We’re back on the road! 🎉🚐 | Our decision to resume van life + our upcoming travel plans

Three months of quarantining at home in Austin, Texas. We are finally back on the road. We are so excited, but it is a little bittersweet leaving my parents. Big shout out to them for letting us stay with them for so long. We are so grateful to have had a safe place to be for the last three months and we appreciate all of the meals, the Hallmark movies, the laughs and just being able to spend quality time together. And we're going to miss you guys. So since today is mostly going to be just driving for us, we thought we'd share a little bit of the background on our decision to leave and share a little bit about where we're going. So we've been getting asked a lot about when we were going to leave. And honestly, it's been a really hard question to answer. Our number one priority through this whole time has been the safety of us and the safety of others. And the last thing we want to do is put anyone in danger of the virus, anything like that. So it's just been something really hard to answer. There's no right answer. There's nothing on the news saying, okay, now you can hop in your van and take off. But we ultimately decided to leave because as the U S opens up, we felt really confident that we could safely explore and work from the road. We were actually more self isolated in the van than we were at my parents' house. And we'll be taking tons of precautions on the road. We'll be wearing our masks. We'll be washing our hands a ton. We'll be following all the local rules and every place we visit. And we're going to be limiting our exposure to people as much as possible. It is going to limit us a bit on what we can do, but we're just going to have to be flexible. Our biggest concern being back on the road, besides health and safety is internet access. So before COVID, we were able to go into Whole Foods, libraries, coffee shops and work using their internet. But now we're going to be relying on our hotspots probably a hundred percent of the time. So we actually upgraded our hotspots while we were back in Austin. So we have more data than ever before. So we're going to cross our fingers. It will work, but uploading YouTube videos might get a bit tricky. We're going to hope that wifi from places extends to the parking lot. So we can do that. So hopefully that'll go okay. If at any point we feel like being back on the road is too stressful or not safe for us or others, we will head back to Austin, but we're going to really hope that is not the case. So we made a quick pit stop to get some diesel and to feed Kona. Our goal today is to make it to San Angelo, which is only about a three and a half hour drive from Austin. But our ultimate goal over the next couple of weeks is to get to the Pacific Northwest. If you're new around here, we lived in Seattle for about three years. We absolutely love it up there and we cannot wait to get back. We've been so excited to get back up there this year. So we're making our way there, but we're going to make a few fun stops along the way. So this weekend's plan is to spend time in the Santa Fe area and then we'll spend some time in the salt Lake city area. And then a handful of days in Idaho, which we're very excited about before finally making it to Washington. So our goals for the summer were to visit Glacier National Park in Vancouver Island, because those are two spots that we could not visit last summer due to finishing the van too late. But unfortunately the Canada border is still not open. And we've heard that the campgrounds in British Columbia are only allowing British Columbia residents to book them. So we've basically given up on Vancouver Island, but we're still crossing our fingers for Glacier. That's like one of our bucket list spots we want to visit in the U S and we have some fun stuff planned there. So we're hoping that works out. But as we've learned on the road, things change all the time. So we're trying to not get too attached to an idea. But if you guys have any recommendations of things to do in any of the spots we mentioned, definitely let us know. We love getting your tips and recommendations for things to do, places to eat in the places that we visit. But normally we're long gone by the time the vlog is posted. So our hope by sharing a little bit ahead of time of where we're going, we can use your tips. Home sweet home for the night. We made it to our spot for the night. We're just sleeping tonight at a rest area right off the side of the highway, which is something we've done a lot in our van life career. And not every single state allows you to sleep overnight at rest areas, but Texas is one that does. So we do it a lot going in and out of Texas. When we're having a long driving day, even a short driving day like today, we're just trying to get from point A to point B. It's just really easy to just get off the highway, just sleep right here, hop back on in the morning and not try to find something more scenic or pay to sleep somewhere that's a little bit nicer. And we typically, I mean, we've always had a good experience at rest areas. They're typically really well lit. There's usually people sleeping here. So it kind of feels like safety in numbers. The downside though is we will have cars driving by us all night long. So the sleep's never really the best, but it's also 90 something degrees out still at 8 PM. So we don't think we're going to sleep that well anyway. All right. It's time to make some dinner. We're getting comfy. Had to change my shirt because we are making zoodles and pasta sauce. And if you don't know pasta sauce and white t-shirts, they don't go very well together. Just right. Pro tip with zoodles, heat up your sauce on the side, keep your zoodles cold. So that when you do the hot sauce over the top, it'll make them nice and tender instead of making them super mushy if you add it into the pot. We are so excited to be back on the road filming travel vlogs for you guys. All this time off from traveling made us appreciate it even more. Even the nights at the cracker barrels or the rest stops like we are tonight. And our goal now that we're back on the road is to film more vlogs for you guys and not just bring you guys along for the jam-packed fun days we have on the weekends, but also for some of the smaller weekday adventures we have as well. We may not be able to travel exactly like we did before, but we're going to do the best with what we've got. And just a warning, our future vlogs are going to be a little more nature and a little more takeout heavy. So food and nature are two of our favorite things, but it won't be exactly, yeah, the same as before, but it's time for us to head to bed. If we don't melt first from this heat, it's really hot. It's so hot in here. It's going to be brutal, but we're going to go to bed, finish our drive tomorrow and we'll see you guys in Santa Fe. All on the road again. I'm so excited to be on the road again. Following all the local rules for every place we visit and we're going to be limiting our exposure, not exposing ourselves to people. That's not good. Don't do that.