Bonus Episode! Parklandia Listener Question

We've been getting questions on Facebook and Insta and in this special Saturday episode, we take some time to answer a listener question about life on the road. In short: it's not an endless vacay, keep a stash of quarters, beware of poo showers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, I'm Matt and I'm Brad. This is park Landia.
We packed up our loft in Chicago, moved into an
r vie with her dog Finn, and now we're a
child in the country full time visiting America's national parks.
Thanks for listening. Today we're reading through some questions we've
been getting from followers on Facebook or Instagram, and today's

(00:28):
question is from Emma, whose Instagram handle is fire after Midnight.
Yeah me too. She asked, I'd love to hear more
about van life, as it's a lifestyle that I would
love to live. Love to the first few episodes, and
then she added a heart emoji, which is really lovely. Yes,
thank you so much for asking this question, Emma. Um,
you know, this style is a difficult style to live,

(00:52):
and to just give up your our luxurious um home
in loft in Chicago was not an easy choice. But
it's a choice that we actually made, um for our relationship,
for our work, habits, um for our whole life, you know,
and it really is a lifestyle. UM. So putting that

(01:14):
into his perspective, it's it's not easy, you know, I'm
getting rid of everything that you have or you know,
really scaling down. I mean we had a little broad sale, um,
which my friend Jenny helped us with. UM. We've had
you know, our storage unit over by the farm, and
all these different little aspects of people that came and
helped along the way. And that's the thing about this

(01:36):
is this lifestyle you have to have a good support group,
um and luckily we do have that, Yeah, we really do.
It's also one thing I think to stress is van
life or our v life is not like NonStop vacation
or super glamorous. Really like I think a lot of
people have this really elaborate romantic idea of it, and

(01:59):
it can be a struggle and it's hard and certainly
not glamorous. It can be messy and strenuous, and you
don't have easy access to a lot of things like
we were used to, like laundry or a dishwasher and
a spacious fridge. So it takes them getting used to.
But it's one of those things where the pros far
away the cons and the experiences you make and discover

(02:21):
along the way, especially the unexpected ones, are make it
all well worth it, like a thousand times over. Yeah, no, absolutely,
I mean there's been times where I've literally gotten a
push hour from our black tank. UM. And I've talked
about this repeatedly to people we meet along the road.
And because you have to be careful with these things.

(02:43):
And you know, I burned all my clothes from that. Okay,
I just throw them away, but UM, you know, those
types of things they happen, and you know you have
to be ready for those mentally. Like I was super frustrated,
and you know, I basically was stripped down outside of
my RV so and bring it in UM to my underwear.
And then I walk in and Matt's like, what are

(03:04):
you doing? Like he was just like, you must be crazy. UM.
So there's definitely a lot of things you have to
learn about your black tanks, your great tanks. UM. And
even though like this, we were probably six months in
and this is when this happened, I didn't check that
they were closed before I opened up the cap to
um dump those lines. And so there's definitely learning experiences

(03:25):
like that. UM. We now know to always carry around
at least two rolls of quarters with us, UM, just
in case we don't have a bank nearby to get
quarters for laundry or their coin machines. Are down UM,
and then in those times we actually talk to people,
like in the laundry rooms, you know, like we meet
people and you know that's kind of fun. Um not

(03:46):
all every time, and but it's that's part of it.
It's about meeting people and finding out who they are
and where they're from and how they're traveling. And you'll
see a lot of different other full timers and they
have a completely different rig I mean, we have a
Class C motor home. Um, there's people who traveling Class a's.
There's people who go to the van lifestyle that's completely

(04:07):
custom built. We've seen bus lifestyles where there's a huge
bus and they completely got it and redid it. UM.
And you just have to find what your travel style
is before jumping into this. I would say the RV
lifestyle is definitely more easier than the van lifestyle. Another
really good factor that helped us was actually talking to

(04:30):
other people who owned r vs UM and one of
my biggest mistakes was actually not listening to them. Um.
They they they said, you know, make sure you have
a walk around bed, you know, make sure you have
enough closet space. And those are the two things that
I didn't do, and I've had to alter our RV
to fit in more, um more clothing space so um.

(04:51):
Actually just recently I installed above the driver's seats, UM
different kinds of cabinet. It's with drawers and places where
we can hang our suits because we're gonna go to
Metts Brothers wedding here soon and and different things like that.
And so through this lifestyle we've had to learn and

(05:13):
adapt to the road. Okay, thanks Emma for that great question.
I know we tried to answer it as best we could.
It's I know, it's a big question, so it's hard
to summarize, but I hope that gives you some insight
for your for van life goals. And we'll absolutely cover
more of this in future episodes of Parklandia. You've been

(05:37):
listening to the Parklandia podcast, a show about national parks
by I Heart Radio, created by Matt Krouac, Brad Caro
Wak and Christopher hasiotis produced and edited by Mike Johns.
Executive produced by Christopher hasiotis special thanks to Gabrielle Collins,
Crystal Waters, and the rest of the Parklandia crew and
Hey listeners. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a

(05:58):
review on Apple Podcast. It helps other people like you
find our show. You can keep up with us on
social media. Check out photos from our travels on Instagram
at Parklandia Pod, and join in the conversation in our
Facebook group, Parklandia Rangers. Thank you so much for listening.