We did it! We Started van life!

We did it! We bought a van! Good morning guys. I'm Darren and I'm Vicki. Welcome to Van-tastic Adventures. We hope our channel will be both fun and informative and you'll enjoy coming along with us. A quick intro about us. I have just retired after 43 years in TV news. Yeah and I've been a freelance artist and designer during that time as well as a homeschool mom raising our two children. They are now adults. We didn't start van life because it looked idyllic on Instagram. We're doing it because our lives have been busy for decades and now that we're at the point where we can cut back on full-time work we pulled the trigger. Life has been really confined and well we're not getting any younger. We didn't just want to go into retirement on autopilot. We wanted more than routines and more than conformity and doctor's orders. We want to feel alive again and live a more healthy lifestyle. So we did what any adventure-seeking couple might do. We bought a van and had it converted into a camper. We filled it up with these essentials which we'll show you when we take you on a van tour in an upcoming episode. We've made a plan to visit all our amazing friends and family along the way which we've not been able to spend time with over the years of working we've done and raising our own family. We're trading in stress for sunsets, chaos for stillness and we're discovering that while life can be messy whether you're working or not it's also funny and utterly human with bits of real joy sprinkled in along the way. So lots of our friends and family have been wanting us to do these videos just to help them stay up to date on what what we're doing on our travels right. Yeah and some of you may just be interested in learning more about van life. And long story short about that we've been campers. We've been campers for a lot of our lives. We've had travel trailers. Our daughter bought a school bus and turned it into an RV. Our son lived in a camper for a few years too. So we've been down that road and we knew that we didn't want another travel trailer and so we figured this van life might be for us. So we figured how do we start it and so we rented. We rented a van. Somebody who had it online we rented that first which I'd highly recommend by the way. And then we did our research and learned a whole lot more about van life. So what we found out when we did our research is what we did and didn't want or need. Right and there's really two camps on that. You can either do it yourself or you could hire somebody to build your van. You know some people have the time and the talent and the tools to do that sort of thing. That's not so much us. So we decided we needed to hire somebody and so also because we wanted it done quickly. We wanted to get out and do some adventures right away. So we studied many conversion companies and we just wanted simple and experience. Yeah and Wayfair vans out of Colorado Springs came highly rated and highly praised by owners. In fact they were named the best camper conversion company in America in 2025 by Outside Magazine for affordability and durability and modularity. So now we needed to find a van and it took us about a year to find what we were looking for. Yeah that's particularly because Wayfair only works with Ford Transits and Ram Pro Masters and we went online to all the car buying websites and we finally found what we're looking for a 2021 Ford Transit 250 all-wheel drive high roof and that just fit our needs perfectly. So we called our chief journey architect. His name is Austin at Wayfair Vans and we told him hey we got our van and so they came to our house they put it on a flatbed and they took it all the way to Colorado to work on. So it only takes a few days once you decide on what build you want and any additions that you want. And so in what April 2025 we flew out to Colorado Springs and we picked up our brand new camper van who by the name we we named Vinny which is short for Vinny Van Gogh. The trip from Colorado to our home in northern Minnesota was fast but fun. Yeah it took us about a week and we stayed at Harvest Hosts in Colorado and Nebraska and South Dakota and we had a great time kind of getting to know the van. Then over the summer Vinny took us on lots of adventures in the upper midwest Minnesota Wisconsin even Michigan. And over the summer we were able to personalize the layout of Vinny making him perfect for us. Well we've covered a lot in this episode but many of you asked us to share our adventures with you so we wanted this particular episode to kind of lay the groundwork for our future adventures and our future episodes are going to include things like a tour of Vinny for sure and we're actually going to hit the road. So I think this is where we're going to let you guys go today. We are glad that you came along. If you liked coming along on today's adventure we ask you to give us a big thumbs up down on the bottom and consider subscribing to our channel. Happy trails. See you next time. So it only takes a few days once you decide what build you want and what additives you want. Additives? No we don't want additives. For most of our adult lives we've had travel trailers and when I look at you you look at me too. That's an indicator that we're long story short you're not looking at the blue dot. My eyes are blurry. There's always something. We got our van and oh you gotta move faster. And so after over the summer we've done it. Okay and look at the green dot only. This is pretty shaky. I don't know if I like this. I don't think I'm gonna do it that way. Pause or delete.