Women Who Travel

What It Actually Takes to Become a Van Lifer: Women Who Travel Podcast

We tap the experts for tips on living on the road responsibly this summer.
WWT Van Life For Dummies
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If, after over a year at home, you're thinking that the best salve for your sanity this summer is to pack up, get out of your house or apartment, and hit the road in a van to explore America's great outdoors, this episode is for you. With advice on what to pack, how to route your trip, and how to avoid the mistakes they made, our guests—van lifers Erin McGrady, an Asheville-based writer and photographer, and Noami Grevemberg, founder of Diversify Vanlife and one half of the @IrietoAurora Instagram account—can help you get started. But while this episode is in part a van life for dummies guide, it also gets at the no-filter realities of living in your van, the privilege that comes with choosing a voluntary nomadic lifestyle, and the responsibility travelers have to respect and understand the public lands they visit. It truly hits all the bases. 

Thanks to Erin and Noami for joining us this week. If you want to dive deeper into van life, be sure to check out Noami's podcast, “Nomads at the Intersections.” Thanks, as always, to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing this episode. As a reminder, you can listen to new episodes of Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, every Wednesday.

Read a full transcription of the episode below.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi everyone. And welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Conde Nast Traveler. I'm Lale Arikoglu. And with me as always is my co-host Meredith Carey.

Meredith Carey: Hello.

LA: With many companies still offering flexible and remote work options and the outdoors calling our name, we think this summer may be the ultimate time to pack it up and live on the road for a few weeks or even months. So we're calling on the pros who have more than their fair share of experience living out in vans and RVs to give you all the advice you need to set out for the first time. We're joined by Asheville-based writer and photographer, Erin McGrady, and Noami Grevemberg, founder of Diversify Vanlife and one half of the Instagram duo @IrieToAurora, who are here to help debunk the myths of van life and prevent you from making rookie mistakes. Thank you for joining us.

Erin McGrady: Thanks for having me.

Noami Grevemberg: Thank you so much for having me on.

MC: So to just set a baseline for everyone, about how much you both know, what got you into traveling and living in vans in the first place?

EM: My story starts with a romance. I'd been doing a solo adventure trip, and I had driven my car to Asheville, North Carolina, just on a whim. And I started swiping through a dating app and I matched up with my soon-to-be wife, partner, but we actually didn't meet in real life that evening after matching, we didn't meet until three months later, we just wrote long love letters back and forth to one another over the winter. And then we finally brought it into real time and then life just really took off from there. We both just quit our jobs. I was a teacher, she had a donut shop here in Asheville, and we decided we were just going to go for broke and travel. We bought an RV and the rest is kind of history.

MC: And Noami, how about you?

NG: Yeah, mine is a little bit of a romance as well. I actually love that story Erin. My husband, Dustin and I were living in New Orleans. We both had our full-time, nine-to-five corporate jobs. I was an environmental biologist and he worked in construction management and we were there just living our nine-to-five gigs and it just started getting really redundant and we started questioning ourselves, is this what we were going to do for the rest of our lives? Are we just going to work nine-to-five careers, come home, party, drink and repeat. And we started to take a step back and reevaluate our life's trajectory. But when we met, it was probably five years prior to that on the day we met on an LSU football tailgate, I shared with him my dream of traveling the country in a van and visiting all the national parks and exploring America the beautiful, and he shared a similar feeling that he always wanted to do that.

So we decided at the same time to dig up an old dream of traveling the country in a van. And three months later, we were on the road in our van traveling. We kind of jumped head first into the idea because we knew we were going to talk ourselves out of it. I don't recommend it to anyone, because I'm a headfirst-in kind of person, but it's the best decision we ever made. And five years later here we are. It was supposed to be a one-year journey from New Orleans to Alaska and back.

MC: You've got a lot more places, I'm sure, than just along that original route.

NG: I mean six months in we were like, "Ah, I don't think we want to stop doing this."

LA: It must've felt quite scary to take that leap and quit your jobs. Were there any moments where either of you got cold feet or sort of took a beat and was like, "What are we doing right now? Is this totally irresponsible?"

NG: Well, all our friends were telling us that. All our family members were like, "This is pretty out there, guys." And we're like, "Yeah, it's a radical shift." Honestly, we did. All the noise of everyone else's opinions and suggestions about what we're doing with our lives affected the decision. But we decided to put the blinders on and just stay focused because deep down inside, it was a calling, we had a calling and we had to see it through, we both felt the same way. So we looked at each other, the morning after we decided to do it and we're like, "Well, are we doing this? Yeah, we're doing this. Okay. Let's go." So it was hard, but I'm glad we did it.

MC: Erin, how about you? Did you guys ever think, "Oh God, what have we done?"

EM: Yes. We had numerous moments, usually it would start with me waking up in a panic, which quickly led to tears and then doubt and all the different kinds of things. At different points, we both had those fears come up and luckily they happened at different times. So my wife and I could kind of bounce off one another and then bring each other back to a place of strength and then just trying to keep going. But I also can resonate with what you're saying, Noami, about your friends and your family, just have having forsaken the steady paycheck, and then thinking like, "Oh, we have to live with this new reality of discomfort and not knowing where the money is coming from." I think that was the most stressful part.

LA: Kind of touching on that topic of reality and the discomfort when it comes to things like finances and so on. I think there's a lot of Instagram versus reality when it comes to van life and life on the road and sort of taking a slightly more nomadic trajectory. What do you think people misunderstand about what it takes?

NG: I mean, I think for me I had this idea that everything was just going to be perfect. I would be doing yoga in all these extraordinary places, reading all the books, I'd have all this time, but I think people underestimate how long it takes to do things. Every day just packing up the van and moving from one spot to the other, it takes forever. So I think that's one of the things that a lot of people underestimate.

MC: I’d imagine that isn’t just true of packing up but of the physical driving as well.

EM: It took me a really long time to realize that what Google Maps says, I can then add plus two—minimum. But I used to look at the thing and think, oh, okay, there's no traffic, this route looks like it's mostly highways. We're going to be able to do XYZ. And then suddenly, we're rolling into camp at 10:00 p.m. in the dark and we're both really annoyed at each other. So we've learned to just dial back a bit on expectations and then Google Maps, plus two hours.

NG: Agreed. Yeah, we go really slow and we don't plan months in advance or anything like that. We plan for the week. Okay. This week we're going to drive these days and we're going to work and explore on these days. So everything is done in time blocks.

MC: Going back to Lale’s question, Erin, what do you feel like is misunderstood about traveling and working out of your van?

EM: I recognize it's a place of I'm doing it because I want to do it, not because I'm forced to live there. And I think in the last year or so really I've had my eyes open to the privilege that I have in traveling in this way and I've become more aware of it. And I've had more of an appreciation for being able to do the things that I'm doing, but not wanting to share about it in a way that makes it feel like alienating or isolating or something for other travelers. And I think that if you want to travel and you have your car and your car is good enough. You don't have to have a brand new van or it doesn't have to be a standup or it doesn't have to be something that's like the tall standup Mercedes though. And I like those vehicles. And I think they're great. I think even just getting to a park via public transportation is a cool thing, too.

LA: I think what you're saying is really interesting, kind of touching on that, that it is a privilege to choose to live this way. To live nomadically as a choice is something that not many people get to do and many people are forced into it and live that life in a very different way. Kind of on the topic of this year, obviously that seems to have put it in relief for you, Erin, but I'm interested to know what navigating this year has been like both kind of on an emotional level and also just kind of responsibly.

EM: We had been traveling and we were in the van when the pandemic hit and we'd come back from a trip in Death Valley and we came back to Asheville and we're just seeing all the things happening and putting things together and realizing the most responsible thing seems to be, to stay in town at home and just lock down with everyone else rather than going back out west as we had planned. But we have a tiny home, which I'm in today, it's 484 square feet. And someone had been living in it, who was a travel nurse. And so we didn't have housing and we ended up moving to five different places within the year because we didn't have a place to go that wasn't the van because we hadn't planned on being home.

So the person that was living in our home, she wanted to stay at the hospital and we're like, "Oh yeah, absolutely. You're a really vital part of this community." So we found ourselves scrambling again. And then we finally got back into her house a couple of months ago and it was just a real relief to be able to have a place to go, but also to really feel what it was like to be displaced temporarily and just a strange way to experience the pandemic when we thought we were going to be out west doing some really fun adventures and work—and some of our biggest projects got shut down, so we were scrambling and how to pivot and turn the work into something that was based from home. I just have a deeper appreciation for even just small adventures these days because of being forced to stay within a smaller radius.

LA: Noami, how about you?

NG: Yeah. We were actually in an apartment in New Orleans preparing to get back on the road in the spring when the pandemic hit and we were kind of caught in this place of should we stay or should we go? What's the responsible thing to do? We were already packed up, ready to go. We were renting an apartment, so we had already given notice and we called the landlord and we still were thinking about staying. He was like, "Well, unfortunately we already rented the place for someone else." So that was our answer. So the next day we decided, okay, we're going to get back in the van and we're going to figure it out and try to stay safe, maybe just go isolate somewhere. And a friend of mine has some property out in Taos, [New Mexico] and she called me and she said, "Y'all are welcome to come, stay on the property for as long as you need." And that was such a blessing for us because I was terrified. How am I going to do this in a van? The same public lands are shutting down, so my partner and I were pretty fortunate to be able to do that. So we went and stayed on our friend's property in Taos for a few months and then got back in the van and went to California and rented a cabin for another few months. And later in the year we kind of came out and decided, "Okay, we're going to slowly make our way probably back to New Orleans." Or something like that. And it was interesting. It definitely wasn't the van life that I knew. We had plans to go to Alaska last year, finally make it to Alaska and that didn't work out. So we ended up just hunkering down in Arizona for the winter and that's how we were able to stay safe. And we were able to isolate. When we were in the van, we stayed isolated and it was a unique experience.

And like Erin was saying, I just feel really privileged to have been able to have that choice and to still have a home. My van is my home. So I was still able to have shelter and still able to stay safe. But it really brought a lot to the surface for me, as far as what we were talking about, van life being a privilege and having the privilege to choose because throughout the pandemic a lot of people got forced out of their homes and a lot of people are being forced to live this lifestyle. And that's something that I always tell other van lifers, we have a responsibility to recognize that not everyone can choose this lifestyle, but we also have to understand that with that privilege comes responsibility.

My first few years in van life, it was very romanticized that you need this $60,000 rig to live this way. But no, I think some of the most important stories that we should be sharing, other stories of those who aren't choosing this lifestyle, aren’t privileged to live it, aren’t privileged to leave the city and go exploring in all the beautiful places. Some people have to stay in their vans near cities because that's where they work. So I feel pretty fortunate in that sense.

LA: Noami, you mentioned sort of those first few years of living on the road and how even you yourself kind of romanticized it in a way. For both of you, when you think back on those early months or those first kind of trips or kind of batches on the road, what advice do you wish you could tell your first timer yourself about van life?

NG: I had this idea that I need to see and do everything. But we've slowed down significantly in the past few years and a lot last year during the pandemic. Van life has changed for me in so many ways. When I first got on the road, I wanted to explore all the national parks. I wanted to see everything, but like I said earlier, it comes with a responsibility in a sense, and now I've chosen to travel slow. I've chosen to immerse myself in cultures and understand the history of this land that I'm so fortunate to be able to occupy and explore and live and work.

And just traveling slow really allows me to create a sense of place and a sense of routine sometimes, which is something really, really difficult to do in this lifestyle. I don't like saying I have a routine per se. I have rituals and I've been able to adapt tools that help me to have some kind of balance because I'm a digital nomad as well. We work on the road and that's been kind of a learning curve for sure. But yeah, I'd give my younger self, a few years ago, the advice of taking it slow, creating a sense of place.

LA: I love that. Erin, what about you?

EM: Man, I wished I could have avoided purchasing a vintage RV because it was just a disaster. I really romanticized... Okay. I'm going to blame my wife on this and we can argue about that later, but she has this really beautiful way of picking out a diamond in the rough. And she will find something that she thinks is really aesthetically pleasing. And then I get excited about it because she's excited about it, but really we should both look at each other and run. We did that twice with two different vehicles. We had a 1976 Toyota Chinook, which was like this cool pop-up Toyota truck camper. And when you register it, it's actually called a house car. I was obsessed with this thing and we spent a lot of money getting the inside reupholstered and making it look really Instagram-worthy. But the engine was just crap for lack of a better word. It didn't work. And it led to a fiery death on the toll, just outside of some place in Indiana. And we had to crawl home with our tail between our legs. But we also had another mishap, not too long after that with another vintage vehicle because we just were still of the mindset that we needed this kind of throwback thing. And I say vintage, but it was sort of just a year older than me. So I don't know what that says about me, but we got another Toyota truck camper and we ended up selling that one as well. And then we finally just started traveling around in our old Toyota Four Runner and then that also died in Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, as they say.

And then we finally got into the van [we have now]. We just looked at each other just defeated and we're like, "We have got to get something that's mechanically sound even if it looks just basic." And our van is very basic. People mistake us for the electrician regularly. So I would definitely make sure that the mechanics of it, unless you're really gifted with tools and micro-computers and whatnot in vehicles that you buy something that's functional and won't leave you stranded because it is a really bad feeling to be broken down.

AAA said that they were going to cancel our membership because we'd had too many tows. Yeah. We got a letter in the mail. It finally caught up to us. It had gone to my mom's house and she was like, "You got a letter from AAA." And I opened it. We started to read it. And they're like, "We're going to just continue your membership if you have another tow." And we didn't even know that was a thing.

MC: I was about to say, that’s the a service. That's what they do.

LA: Their entire job.

NG: I mean, we break down all the time. So I got to tell my husband this.

EM: Yeah. Be on the lookout for the letter.

NG: Yeah. I guess the kind of romantic idea of having a vintage band is sort of shattered when you're standing at the side of the road in the middle of the night, waiting for AAA to show up.

EM: Yeah. There's only so many cool pictures you can make out of the forlorn face with the tow truck in the background.

NG: I kind of resonate with your story Erin, because I have an old Westy and we break down all the time. But my partner, on the first time we bought the van, we were preparing to get on the road. He spent the entire two weeks leading up to it under the van, just talking quietly to himself. That's when I knew that he would be our in-house mechanic. I feel so fortunate that he is skilled at mechanics because I wouldn't be driving in my iconic Volkswagen Vanagon. So I feel like that's an important tool for people to understand: vans breakdown. It's inevitable.

EM: You really have my dream vehicle. And we will point out to one another, when we see one on the road, “That one's moving, it's working,” as if somehow that will lend confidence to us to purchase something like that.

LA: I love it.

MC: For people who are trying out, living or working out of a van for the first time this summer, what are things to pack that you think that people forget, that you have found to be so important in your day-to-day life now?

NG: For me, it's my Wi-Fi booster. I can't live without it right now because I'm able to still be a little bit more remote on the days that I work and still able to get service for my hotspot. Before that it was really difficult. I spent a lot of time in Walmart parking lots and Starbucks parking lots. So now I'm still able to get out a little bit further into remote areas and work. So for me, I think this year for digital nomads, it's a Wi-Fi booster.

EM: I need to look into one of those. Thanks for that tip. I think for me, it's just some weird random stuff. I always need a piece of string so I can hang up some laundry because we'll do that in the van, but then it just smells bad at night. I'm a big fan of hammocking because then that allows me to get a little tiny bit of personal time because I love my wife. But when you spend this far from one another all day long, you need to be able to get away from each other and do it in a way that's not going to cause an argument, so hammock time is cool. And then I could do really well with just a spork. When we first set off, I literally packed an entire set of china. Like the spoon and fork and knife, I had 15 of each, but there was-

MC: You were going to have dinner parties in that van.

EM: I don't know what I was thinking. But yeah, we use the same thing over and over. We lick it. That's a symbol that it's clean. So you could do away with it a lot less.

NG: Minimize, minimize, minimize, right? That's the thing. Minimize, minimize, minimize.

LA: Erin, you mentioned your sacred hammock time, which I think after the past year, anyone who has been locked down with a partner can definitely relate to. As we record this, my husband is hiding in the other room. How have you both navigated being in such small enclosed spaces with a partner for such long lengths of time? And sharing all of your experiences together? It's not like you get to the end of the day and you necessarily have something new to tell the other person, which has been very strange for me this past year. So I'd love to know how you've both navigated it.

NG: Yeah, it was rough in the beginning for sure. I mean, everything is heightened. You're with this person, every single thing is heightened and you're in each other's space all the time. We were literally bumping heads and stepping on each other's toes and nerves. But we've learned to really communicate, through a place of empathy, our needs. We have a small full-size bed in our van and we have a pop-top that also has a pullout bed and sometimes I just want the bed to myself when it's that time of the month or I'm fatigued from the road. Sometimes I just want to spread out. So it's like, "Can I just have this bed tonight for myself? You can have upstairs. I can have down here.” Or if we just need the van to ourselves, I'll just ask, "Hey, can I just have this fan today to myself?" And he'll go on a hike or I'll go on a hike and he can have the van.

So we've just learned to give each other space in that way from a place of love and empathy. It's hard sometimes. We definitely get heated a little bit in the van and get on each other's nerves, but it's all about communication. And we've learned to learn to communicate better in the van I have to say. Creating rituals in the mornings—I'm a morning person and my partner is not. So in the mornings I wake up and I do whatever it takes to get me out of the van. So I'm a runner. I do yoga. Movement is very important to me. It gets me grounded and really brings me into the present moment to get ready for my day, whatever it may be. So I get up really early. I rise with the sun and I get out—and when I'm back, he's up and he's in good spirits, coffee is brewing. So I guess we would say it's a ritual that we have created in our van that we do no matter where we go: I get out in the morning and he has the van to slowly wake up. So it's actually really beautiful.

LA: Erin, how about you?

EM: I think Caroline and I have a tendency to do everything together and we really enjoy it. And then all of a sudden, the wheels fall off the bus and we need to get away from each other really quickly. And it sometimes can be hard to tell when that's coming, because we think one of us is always surprised, "Oh, we thought that was going really swimmingly." And then it was a total fail. So this sounds really, really stupid but I'm just going to say it. We try to follow different people on Instagram and we try to read different books and we try to look at different things on the internet. So we have something to share at the end of the day. So we're not just speaking to each other about things that we already know and there's something new to share. We've been trying to create these, I don't know, if it feels like artificial experiences, but new things to talk about rather than just, "Oh, did you see that?" “Yes, I saw that.” And then finishing the other person's sentence. So I think there are more mental tricks than they are actual physical strategies or boundaries, but they've been working. So we're just going to go with that.

MC: This is kind of a more logistical question and kind of goes back to what I was asking earlier about the driving part. But when you're planning your trips, whether it's just the week Noami or a long weekend outside of Asheville, how do you decide where to stay? What to see? That sort of thing. What is your planning process for trips in your van?

NG: I would say for Dustin and I, like I said earlier, we do time blocks, work and then adventure. So it depends on where we are sometimes. If we're in Arizona, we'll look up public lands or monuments or places that we want to go hiking, the best hiking trails. We do a lot of backpacking, so we'll probably look that up. And usually that's how we decide where we want to go. Right now, I'm writing a book about van life and I'm going to have a lot of photography in it. So I've been planning around that. So this year, our trip is really intentional and it has to do with collecting stories and photography for the book. So this year we're planning it that way. So it's really intentional. Sometimes earlier on, we would just point to a place on the map and we'll just say, "Okay. Where do we want to go?" And close my eyes and point there. And that was pretty exciting and adventurous, but these days it's much more intentional.

EM: Yeah. I think for us in the beginning, we went to places where neither of us had been before in an effort to see something new together. And I mean, obviously we've been to places where one of us has gone, but we really liked that idea of going someplace that we could both kind of see for the first time together as a kind of experience. But these days the work kind of drives where we're going. And then we've tried to try to build in time so we can kind of take a wayward journey to get to those places in between the jobs. But if it's a weekend thing close to home, [We go to] Google Maps and looking in on the terrain satellite thing, and seeing what you can see without having to see with all the bloggers and websites and everything has said, and seeing if you can find your own what looks like a trail next to a river and see if you can find something off-the-beaten path that's always interesting to me.

I really like to play tourist when I'm in a new town to just embrace it and own it, too. I'm going to do all the super touristy things because why not? They're touristy for a reason. And then on my second pass through, then I'll kind of drop down into a deeper level. But I like playing tourist in my own town too.

MC: For both of you, what has been the best place that you have visited in your van?

NG: I'll have to say. I really, really love the Sawtooths. Yeah, the Sawtooth mountains in Idaho.

MC: So beautiful. Dark sky reserve. I went there to report a story about the dark sky reserve opening and was driving alone on the streets in my uncle's pickup truck. It is too dark out here, but it's so beautiful, but it's just stunning.

NG: Yeah. Hot Springs, just remote backcountry, wildlife. It's probably one of my favorite places,

EM: This might be a really boring answer, but I'm going to give a shout out to my town, Asheville. I have some bittersweet feelings about leaving to go west, which typically it's the opposite. I can't wait to go west and I'm bittersweet about coming home. But if you get the chance and you’re able to come to the Blue Ridge Mountains, there's a lot to offer. There's a ton of breweries. I sound like a travel ad, but it's a really cool place to come visit.

LA: We touched on sort of being a responsible traveler and responsible van lifer earlier. But I think so many people have discovered the outdoors for the first time during the pandemic when they've been searching for sort of wide open spaces or rediscovered it. And I think that's probably encouraging a lot of people to get on the road. And even if it's not for a long length of time, even if it's just for a few months to kind of live the van life. And I think that also sets you up for maybe not behaving that responsibility in the outdoors, if you aren't knowledgeable of the outdoors and also of the land that you're on. What advice do you have for the people who are doing it for the first time about being respectful of the spaces that you're entering into?

NG: I recommend that people learn the history of the land that they're on. It's as simple as Googling: Whose land am I on? And how should I honor that? Because all land is Native land and they were here long before us taking care of the land. And I think it's really important for us to recognize that, to acknowledge that, and to take the time to learn the true history so that we're not perpetuating false narratives and we're not perpetuating the erasure of the Native people who the land belongs to. And I think that's a really good first step in unlearning the conditioning that we're taught about what it means to be an environmentalist, what it means to be a responsible outdoorist. So I think that's a really good first step. And also just recognizing our own biases and that perpetuates gatekeeping of Black, Indigenous, Asian, and LatinX and other people of color in the outdoors. I think that's a really important thing to learn when we're navigating the outdoors, because there are more BIPOC in the outdoors this year than ever. I've seen so many BIPOC van lifers on the road and it's really exciting for me, but it's a little scary because we are being policed on public lands all the time—I hear stories. We can't be environmentally responsible without being socially responsible. It goes hand in hand. I think that it's really important for people to check their biases and learn the true relationship of BIPOC and the outdoors, and also, acknowledging and sharing information with each other in the unlearning process, because we can only have this with real uncomfortable conversations.

EM: I just want to take a pass to let what you just said, Noami, to just amplify what you said. So taking a pass to let your answer take up more space.

NG: Thank you.

MC: You can hear Jaylyn Gough, founder of Native Womens’ Wilderness, speak to those points too in a recent episode that I’ll link in the show notes. As a final question, I’ve got a simple one: What do you love most about van life?

NG: For me, I would say community. I love, yes, the travel, everything is just gorgeous and we love it. I love being able to have my home with me all the time and see beautiful places and explore. But beyond that, this is really the first time that I've ever felt such a deep sense of belonging to a community. It's truly a challenge, building remote and virtual communities, but 2020 has been just instrumental in solidifying and mobilizing the diversified van life community, and really bringing the van life BIPOC community closer together. I mean, we mobilized, we leaned into it, we're learning and growing together and taking up space and shifting the narrative. And for me, that is just one of the most impactful experiences I've ever had in living this road-travel, nomadic lifestyle. So I would say for me, it's the community.

EM: I would agree with that too. I also think for me, it's getting to know my wife, my partner, in these ways. And oftentimes I can feel what it feels like to be at a really beautiful sunset at an overlook. And then I can see it in her face and I'm like, "Oh yeah." We're having a similar experience. It's something to connect on and deepen our relationship. And I've really loved meeting the random people that have come out of the internet into real life. People will reach out and say, "Hey, you're in my town. Do you want to grab a beer?" I'm like, "This is a real person. Yes." And we do that and then we stay connected. And I think that's one of the coolest things about being mobile and having the internet to just connect people and bring it into real life. The first time that happened, it sort of blew my mind like this isn't just someone that lives in the phone. And that feeling of being able to kind of connect with them almost immediately, because you do have some sort of knowledge about them just from interacting on Instagram. It's wild. It's really cool.

NG: Snaps to that Erin. Yeah. Snaps.

EM: Yeah.

NG: It's beautiful. So true.

MC: Speaking of community, if people want to follow you Noami, on your journey over the next, who knows how long. Where can they find you on the internet?

NG: You can follow my van life journey on my instagram at @irietoaurora and at @diversify.vanlife. On my website, irietoaurora.com you'll find eco-van life tips and digital nomad resources and guides.

MC: Amazing. And Erin?

NG: My Instagram handle is @E.McGrady and @AuthenticAsheville. And you can just Google Authentic Asheville and you'll find our travel blog.

MC: You can find me at @ohheytheremere.

LA: And me at @lalehannah.

MC: Be sure to follow Women Who Travel on Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter. Links to Erin and Noami's social media accounts. And all of the things that we've talked about today will be linked in the show notes. And we'll talk to you next week.