MAK and Owen bought a Toyota Tacoma and left in 2016 for a sustainable life. Lets talk about their story!
We are MAK and Owen. A married couple that left Atlanta, Georgia in 2016 to go on the road full time.
We are fulltime freelance designers and work from the road. We wanted to start vanlife because we did a 6 month road trip after college and fell in love with the movement more than just one particular place.
When we left in 2016 it was for a sustainable version of the first trip after college!
We’re currently on our 3rd and are working on our 4th home on wheels. We are still trying to find what the perfect setup is for our life, work, and offroad capability that we want!
We think that this new (yet to be revealed) version will be the winner for us!
We’ve always loved old Toyota Land Cruisers. We would build out a Troopy Land Cruiser but sadly there isn’t enough workspace in them for us. So we will just admire them instead.
Our first home one wheels was a VW Vanagon Westfalia, and we did everything on that van ourselves other than replace the engine. Our second home on wheels was a 1985 Toyota Sunrader 4×4 and we did everything from scratch on that build.
It took over 8 months to complete. For the Tacoma and current home on wheels the 2008 Tacoma we did the build ourselves, it only took 2 days. I think it’s because we now have a lot of practice building things.
Our new set up that we should have by mid-January we’re having a company build it for us, because we wanted to travel until the day it’s ready!
For our current home in the Tacoma, we honestly love it! We wouldn’t change a thing on it! The past couple of vehicles have really taught us what we do and do not like, so it was easy to design the build for the truck and feel confident in what we made!
Only two days! If you are wanting to get out there fast we really recommend a truck camper! The hardest part was deciding how to organize the drawers below our bed.
There are a lot of beautiful roads but we loved the road leading up to the Bugaboo Mountain Range in Canada. The road lead up to a trail that takes you up to the Bugaboo Glacier.
It was long, remote and so beautiful the whole way!
We are free campsites in the middle of nowhere. Reason being is that we like to be outside enjoying nature.
When you are in the middle of nowhere it’s quieter and makes you feel like there are still things untouched by humans on this earth.
This is a hard one for us to answer. We’ve been doing this for so long now that we have most of it figured out. If we had to say something through it would be working through breakdowns.
When you live on the road, your car is your home, when your home isn’t working or is in the shop you very quickly become homeless.
It’s very hard to keep a level head and stay positive, but those are so important to see yourself through a stressful time.
There are a billion best parts, but I would have to say that every day is a different day then the last and who knew it was possible to be so happy all the time?!
We have our own business. We do graphic design, motion graphics, illustration, and freelance photography!
It honestly varies. Because we work full time we do not watch a budget all that closely but we do spend most to all of our money on gas and food.
We fill up on gas 2-3 times a week and go to the grocery store the same number of times.
Pick a vehicle that you can count on. If you go out in an unreliable vehicle you stand a chance of spending far more money on fixing your vehicle or staying in a hotel while it’s being fixed.
That is what we did in our first home on wheels and we nearly spent every dollar on fixing it when it blew 2 engines and a radiator in one month.
The whole point of vanlife is to get out there and experience the world, and I hate to say it that isn’t going to happen if you are just going from auto shop to auto shop.
Or worse you have to cut your journey short like we almost did.
