United States | Nomadland IRL

The pandemic pushed more Americans to try out van life

But the viral travel fad isn’t as carefree as Instagram makes it out to be

Doing it for the ‘gram
|Longmont, Colorado

IN 2019 LUCY JACOBSON and her colleagues at Rossmönster Vans flew to San Francisco carrying “suitcases full of cash”. They were on their way to purchase five retro Volkswagen vans made in the 1980s in order to drive them back to Longmont, Colorado and turn them into custom adventure-mobiles. The road trip home took them to Las Vegas (“to let our freak flag fly”), through Utah’s canyons and over the Rockies. It was the kind of expedition increasing numbers of Americans are hankering for.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Vanity projects”

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