Written and photographed by Dylan Machi
When your camper van breaks down mid-expedition, you learn two things fast: patience is non-negotiable, and sometimes the most memorable parts of a road trip happen when you are forced to stay in one spot.
My girlfriend Paige and I aren't the type to over-plan our lives in 15-minute increments. But when you set out from our hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, to drive a 35-year-old, 1991 Ford Econoline camper van over 7,000 miles across the country, flexibility becomes your best asset.
Heading into my senior year of college, this was my last summer of total freedom, and we wanted to make every mile count. We packed up the van, brought along our two cats, and hit the road to see the West Coast for the very first time.
Living out of an indescribably small space with two cats, camera gear, and a cooler of food means trading conventional comfort for river baths, camp-stove dinners, and seeing where the road takes us.
Our route was quite ambitious: exploring Moab, Big Sur, the Redwoods, Squamish, Banff, and Glacier National Park, hiking and camping through some of the most striking landscapes I’ve ever seen, doing a full loop of the USA and parts of Canada.
The Cabin with Wings
Part of the draw of traveling like this is stumbling into unexpected places. That was when we were invited into Bruce’s home.
Tucked deep into the forest, Bruce had built his entire living space inside the decommissioned frame of a Boeing 727-200 fuselage reclaimed entirely by moss and ferns. I spent hours interviewing him for an ongoing documentary project, listening to the quiet cadence of a man who traded societal noise for a cabin shaped like a cockpit. It completely shifted how I looked at our own temporary home on wheels.
22 Days in Jackson
Trips like this don’t always go according to plan, and the shocker of the summer happened as we rolled into Jackson, Wyoming. We were driving our van, Betsy, up a steep hill to some backcountry campsites on a forest road near Grand Teton National Park.
Even though she’s only rear-wheel drive, she’s conquered some crazy terrain, but the dead heat was too much. The transmission blew, and our transmission fluid completely leaked out, leaving us stranded.
If you’re going to break down, Jackson is a brutal place to do it, consistently ranking as the most expensive county in the entire country.
Doing van life at 21 on a serious budget means a hotel room isn't in the cards...
We ended up stranded there for 22 long days waiting on parts, including a replacement transmission that ultimately turned out to be the wrong one. Towing a Class B van off a forest service road using a heavy-duty tow rope is a humbling experience.
With no budget for hotels, we camped right there in our broken-down rig, cooking on a propane stove in parking lots and leaning into the downtime. It was an intensely stressful hurdle, but it forced us to slow down and observe a town most tourists only pass through.
One of our main goals for this two-month trip was to break our old habit of sprinting through National Parks in two days and actually make real connections with other people our age on the road.
Breaking down gave us that. Jackson has a massive van life community, and we ended up running into people at the public showers and climbing wall that we ended up going hiking with the very next day.
We spent our days hanging out at the lake, hiking, and stringing up our ENO hammocks to pass the time together.
Sleeping Above the Treeline
In Washington, we hit the absolute physical highlight of the trip: a spot we hiked through the snow to reach Park Butte Lookout. Perched on a ridge staring directly at Mt. Baker (an active, snow-capped volcano), an old fire tower is a literal time capsule.
There’s a full bed inside, leftover cans of baked beans on the shelf for weary hikers, decayed maps, and a logbook full of wild entries from past travelers.
As it started to snow, the exposed firetower dropped in temperature fast, and we skipped the old mattress. Even with freezing, numb fingers, setting up an aerial camp was quick. We strung my ENO hammock up diagonally, clipping into hardware right inside the glass-walled tower. We added our ENO Vulcan UnderQuilt underneath, and it blocked the cold draft completely, trapping our body heat and keeping us insulated from below. Swaying above the tree line with a snow-dusted volcano framing the window, it was easily the best night of sleep on the entire trip.
The Messy Middle
We drove 7,000 miles, got shook by mechanical failures, lived out of a parking lot in a town we couldn't afford, and drank mate in a retired Boeing jet. The road doesn't hand you a neat, tidy narrative. It hands you grease-stained hands, broken parts, and moments of absolute, jarring stillness suspended between two trees. And honestly, that messy middle is the only part worth writing about.
Author Bio
Dylan Machi is a filmmaker, film photographer, and senior studying Mass Communication at UNC Asheville. Based in the Blue Ridge Mountains, his love for travel and the outdoors keeps him on the move and looking for the next hammock spot.
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