The skylight broke somewhere in Washington.
By then Austin had norovirus, I’d started getting sick too, and we’d accepted that every towel we owned would spend the foreseeable future trying and failing to keep our mattress dry.
Every road trip has a version you imagine before you leave.
Bend was everything we’d hoped for. We spent mornings riding bikes through town, surfed laps on the Deschutes, endless frisbee with cola by the river, and settled into the rhythm that made us both fall in love with van travel. Wake up somewhere beautiful, get wet, move your body, eat good food, pass out, repeat.
Then somewhere between Bend and Pacific City, Austin came down with norovirus.
From there, it felt like the Pacific Northwest remembered it had a reputation to uphold. The skylight crumbled, and our carefully organized little home slowly developed an indoor water feature directly over the mattress. Gorilla tape and trash bags became structural components of the van.
It’s amazing how quickly your priorities change. The funny thing about plans is that nature has absolutely no obligation to honor them. Somewhere along the way, our list of must surf beaches quietly turned into a list of hardware stores and surprisingly strong opinions about waterproof tape and sealant.
Austin spent most of the Oregon coast recovering while Cola and I wandered the beaches. She still needed exercise, and I still wanted to see the places that meant so much to Austin long before we met. We’d meet back at the van and trade stories, mine about the new conversations and the people Cola barked at, his about whichever medicine was winning that day.
We almost skipped Olympic National Park, but after driving all that way, it felt wrong not to at least step into the forest. We patched the skylight as best we could before another downpour found its way inside, had a moment of silence to accept the van would never be dry again, and started walking!
Olympic didn’t seem to notice we’d had a rough week.
We’d been cursing the rain for days but it turns out the rain wasn’t the problem. We’d just been experiencing it from inside a leaking van instead of beneath thousand year old trees.
Everything in the forest seemed to have reached an agreement with the rain long before we got there. Ferns spilled over the trail, water ran down every trunk, and moss covered anything that stayed still long enough. For the first time in days, neither of us was thinking about being sick.
We both found home in a van long before we met. Somewhere along the way, home became a person too. Olympic felt like coming home in more ways than one.
Victoria gave us exactly what we needed, a quiet pause. Austin recovered in the hotel while I wandered the city for a few hours, happy to simply be somewhere new. The next morning we caught the ferry and started back toward Boise, lingering in places like Hoodsport and Hood River because we’d finally stopped measuring the trip against the one we’d planned.
Looking back through the photos, it’s remarkable how little evidence there is that any of this happened.
They don’t show the trash bags taped to the ceiling, the fever dreams, wet bedding, or the nights Austin wondered whether he’d ever feel rested again.
Instead, they show afternoons spent with old friends and new ones, ferry rides, lots of good food, and the three of us in the van singing and freestyle rapping with our anxiety-ridden, decidedly non lap dog, sitting on our laps.
Trips have a way of editing themselves. The misery fades. The stories get better. The hardships are meaningful but you remember what came out of them, the good stuff. The PNW still managed to be exactly what we’d hoped it would be. Just not in the way we expected.
