June 2018:

Man, it has been a while!! You are probable wondering if we are alive, what we are up to, if we’re still traveling and why we haven’t posted. We have been very busy this past year.

I, Amandine, have been in graduate school the last two years and it had taken over my life. I had no time to travel, work on the bus & van, or even think about it. It was a very hard two years. Kevin had a wrist and elbow operation last October, which means he has been unable to also touch the bus and the van until recently. They are both in need of love.

Now that we have more time and are in better health, it’s time to get back into it! Kevin has been tinkering with the engine and I am working on giving this website a little love.

In short, we’re back and it feels amazing. More coming soon.

Amandine

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Welcome to Van Life Unfiltered.

We have had PhoenixTheBus.com, along with the instagram name and the #PhoenixTheBus for a few years which has served us well but time has come for the next adventure.

PhoenixTheBus.com was mostly used as a blog, a platform used for us to share how to accomplish certain mechanical or cosmetic repairs and upgrades we have completed as well as personal life updates, road trip details, photos, and more philosophical writings about the aspects of life and adventures that aren’t material things. The name also details that this was very specific to Phoenix, our 1979 Volkswagen bay window bus. We have recently purchased a vanagon which we are currently restoring.

The time has come for a website that includes Phoenix and this new vanagon, in addition to more easily accessible content. We are also changing our instagram name to match this next step. The content has been moved from PhoenixTheBus.com to this website but some of it has been rewritten and/or relocated to be more comprehensive and useful along with new content.

Van Life Unfiltered is about sharing our process and adventures in an honest way. We find that it’s important to make others discover their dreams of adventure but that it is just as important to talk about the difficult and not so pleasant aspects of bus life & van life. This is often a difficult, tiring, costly part of our life. It’s not about focusing on the “behind the scenes” or on the “pretty stuff”. It’s about writing without boundaries and limits.

Please take a look around and as always, feel free to contact us with any thoughts, questions, concerns and/or requests for a place to park.