What do you consider to be your place (or former place) of work?

We built, owned and operated a yoga studio in Red Deer, AB Canada from 2010-2015. We made the decision that we wanted to travel full time with our kids and sold our business to two of our employees. When we were planning to travel and in the process of selling our business, home, and most of our possessions, we really didn’t know what we were going to do for work. When we were traveling in Canada and the US we taught at and provided business consulting for tons of yoga studios. The business coaching aspect of our yoga expertise has really taken off since we sold our studio and started traveling. First Josh was providing on the ground consulting and training at the studios we visited, then it turned into phone consultations with numerous studios, and now we’re nearly ready to launch the first ever online course for yoga business owners with Nomad Business Coaching.

Year, Make, Model of your vehicle?

2006 EarthRoamer XVLT

Did you name your vehicle? What do you call it?

We call the EarthRoamer, the EarthRoamer. But our license plate says ZAMA – the name of our second daughter who passed away when we were traveling in Ecuador in March 2015, and who the inspiration for our decision to travel full time is in part credited to. If you ask the truck, it probably thinks its name is Thank You, because we’re constantly saying “thank you for getting us up this hill/ over these rocks/ out of this sand/ etc.”

When and how did you get it?

We bought the EarthRoamer used in fall 2016 in Montana. We had been looking on Expedition Portal for overland vehicles for sale for months. When we first drove to Montana to look at the truck, we immediately knew it had everything on our wish list and we really hit it off with the previous owners. We hadn’t even sold our business yet and did not have the finances to make the purchase. But luckily John and Suzanne liked us, and allowed us to make a down payment and pay the rest in a few months. When the sale date of our business was suddenly pushed back, we had to borrow funds from Jenna’s parents to buy the EarthRoamer and then pay them back once the sale of our studio finally closed. Finally after making the down payment in August 2015, Josh drove the EarthRoamer back to Canada in November 2015, where we parked it in a storage warehouse and packed and repacked until we officially left in February 2016.

What other vehicles did you consider and what made you ultimately pull the trigger on the one you bought?

We ran the full gamut. We started off looking at vans, mostly Syncros, and SportsMobiles. We knew we wanted something 4×4 that could go off-road since our tentative plan was to drive the Pan American highway (Canada to Argentina). Our criteria included: one permanently set up bed, a permanently set up bathroom, driving safety – the kids in a proper seat, strapped in, enough storage for uniquely sized items and full time living, 4×4, solar, single fuel source, and an off grid system. We soon realized that vans were pretty small for a family of four. We then looked at truck campers and even test drove a motorhome, which felt like it was made of cardboard. Standard RVs are simply not made with the expectation of full time living or full time driving, especially beyond RV parks and well-maintained super highways. We had been researching overland vehicles for quite some time, but knew that they were mostly well beyond our price range or required long lead times. So Josh thought he would just build us a custom overland vehicle on an awesome Fuso chassis he found. Luckily (for Jenna’s sanity) just as he was about to pull the trigger on the Fuso, we came across a 10 year old used EarthRoamer on Expedition Portal that had everything on our wish list (and more), and was only slightly over budget. We weighed our options and the EarthRoamer was our dream travel vehicle for this trip and definitely seemed to have the most bang for our buck, so we decided to make an offer and just make the finances work.