At a surf resort in Nicaragua, Smith helped a lanky American named Foster Huntington repair the dings in his board. When the waves were choppy, the three congregated in the resort’s hammock zone, where the Wi- Fi signal was strongest. One afternoon, Huntington listened to the couple have a small argument. Something about their fond irritation made him think that they’d be suited to spending long periods of time together in a confined space. He spent his days surfing, exploring, and taking pictures of his van parked in picturesque locations along the California coast.

What began as an attempt at a simpler life quickly became a life-style brand. This is a question I hear all the time from readers who are parents - and it's a question that comes up in our own household as well. Should I get life ins.

It was the early days of Instagram, and, over time, Huntington accumulated more than a million followers. He represented a new kind of social- media celebrity, someone famous not for starring in movies or recording hit songs but for documenting an enviable life. King, a telegenic former business student, had quit her job at a Sotheby’s branch when she realized that she was unhappy. Smith, a competitive mountain biker and the manager of a kayak store, had never had a traditional office job. They figured they could live cheaply in a van while placing what they loved—travelling, surfing, mountain biking—at the center of their lives. When King found out that she’d been hired for a Web- development job that didn’t require her presence in an office, it suddenly seemed feasible. King and Smith, who are thirty- two and thirty- one, respectively, had grown up watching “Saturday Night Live” sketches in which a sweaty, frantic Chris Farley character ranted, “I am thirty- five years old, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river!” But, the way Huntington described it, living in a vehicle sounded not pathetic but romantic.

But I said, . Six years later, more than 1. Instagram posts have been tagged #vanlife. In 2. 01. 3, Huntington used Kickstarter to fund “Home Is Where You Park It,” a sixty- five- dollar book of his vanlife photographs, which is now in its fourth printing. In October, Black Dog & Leventhal will publish his second book on the topic, “Van Life.”Scroll through the images tagged #vanlife on Instagram and you’ll see plenty of photos that don’t have much to do with vehicles: starry skies, campfires, women in leggings doing yoga by the ocean. Like the best marketing terms, “vanlife” is both highly specific and expansive.

It’s a one- word life- style signifier that has come to evoke a number of contemporary trends: a renewed interest in the American road trip, a culture of hippie- inflected outdoorsiness, and a life free from the tyranny of a nine- to- five office job. Vanlife is an aesthetic and a mentality and, people kept telling me, a “movement.” S. Lucas Valdes, the owner of the California- based company Go.

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Westy, a prominent seller of Volkswagen- van parts, compared vanlife today to surfing a couple of decades ago. Sitner, who is forty- nine, said that his generation’s adventurous rite of passage was more along the lines of “backpacking through Southeast Asia, eating mushrooms on a beach in Thailand.” Around five years ago, he began to notice that young people were increasingly interested in old VW vans. But vanlife, as a concept and as a self- defined community, is primarily a social- media phenomenon. Attaching a name (and a hashtag) to the phenomenon has also enabled people who would otherwise just be rootless wanderers to make their travels into a kind of product. While still in Central America, King and Smith came up with a name for their project: Where’s My Office Now, a reference to their goal of fusing travel and work. After the couple returned from Central America but before they bought a van, King registered a Web site and set up social- media accounts. Smith, who was still using a flip phone, was suspicious of his girlfriend’s preoccupation with social media, worrying that it would detract from the experience.

But there was never any doubt about what kind of vehicle they were looking for. Some vanlifers drive shiny new Mercedes Sprinter vans or practical Ford Econolines, but the quintessential van is the Volkswagen Vanagon, beloved for its bulky, unaerodynamic shape. And it was going to look great in the photos.” That winter, while living in New England, he and King bought a cream- colored 1. Vanagon Camper from a woman in upstate New York for thirty- five hundred dollars.

The van was sturdy and full of personality; it had a rusty undercarriage and was wired with an external P. A. They called it Boscha, because it sounded like the name of a German grandmother. They gave away their business- casual clothes and sold their car. In January, 2. 01. New Hampshire during a snowstorm and headed south. Their first post from the road, a picture of the van driving through snowy woods, got ninety- seven likes. On the first day, the van slid backward down an icy hill and had to be towed.

They drove through winds so strong that they worried that Boscha was thrown out of alignment. Progress was slow; even in optimal conditions, the van couldn’t go faster than sixty miles per hour. King and Smith spent Valentine’s Day at a truck stop in Albuquerque, where a security guard accused them of being prostitutes. The uncertainty of life on the road was a constant low- level drain at first, particularly for King, who discovered that she was afraid of the dark. After the engine conked out in Arizona, a tow truck delivered them to an R. V. They stayed there for a month while Smith replaced every ground wire in the van.

One afternoon, he called Go. Westy to talk through a puzzling repair situation. On a whim, he asked a Go. Westy manager named Jad Josey if the company did sponsorships. By the end of the day, Josey had e- mailed Smith a one- page contract, asking for periodic social- media mentions in exchange for discounts and subsidized repairs. Go. Westy’s sales have increased fifty- five per cent in the past five years, thanks in part to the vanlife trend. The company now sponsors fifteen vanlife projects, including one run by a couple selling cr.

Smith, who had seen similar deals between cycling companies and mountain- bike racers, was familiar with this kind of arrangement. He began to see that the time King was spending on social media might have a point after all. Smith and King slowly grew accustomed to their itinerant life style.

They hiked the Grand Canyon and visited hot springs in Oregon. King’s stress abated. With every mechanical breakdown, Smith became more confident handling repairs. Movie Trailers The Conjuring 2 (2016).

He also developed a repertoire of meals suited to the van’s two- burner kitchen. His specialty was a dish he called huevos vancheros: eggs fried in coconut oil, seasoned with turmeric, served over buckwheat with salsa and sauerkraut. The couple bought things to make the van homier and more comfortable: a fruit basket, a travel bidet. Working on the road proved harder than expected. Smith took occasional part- time jobs—as a mountain- bike guide; as a P.

A. Driftwood and Knapp made money from their popular social- media feeds, through product placement and partnerships with brands. In the course of Smith and King’s travels, their following on Instagram had climbed into the tens of thousands, but they had never been paid for a post. Driftwood encouraged the couple to focus on Instagram if they wanted that to change.

The following spring, Where’s My Office Now posted its first paid, sponsored image to Instagram, on behalf of the water- bottle company Hydro Flask. It showed King heating water in a teakettle, a light- blue thermos conspicuous in the background. They began working more product placement into their Instagram posts. Since then, their sponsorships—which King prefers to call “alliances”—have included Kettle Brand potato chips, Clif Bars, and Synergy Organic Clothing. Last summer, the tourism board of Saskatchewan paid the couple seven thousand dollars to drive around the grasslands of central Canada with other popular vanlifers, documenting their (subsidized) kayaking trips and horseback rides.