The Guardian Showed You One Park. Let Me Show You the Rest of the City.

When I read The Guardian's recent article about Americans living in vehicles, I smiled more than once.

It accurately captured something I've experienced myself: the sense of community that comes alive every winter at La Posa South in Quartzsite, Arizona.

If you've ever spent time there, you know exactly what the author was describing.

Friendships form around campfires, neighbors check on one another, and complete strangers become a support system. For people who enjoy that kind of communal living, it's a remarkable place.

I was genuinely glad to see a major publication devote so much space to a community that is so often misunderstood.

But as I finished reading, one thought stayed with me.

It was like visiting one park in a giant city and then assuming you've seen the whole city.

Quartzsite is real.

The people in the story are real.

Their experiences matter.

But they represent only one part of a much larger picture.

I've been living full-time in my 2019 Kia Sorento since 2024. In that time I've traveled through every state in the continental United States except Florida. What surprises many people is that I didn't even know Quartzsite existed until 2025. I had already spent nearly a year living this lifestyle before I ever parked on the Arizona desert.

That alone should tell us something.

There isn't just one way to be a vehicle resident.

Some people spend every winter in Arizona.

Others head to Texas or Florida.

Some return to the same places year after year, building friendships that last decades.

Others, like me, are happiest chasing the next sunrise alone.

One of the biggest surprises during my first six months wasn't a destination or a campground. It was discovering something about myself.

I learned I was far more resilient, determined, and resourceful than I ever imagined.

When things went wrong—and they always do eventually—I figured them out. Flat tires. Mechanical problems. Finding safe places to sleep. Unexpected detours. There wasn't anyone standing beside me with the answers. Each challenge taught me that I was capable of far more than I had believed before moving into my vehicle.

Then, almost a year into this journey, I discovered Quartzsite.

For the first time, I saw thousands of people living lives that looked something like mine.

It was fascinating.

It was welcoming.

And it also helped me realize something else.

I'm not really a community camper.

I enjoy visiting.

I enjoy meeting people.

But after a while, I'm happiest finding a quiet place where I can be alone.

There are a lot of nomads like me.

In fact, I think we're probably the hardest ones to notice.

We blend into the parking lots.

We spend a few nights in a National Forest.

We disappear down a quiet BLM road.

We move on before most people ever know we were there.

If you wanted to write an article about us, you'd probably have a much harder time finding us than you would in Quartzsite.

That's another reason no single story can represent this lifestyle.

There really isn't such a thing as an ordinary Tuesday.

You might wake up with plans to drive three hundred miles, only to discover your alternator has failed before breakfast.

You might spend an afternoon searching for legal overnight parking because local ordinances make sleeping in your own vehicle illegal.

You might decide to linger an extra week because you stumbled upon a place so beautiful you can't bear to leave.

As I wrote in my earlier post, The Road Doesn't Care About Your Schedule, life on the road has a way of rewriting your plans without asking permission.

Ironically, some of the hardest parts of this lifestyle aren't the ones most people imagine.

Living in a small space?

That becomes normal surprisingly quickly.

Owning fewer possessions?

Many of us find it freeing.

What can be mentally exhausting is something much less glamorous: simply figuring out where you'll sleep tonight. In much of the western United States, public lands make that relatively easy. But as you travel farther east, overnight parking becomes more difficult, and sometimes illegal. It's a challenge most people never think about until they're living it themselves.

And then there are the moments no article can truly capture.

The feeling of rounding a bend and seeing one of the places you've dreamed about your entire life.

Watching the sun rise over a desert you've never visited before.

Standing on a rugged coastline after thousands of miles of driving.

Those moments are impossible to measure, but they're part of why so many of us continue living this way.

The Guardian told an important story.

I'm grateful they did.

But it wasn't the story of vehicle living.

It was the story of one community, in one season, in one place.

There are thousands more stories waiting to be told.

That's why I created Road Life Hub.

Not to replace stories like the one The Guardian published, but to help fill in the spaces between them. To share the everyday realities, the unexpected challenges, the quiet victories, and the many different ways people build a life on the road.

Because vehicle living isn't one park.

It's an entire city.

And we've only just begun exploring it.