Welcome to our Van Life blog. The stories highlighted on this website are journals of our favorite places and our best days while traveling. In reality, we have a lot more stories we haven’t posted yet. Our blog is always adding and updating our content. Thank you for visiting our site. We hope you will enjoy our travel journal and will return routinely for travel ideas and information.
TRAVEL SLOW – STOP OFTEN
The Cades Cove Bike Ride
A Cove is a relative flat valley between mountains or ridges. Interestingly, Cades Cove is in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountain Range and also part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cades Cove is an 11-mile, one-way loop that winds in the valley. The wild life and an old community history can… Read more
Animals of the Great Smoky Mountains
We did it! Our first bear sighting in the wild occurred and it did not happen when we were hiking. We will always remember the animals of the Great Smoky Mountains for this reason. Our sighting happened when we were safely in Alice! We had just finished our hike in the rain at Rainbow Falls… Read more
Tunnels, Alice and the Blue Ridge Parkway
After spending several days in the Great Smoky Mountains we were looking forward to driving from the mountains to Asheville, NC on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had been on the Blue Ridge Parkway in northern Virginia growing up so being back on this parkway was very special. We stopped to take a picture by… Read more
Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The highest elevation in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is Clingmans Dome standing at 6,643 feet above sea level. This peak straddles two states and is the tallest peak in Tennessee and the third tallest peak in North Carolina. Clingmans Dome is also the highest peak on the 2,174 mile Appalachian Trail that runs… Read more
Fitness Life By Design
When we started our Van Life By Design website and blog, our mission was to write about and photograph our travels in our Sprinter van Alice and other travel related topics. This is still true. Gail is also interested in writing about exercise and fitness, healthy eating and other lifestyle topics so we have launched… Read more
Spring in the Smoky Mountains
We visited the Smoky Mountains in the spring when the forest was coming to life. During our stay, the renewed plant life in the forest introduced me to more shades of green than I had ever seen in one place. It’s interesting what one notices when visiting a new place. Who would have thought the… Read more