The guide I wish I’d had
when I started vanlife…
When you live or travel in your vehicle, the public space becomes your oyster. From parking lots to affluent residential streets to ocean views to remote forest land. Knowing where to park, and where to park safely, can make or break your experience.
Drawing on years of experience sleeping in vehicles across the American West, this guide will teach you the essential skills of the overnight parker: how to blend in, how to discern a safe spot from a risky one, and how to tap into a hidden network of resources most travelers never access and that you won’t find in any mainstream guidebook. You'll learn where you can legally park (and where you can't), what makes a spot truly good, how to stay safe, and how to navigate everything from Walmart parking lots to remote public land.
Complete with state-by-state recommendations, safety protocols, gear checklists, and wisdom from a host of vehicle dwellers.
Available for purchase June 2026
I’m April, and for the past five years, I’ve lived on the Road…
Traveling the North American continent in a beautiful van called Firefly, I write the newsletter, The Ecstatic Wanderer, where I share my experiences of living on the road through stories, audio, essays and photography. I help others tap into their greatness through intuitive storytelling tarot sessions called Power Story Readings.
Join my adventures by subscribing to The Ecstatic Wanderer on Substack where you will receive regular stories, essays, photography, and audio diaries from a life on and off the Road in a van called Firefly. Subject matter can and often includes rewilding, solitude, community, meaningful work, wandering with a purpose, minimalism, outcast culture, old world hospitality, inner beloveds, and encounters with the divine.
Substack: The Ecstatic Wanderer
Power Story Readings: Your Life is a Mythic Story
In the comings and goings of everyday life, it can be easy to forget that your life is a wild, mythic journey full of signs, symbols and synchronicities. Maybe your options seem uninspiring or limited right now. Maybe you need to be reminded of who the fuck you are.
Power Story Readings are one-on-one intuitive storytelling sessions using tarot cards. I created these readings from my tarot, journaling, and intuitive development practices, as well as the personal mythology and wilderness rites of passage work that I have been engaged in for the past several years of my wandering life.
These readings will especially resonate if you are in a period of transition and transformation, or find yourself in a rut and need help cultivating new ideas (perhaps for romantic, vocational, or artistic endeavors). Power Story Readings are especially useful for unearthing your sacred gifts and archetypes and for finding the courage to begin living them.