21 for 2021: New Years Resolutions for Travel and Vanlife

Traveling more is a common New Year’s resolution for many people. Every year, we use the New Year as a opportunity to reset and reevaluate our goals when it comes to living a life of adventure.

We got the idea to create a 21 for 2021 list from the Happier podcast. Below we share a list of ideas and resolutions for 2021. Some of these things we’ve tried and loved in years past, and some things are goals on our own 21 for 2021.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 hasn’t been the easiest year for achieving travel goals. In the list below, you’ll find some ideas that are safe to do even in the midst of a global pandemic. You can use your time at home to plan new adventures. Plus there are also plenty of adventures you can do safely outdoors! If you camp or if you have a little house on wheels like our camper van that you can stay in, it may be safer for you to travel.

Having a camper van makes travel much safer because you are not dependent on public accomodations.

We can travel safely in our camper van. Plus we share a lot of tips for avoiding crowds while traveling.

However some of these goals may not be possible for anyone unless the pandemic improves. Don’t hit the road with a 2019 attitude! Don’t put local people at risk so that you can have a fun adventure or vacation. Be flexible, be safe, be kind.

1. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Thoreau was so right when he said this! Prior to moving into our camper van, we got rid of probably close to half of our stuff. Even before we moved into our van we thought we didn’t have that much stuff, but it was kind of horrifying when we started piling all of our junk up and realizing how much their really was.

Living a simpler life makes it much easier to achieve your travel goals. You’re probably stuck at home anyway, so channel your inner Marie Kondo and get to work!

Even if you’re not planning to move into a tiny house, traveling light can really make it easier to travel and you’ll travel more often. Plus when you opt for experiences over things, you have more money and time to spend on amazing new adventures.

We opted for experiences over things and have no regrets.

Sometimes the simpler days we have had while traveling have been the most memorable.

Aside from physical things, you can also simplify the way that you travel. Rather than stressing out over finding the best restaurant, just stop at the next non-chain restaurant you see you might be surprised. Or just get sandwich ingredients at the grocery store and find a local park to eat at. We use our DIY chuck box to make eating on the road a breeze.

2. Buy no unneeded clothes.

After you have simplified your life, Marie Kondo’ed every closet, and moved into a tiny house, you have to maintain that simplicity. To do this, you could make a resolution to buy no new clothes or to buy no unneeded clothes.

We need to break our addictions to fast fashion. It’s bad for people and it’s bad for the planet. And imagine the ease of getting dressed in the morning when you only have two pairs of pants!

Ian is the king of having no unneeded clothes. He literally has 3 pairs of pants.

When you live in a camper van, every piece of clothing needs to have a purpose.

If you do need a new pair of boots for fly fishing or technical clothing for a winter trip, try looking at secondhand stores. (Or online used gear stores.) If you are traveling to a place that is a tourist destination for the outdoors with many wealthy or seasonal restaurants, go to the thrift stores and you’re likely to find that nice jacket that would be too expensive new. I’m talking Aspen, I’m talking Jackson, I’m talking South Lake Tahoe…)

If you absolutely must buy something new, buy it for life. Buy a great product that will last you for the rest of your life or at least many years. (If you aren’t sure what will last, you can consult the “Buy it for Life Forum”). Ian pretty much only wears Prana technical pants. They somehow don’t hold stains and they last forever (although I’ve recently had to tell him that his oldest pair looks like loose old man pants and it’s probably time to say goodbye.)

If you buy high quality clothes for outdoor activities, they will last for years. They might go out of style like these fly cargo pants, but they will last!

3. DIY something you’d usually buy!

Rather than buying some gear that might be expensive, try DIY’ing it! When we were planning a long bike tour, Ian didn’t have a way to attach a rack to his carbon-fiber road bike. Instead of buying an expensive, frame pack, he sewed a Custom DIY frame pack for his bike. We also made our own bug nets for our van doors using agricultural netting.

A new years resolution to try this year is to DIY something you would typically have to buy.

Check out Ian’s excellent tutorial for sewing your own DIY Frame Bag for your bike.

4. Keep a list of the places you want to visit.

This is a totally COVID approved resolution! Most people have a bucket list in their head of cool places they want to visit, but what about all those less epic spots you’ve heard about but you’re not going to remember when it comes to planning that road trip?

Whenever people tell us “you have to visit this tiny hole in the wall restaurant in Oregon,” or when we see a cool looking spot in a magazine, we save it to Pinterest. We have a Pinterest board of all the places we want to go with section for each state to keep in organized.

Every time we see an incredible photo of a destination on a blog, we save it to our Pinterest account.

We’ve discovered some truly incredible places off the beaten path in our travels!

When we are ready to visit a state or region, we find the best route for the trip with all the spots we want to visit with an app called Furkot. There’s no limit to the number of destinations you can add so you can create some of the kookiest road trips you’ve ever seen.

We use apps like Furkot to help us find the optimal route for all of our travel destinations.

Keeping a list of all the less famous destinations you want to visit will make trip planning a breeze!

5. Plan travel around visiting friends and family.

After COVID, we are all going to be ready to visit all of our friends and family who we haven’t seen for a year. Include your friends and family on your road trip routes!

And we aren’t just talking about close friends and family! Visit your old friends from college, your neighbor who moved away, the cousins you haven’t seen since you were kids. We have made a point of rekindling old friendships why traveling, and we have never regretted it! A big plus for visiting friends is that local people are going to be able to show you the coolest places in their town.

We love visiting old friends while we travel.

When you visit friends and family, they will also introduce you to amazing places (like hot springs) in their area.

6. Be brave. Make new friends.

Along with visiting people you already know, you can make new local friends while traveling. We love using apps like CouchSurfing and WarmShowers to make new friends while traveling and bike touring. CouchSurfing is especially easy when you are in a camper van, because you can park outside the house, but still meet new people and take advantage of their shower and their local knowledge.

We’ve also had fun meeting other van and bus lifers by seeing people’s geotags, reaching out to them to say hello, and later meeting up. We’ve also spotted other converted vans at dispersed camping areas and went to say hello.

Make visiting new places and meeting new people a new years resolution.

Meeting new people post-COVID will be a great way to get back into traveling!

7. Read 21 minutes per day in 2021.

This is another challenge from the Happier podcast. Lots of people make resolutions to read more, and one way to do this is to develop a consistent habit of reading ever day.

Make a New Years Resolution to travel more in 2021, even if it’s just through the pages of books.

For travelers, read books about the destinations you’re visiting or planning to visit. It can really change how you experience a place. For example, if you’re visiting Wisconsin, read Sand County Almanac. If you’re canoeing in the Boundary Waters, read Listening Point. Staying at a cabin in the Adirondacks? Read Woodswoman.

We love reading while we are traveling, especially reading about the places we are visiting.

Make a habit of reading 21 minutes per day in 2021 and you will read a lot of books!

8. Exercise regularly even while traveling.

Another habit to develop to make traveling more fun is to exercise regularly even while you are traveling. Being in good shape is going to enable those cool outdoor activities on your bucket list. If the trail ends up being longer than you expected (or if, for example, your girlfriend happens to only tell you the trail distance in only one direction, because she knows you won’t want to hike it if you actually know how long it is…), you will be prepared.

Trail running in the places you travel to can take you through incredible landscapes.

Whenever we see a bike trail while traveling, we make a point of riding it.

Running and biking while traveling is one of our favorite things to do because it’s a completely different way to experience a place. You never know what you’ll discover while running in a new city or biking through a National Park. (See how we take our bikes with us when we travel.)

9. Eat healthier before and during travel.

Along the same lines as exercise, your time spent traveling is just going to be more enjoyable if you eat healthy. A lot of our healthy eating habits go right out the window as soon as we hit the road, and that’s part of the reason we often feel exhausted while traveling. When we first started traveling full time, we quickly realized that we had to eat better in order to sustain our active lifestyle.

We specifically designed our van’s kitchen so that we could cook while on the road.

Our 12-volt fridge allows us to eat healthy fresh food while we are traveling.

If you want to eat healthy while traveling, preparing and cooking your own food is the way to go. Try building your own portable camping chuck box or get one of these awesome 12-volt fridges to store all your fresh veggies (and let’s be honest…ice cold beer.)

Our portable camping chuck box makes cooking while traveling very easy!

Cooking while traveling rather than eating out can keep you safe in 2021.

10. Go somewhere epic.

Everyone should have an absolutely epic destination on their list of places they want to go. Most people already have lots of ideas. It’s time to actually plan it and do it! Maybe it’s summiting Half Dome, or maybe it’s descending into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, or maybe it’s something a little more off the beaten path.

Add an epic place to your 21 for 2021 list of New Years Resolutions.

If you had asked me in 2017 if I would ever go backpacking in the Yukon, I probably would have just laughed. But in 2018, Ian and I backpacked through the Ä'äy Chù River Valley in Kluane National Park. This area of the Yukon has the largest stable population of grizzly bears in Canada. We hiked to the top of Observation Mountain to see the Kaskawulsh Glacier.

We took an challenging backpacking trip in the mountains of the Yukon.

Make a New Years Resolution to travel somewhere outside your comfort zone.

The Kaskawulsh Glacier is a truly epic destination.

11. Go somewhere that doesn’t inspire you.

Yes, you should go somewhere completely amazing in 2021, but don’t forget all those undiscovered places that with a sense of adventure will also totally wow you. We discovered some truly amazing places in the flyover states.

You’ll never know what you’ll find hidden in the woods of Illinois.

The Stunning Little Grand Canyon in Southern Illinois.

Take Illinois for example, did you know that there is a Little Grand Canyon in Illinois. It’s so unique and unexpected. Monument Rocks in Kansas was another total surprise to us. These chalk pyramids rise spectacularly out of the great plains.

Add a flyover state as a travel destination and you might just be surprised by what you find.

Kansas has some of the most dramatic skies and weather we have experienced.

12. State Parks!

Venturing far from home might not be possible in 2021 and visiting a national park with big crowds might not be a good idea. Most states have incredible state park systems, and often they are free to visit for state residents. While traveling in the van, we often prefer state parks to national parks because you don’t have to battle for parking or dodge crowds on hiking trails.

Temperance River State Park is along the Gitchi Gami State Trail.

State parks have such interesting spots—like this massive hand-carved log in William B. Umstead State Park in North Carolina.

Some of our favorite state parks are Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada, Temperance River State Park in Minnesota, William B. Umstead State Park in North Carolina, Shore Acres State Park in Oregon (really all of the state parks on the Oregon Coast), and Snow Canyon State Park in Utah.

The Oregon Coast is a long string of state parks. One of our favorites is Shore Acres State Park.

Every state has preserved special places in state parks, like the incredible sandstone and lava tubes in Snow Canyon State Park.

13. Do your own vehicle maintenance.

If you want to be a more avid off-the-grid, one of the best skills you can develop is doing your own vehicle maintenance. Why? Not only is it way more affordable, you’ll feel more confident being hundreds of miles from the nearest mechanic.

Ian does all of the maintenance on our Sprinter camper van.

If this happens to your brake rotor while on the road, you’ll know what to do.

You too can learn to repair your vehicle…and whatever this is…

Ian does all of the maintenance on our Sprinter Camper Van. Getting Mercedes vehicles repaired is very expensive, so we have saved thousands of dollars by doing repairs and maintenance ourselves. He uses online forums and Youtube to learn how to do repairs. Even if you aren’t ready to take on replacing a timing chain, learning about your vehicle and to do basic maintenance like oil changes can save you money and make you more confident while traveling.

14. Try a new form of transportation.

Last year we decided to do a 1300-mile bike tour around Lake Superior. Using only the power of our muscles to bike around the world’s largest lake was a great adventure. The slower form of travel really gave us a more intimate experience with the Lake and we saw it in a way that I think we would have missed out on if we had done the Lake Superior Circle Tour as a road trip.

After traveling for two year, we traded our tiny house for two wheels for an epic bike tour.

Bike touring can give you a new experience even in familiar places.

If you typically like road trips, try camping or backpacking this year. If you always fly to a destination, plan a cross-country road trip this year instead. On Bike Overnights you can find hundreds of ideas for overnight bike tours. There’s probably even some close to your home. You could even try a trip by canoe or kayak!

Backpacking in the winter or shoulder season could be a very safe way to travel during COVID.

If you’re very adventurous, you could even try taking a trip out on the water! (Also you have to be quite adventurous to pull of this stellar fashion…)

15. Swim in the ocean (or a Great Lake!)

This is a common bucket list item for many people, especially if you live in a land locked state. Swim in an ocean or a Great Lake this year! If you need some inspiration, check out these blog posts about Lake Superior or the Oregon Coast.

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson

16. Earn a little extra spending money.

In your down time you can easily earn a little extra cash for traveling with certain apps. Most of us have had a little more time on our hands than expected this past year. You can use your downtime to earn some extra beer money, or you can save money on groceries with these great apps.

We have tips and tricks for earning a little extra money while traveling or while your stuck at home during COVID-19.

17. Visit somewhere weird.

Not every destination you visit needs to be picture perfect! Add somewhere weird to your 21 for 2021! You’ll be surprised by the fun that you’ll have at quirky destinations.

You could bathe in these bathtubs in the middle of the Utah desert.

We LOVE roadside attractions. Their is actually another giant dresser just a few miles away from this one!

If you need some inspiration, check out these bathtubs in the middle of the desert, the world’s largest chest of drawers, the International Car Forest of the Last Church, or Canada’s biggest goose.

Adding weird places, like the International Car Forest, to your 21 for 2021 is a great idea.

Even while bike touring, you might discover some quirky places.

18. Shower less. Seriously!

Most Americans shower way more than the rest of the world. Once you can get comfortable showering less often, it makes travel so much easier. This is especially true if you love outdoor travel. In the past we’ve gone over a month without access to a real shower while traveling.

After traveling full time in our van, we’ve got a lot of hacks for extending the amount of time between showers, tips for washing your hair on the road, and places you can get a free shower while traveling in a camper van.

If you get more comfortable with being less clean, it allows you to travel for longer durations of time.

We love quick dry camp towels for traveling because we can rinse off in a stream or wash our hair in the van, and it will be dry a few hours later.

19. Travel in the off season.

By visiting popular destinations like national parks in winter, you will not only avoid the crowds, you will also get the opportunity to see the place from a totally different perspective.

The snow in Bryce Canyon National Park give the hoodoos a totally different look.

By visiting Arches National Park in the winter we were able to avoid the crowds at Delicate Arch.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Utah in winter. We were able to visit many of the very popular national parks without having to battle long lines of cars just to get to the trails. We were totally alone while visiting Delicate Arch. We were able to get a prime spot to photograph Mesa Arch. And the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon are breathtaking in the snow.

Many photographers make a resolution to photograph Mesa Arch at sunrise. When you go in winter, it may be cold, but you won’t have to battle to get a good view.

20. Document your travels.

While traveling, I like to keep a very basic journal of all the places we’ve gone. I tape or glue maps, brochures, or ticket stubs into the journal so that I can remember places better.

Ian and I also have taken thousands of pictures while traveling. Maybe this is the year you can develop your photography skills! We blown some of our better photos to a large size and framed them and others we just keep in a photo album. Of course, we also keep this travel blog to document some of our favorite experiences!

Photography is a great way to document your travels.

We like to keep a journal while we travel so that we can remember it later.

A safe activity during COVID-19 is to go back to old photos and journals from travel and make photo books or even a travel blog!

21. Build your own camper van for travel!

If there’s ever been a time to build out your own camper van for COVID-safe travel, it’s now! With a camper van you can stay nearly totally isolated while transporting yourself to incredible places. Plus you’ll have your own lodging when you get there.