They’re on the Great American Road trip and living in vans

The Great American Road trip is alive and well in Glacier National Park this summer and the good old van is the vehicle of choice for more than a few folks.

For Jo and Franz Zillner of Wisconsin, their van is a home away from home. This is their second trip to Glacier and they said their Ford van, which they customized themselves, allows them to travel comfortably and visit family in Washington and Texas.

“It gives us the ability to see this great country,” Franz Zillner said. They were parked at Lake McDonald, had their inflatable boat inspected and vacuumed out by Park Service staff and were heading out to float the lake.

They said they took a break from travel last summer because of the pandemic — several campgrounds in Utah closed down — but this summer they’ve been hitting the road.

The Zillners are park aficionados and plan to visit every park in the U.S. eventually.

For Jake Forbes, he was traveling solo in his four-wheeled drive Ford Econoline. The Californian originally bought the van to go to Mexico and surf, but things got a little hairy down south.

“So I said let’s tour the Midwest and see how long I can go,” he said as he was camped at Apgar.

He’d been on the road a month through Oregon, Washington and his last stop saw him visiting with friends in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for a week. He decided to swing up to Glacier before heading south to visit friends in Colorado. He said he might go home or go to Texas and visit friends there.

He works for a financial app called Acorns, so he can work while he’s on the road, he said. He just needs wifi and a table.

“I can work from anywhere,” he said. “It’s a blessing.”

Forbes is far from alone. Anecdotally, the Hungry Horse News has seen more out-of-state license plates in Glacier this summer than ever before.

Even states like Maine, Florida and New York aren’t all that uncommon this summer.

Todd Minoski and his wife, Sydney, were two of those long-distance travelers. They’re also living the van life, but it’s a vintage 1964 Dodge A100.

They’d driven from Pennsylvania to visit the Glacier.

Minoski rebuilt the van’s engine and it ran pretty well with the exception of a fan failure in traffic in Chicago of all places. The capital of horrendous traffic, they managed to get the van across four lanes of traffic and to an auto parts store where they bought not one replacement fan, but two.

While custom vans like Mercedes Sprinters can cost as much as $180,000, Minoski bought two A100s for $1,300.

“Two made one,” he said.

Other than the Chicago breakdown things have been fun, the couple said.

“It’s been an adventure,” they said.