Lots of people dream about quitting their nine-to-five jobs and setting out on a cross-country adventure. Not many dream about doing it in a decommissioned ambulance. But that’s exactly what B.C. couple Raychel Reimer and Nick Hurley did in 2020. They found the vehicle at an auction and paid $6,000 for it, then spent another $6,000 stripping out all the ambulance infrastructure and turning it into an 80-square-foot sanctuary on wheels, as they call it.
Raychel and Nick have learned all about ambulance life in their three years on the road: they get water by filling up five-gallon jugs at grocery stores and use apps to find safe overnight parking spots. They’ve driven their ambulance through 15 U.S. states and to the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. The best part? Their costs are a fraction of what they’d be paying for rent in a Canadian city.
“Some people think it’s cool that we live in a van, but other people think, Like, you’re just homeless?” Raychel says in her Maclean’s piece. “They don’t understand that we have a home, and we go to bed in a happy marriage every night. We have a place to cook and have our friends over to sing karaoke. Our van is our safe haven. It’s really hard for me to imagine going back to paying rent.”
—Emily Landau, executive editor
