Traveling Nurse, Wife Travel The Country In 75-Square-Foot Renovated Van
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A traveling nurse and his wife living an Instagram-worthy life in a renovated 75-square-foot van.
Danny Reckart, a traveling nurse, and his wife Lindsey, a chemist, picked up and hit the road last year after becoming inspired by a cousin who had gotten into the RV life.
"I was already travel nursing, and we were apartment to apartment and hopping around," he said. After seeing his cousin get into RV life he thought, "'man, that might actually work for what we're doing.'"
His wife, however, vetoed the RV, and talked him down to a van. He says they bought a van a month later, renovated it and were on the road four months later.
The renovated interior includes mint green cabinets, wood paneled ceilings and walls, an abundance of cabinets and drawers, a stainless steel sink, an oven and stove combo and butcher block counters. For TV, they hang a screen to hide the driver's seat, the passenger seat and windshield. The couple's two cats, Mogley and Bagherra, are also along for the ride.
Lindsey Reckart said it wasn't hard to trade in a regular job for the van life.
"I didn't want any regrets. I wanted to be able to travel and see things and just wasn't able to do that with a 9-5, 40 hours [job]," she said. "He only works three days a week, so all the rest of the days, we're able to go out in nature and explore and just live simply and blissfully."
And while their time off together is great, Danny Reckart happens to be a traveling nurse right in the middle of a pandemic. He says that just before everything shut down in March, they had gone to Mexico for eight days and returned to find a different world.
"Prior to leaving there was news about coronavirus up in Washington," he said. "I come back to work, and my unit is a dedicated coronavirus unit now, we have all sorts of potential cases, couple positives. So it was scary at first."
But even with the world in chaos at the moment, the couple finds solace in their small living space, and their even bigger outdoor space.
"Right now Big Bear has been a great escape for us, it's only an hour away," Lindsey Reckart said. We're able to get out of our 75 square feet and use nature as like an additional space for us."
