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About
We are Jason and Ashley Cole. Travel has been a part of our lives for as long as we can remember, and marriage didn’t slow us down! Eight years ago, Jason and I had this idea of finding an old van then converting it over into a camper van. Once finished we would take it down through Mexico and possibly into South America. While this was fun to daydream about, we also had full-time jobs. Then one day we stumbled upon a beat-up 1986 Toyota Van sitting alongside the road. The sign read first 500 dollars takes him. Well, we were the FIRST! We bought it and converted it over to camp out of here in Washington state.
By the end of the summer, we were convinced this was going to be a mid-term goal for us. One night over Mexican food and lots of tequila we decided to set a date and make this daydream a reality. After extensive research, we decided to ship the van to South America so we could truly have the time to learn as much as we could about the land and the people. So we set a date of May 2015. We saved every cent for over a year, sold most of our possessions (because storage units suck!), and set the date to ship the van to Peru.
We flew to Cartagena Colombia because well, Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone was Jason’s hero growing up! It took us six weeks to backpack through Colombia, finally arriving to pick up the Lil’ Mule (the van) in Lima Peru.
In our time in South America, we met some incredible people in all different types of vehicles, from cars, Unimog’s, motorcycles, and vans. What we learned was, it’s not so important what type of transportation you have, it is the individual’s level of comfort that gets them to travel.
After a year of exploring, we arrived back home. We had to get established again, but we had a plan and another goal. When the timing was right and Jason had his next design of van we took a shot and the rest is history! Jumping ahead Jason and I are now running Treeline Vans LLC full time. Building quality vans for long and short-term travel.
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