San Diego, California, is both a workplace and a precarious stopping place in the book’s account of nomadic life. For LaVonne Ellis, it offered paid work and later a return to familiar streets, but not lasting security: she stealth-camped in a vehicle, confronted the stigma attached to living in it, and eventually had to move after a police officer recorded identifying details. The city brings the promise of mobility into contact with the limits imposed on people who need a place to stop.

Work, health, and the road

Before LaVonne began living on the road, she worked in radio journalism, including as a correspondent for ABC. After a new manager eliminated the news desk at her Minneapolis station, she was promoted to a position that did not suit her and then lost her job. Finding new work proved difficult as she aged; after moving in with her sister to look, she eventually secured a modestly paid job reading short traffic reports. She worked first in Los Angeles and then in San Diego, trying to support herself while raising a younger son who still lived at home.

The work became increasingly difficult because LaVonne developed migraines and sensitivity to chemicals and fragrances. Although she had adapted her household routine with odor-free cleaning products, hours in an office left her in pain. She quit, went on welfare and disability, and supplemented them with online piecework that paid little. With her son and his wife, she shared a one-bedroom apartment and slept on a cot in the living room. Uncomfortable with the feeling that she was crowding them and unsure where else to go, she began considering vehicle dwelling after reading a book about it. San Diego therefore belongs to both sides of her transition: it was a place where she tried to earn a living, and part of the urban setting from which she sought another way to live.

A stop made precarious

LaVonne’s later return to San Diego followed a breakdown that had left her stranded in Ehrenberg, Arizona. Her maroon 2003 GMC Safari, LaVanne, had failed after the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, and she still owed several thousand dollars on the van. With no money for repairs, she waited for Social Security checks. In San Diego she was parked alone and stealth-camping, with her morale low after a difficult stretch. Lori, who lived with her son in a Chevy Tahoe, helped by taking her on grocery trips. LaVonne also found companionship in Scout, a puppy from a litter born to Lori’s dog.

When LaVanne was towed to a repair shop, the engine estimate came to $3,000, beyond LaVonne’s means. While walking Scout nearby, she found a nearly new twelve-person Chevy Express at a used-car lot and obtained financing despite her poor credit. She named it LaVanne Two. The purchase let her leave Ehrenberg and return to San Diego, a place she knew, but the rescue depended on taking on another vehicle loan. Her experience shows how a vehicle can be shelter and transportation at once, while a breakdown can remove both forms of security together.

The H word and the knock

Even after returning to San Diego, LaVonne felt unsettled by the possibility that other people would classify her as homeless. She wrote on her blog that living in a van in the city could lead others to think of someone as homeless, and that being seen that way could make the person feel homeless. The distinction between being housed in a vehicle and having no home was not merely a matter of vocabulary: it affected how she understood her own situation and anticipated the judgments of others.

That spring, while stealth-camping in San Diego, LaVonne received a knock from Officer Nunez. He was friendly and said he wanted to check that she was alive and not running a meth lab. He did not issue a citation. LaVonne’s van looked new and clean, and her dog was adorable; the account also notes that she was white. The encounter thus ended without a ticket, but its outcome was not simply reassurance. The officer recorded her name, license plate, and the make and model of LaVanne Two. Once those details had been taken, she considered her cover blown and knew she would soon have to move on.

Mobility, parking, and belonging

San Diego’s importance in the narrative is sharpened by the practical systems that make nomadic life possible while limiting where it can take place. Full-time travelers must maintain an official domicile for vehicle registration, licenses, taxes, voting, and other obligations, even when they have no conventional home. Some choose states such as Florida, South Dakota, or Texas and use mail-forwarding services; in South Dakota, the described process can require only a motel night and registration with a forwarding service. Such paperwork supplies a fixed address on paper, not a place to settle in daily life.

Parking is similarly conditional. Walmart permits overnight stays in some lots, but local bans and store decisions mean the invitation is not universal; an app maps locations and records travelers’ reports. On public land near Quartzsite, Arizona, Bureau of Land Management rules allow free camping for up to two weeks before campers must move at least twenty-five miles or pay to stay in the La Posa Long Term Visitor Area. Elsewhere, rangers in Coconino National Forest have questioned people in vans and RVs about their addresses and can cite or evict those considered to be making residential use of the forest. These examples are not presented as San Diego regulations; they establish the wider conditions surrounding LaVonne’s urban camping.

Across the book, the road offers movement, chance assistance, and the possibility of choosing a different life, but movement depends on a functioning vehicle, money, legal access, and places where stopping is tolerated. San Diego gives that tension a personal scale: LaVonne could return there, receive help, and avoid a citation, yet the collection of her identifying details made continued concealment difficult. The city is therefore less a settled home than a temporary refuge whose welcome could not be taken for granted.