36-year-old travels the world in a Toyota Tacoma: After 3 years on the road, this is her No. 1 takeaway

CNBC

21-06-2025

In 2015, Ashley Kaye's father died and she inherited her childhood home in Waterford, Wisconsin. At the time, she was 27 years old, working in corporate healthcare and transitioning to a consulting job, where she worked 80 to 100 hours a week.
"I worked from home, so I just walked from my bedroom to my office to the kitchen and repeat," Kaye, now 36, tells CNBC Make It. "I was a zombie in those times,"
While traveling, Kaye met someone on a scuba diving trip in Honduras who helped her realize what she wanted was to leave her career behind and travel full-time.
"We just hit it off and chatted the whole time I was there. We spoke about the worst of the worst, the best of the best, and financials, too," Kaye says.
"He told me he wished he had done it sooner because it's so much easier and cheaper than you think. That changed everything for me. I went home and worked more and more until I quit the next year."
Kaye spent the next three years traveling during the covid-19 pandemic. While on a trip to South Africa, she received unexpected news that her aunt was ill and she'd need to fly back home to Wisconsin.
"That flight was probably the moment where not a single ounce of my being was like 'Yay, I'm going home.' It was like, 'I don't want to be here. This isn't it for me.'," she says. "I love being on the islands. I love having the ocean near me. That took away the hesitation I had in previous years about selling the house."
While Kaye was back home caring for her aunt, she prepared her childhood home for sale and considered her next move. She thought a lot about trying van life and living and traveling with her dog.
"Traveling by plane with a dog just sounded like a terrible idea," she says. "I do a lot of photography, so I knew I wanted something where I could reach tougher destinations."
While waiting for the sale of her home to close, a couple reached out to Kaye on Instagram to ask about her time in South Africa. They shared their experience overlanding in a Toyota truck with a camper in the truck bed.
Overlanding is a form of self-reliant travel that involves adventuring to remote destinations, typically in a vehicle of some type.
After doing a bit of her own research, Kaye was all-in and purchased a Toyota Tacoma truck for $42,934, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Kaye picked up the truck in South Dakota and drove it back to Wisconsin to finish packing up her home when it officially sold in March 2023.
Now that her new home was the truck, Kaye set off on her first adventure: A drive down to Baja California, Mexico. She stayed there for three months and planned out the renovations she would need to make the truck more livable.
"My life is kind of like 'the plan is there is no plan.' Most people plan this type of adventure for years. I didn't even have a truck when I accepted the offer on my house," she says. "It was very spur of the moment, so I needed to take a pause and figure things out."
While living in Mexico, Kaye found an American company that made the truck bed replacements that would provide external storage and make it easier for her to live and travel in the Toyota Tacoma. But, the installation couldn't happen until September.
In the meantime, Kaye learned as much as she could about the truck and the kind of camper she would need. She estimates that she has spent over $50,000 on the renovations.
Costs included purchasing a camper, adding solar power, replacing the truck bed, upgrading the suspension, new tires, customizing a bumper, and installing an electric cooler.
When the truck was ready, Kaye decided to journey the Pan-American Highway, starting in Denver. The highway stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.
"It's really an incredible way to travel because you get to set your own pace and if you find somewhere that's beautiful and peaceful you can stay as long as you want," Kaye says.
"But there's pros and cons to every mode of travel and a lot of red tape and logistics crossing borders. It can be exhausting, especially when you're alone. You have to find a balance that works for you, but overall, it's definitely one of the coolest adventures of my lifetime."
Since living and traveling in the truck full-time, Kaye has visited Mexico, every country in Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and parts of Argentina. In total, she's been to over 20 countries so far.
"I don't want to be a cliché and say it's a dream life because it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that you need to take care of and maintain," she says.
"But it's really incredible to be able to wake up and just look at the map and say, 'Should I go sleep inside this volcano or go to the jungle or go to the beach?' You have a lot of really beautiful options, so I can't really complain."
After all this time on the road, Kaye says the biggest lesson she's learned is that life is too short.
"Ever since I started traveling, [I learned] life is just too short. You don't have to go and quit your career to travel the world but whatever your dreams and goals are in life just start now and everything else is just figuring out a goal," she says.
Kaye says when she was younger, it was her dad who taught her that she was capable of anything.
"I grew up with my dad raising me and telling me every day 'You can be anything you want when you grow up and you can do anything,'" she says. "He was 57 when he passed away, so he never even got to retire. His passing taught me how to live life because you never know how much time you have in life."