About

We’re Amanda and Robyn, and we’ve been on the road full time since 2020.

We sold a house, got rid of most of what was in it, and moved into a four-window schoolie named Gus. We found him on Facebook, flew to Montana, and drove him home. That was the start of it.

Since then we’ve had the good and the bad. We’ve woken up to views people fly across the country for. We’ve also been woken up at 3am by a Walmart parking lot sweeper. Somewhere in the middle of all of it we worked out that what we actually missed was a community — and that, plus a few other things, is what started this app.

Amanda and Robyn in a selfie at the Badlands National Park entrance sign, with Gus parked behind them. — Badlands National Park, 2020 — a few weeks into full time.

The two of us

Amanda

I’m the spot and activities finder.

I know the secrets to finding the good stuff. A cold drink at a local bar, a bike ride through a beautiful park, hanging with the locals at the town pool — I’ll find it, and I’ll find it on a budget. I keep us on our toes, which sometimes means we end up on a genuinely crazy adventure.

I spend my working hours as a remote CSM and my down time swimming, cooking, and playing whatever game just came out. I’m a cool nomadic nerd with a lust for the unknown.

Robyn

I’m the driver.

I’m the one who gets us in and out of the sketchy situations and the deep ruts. I first found vanlife on YouTube, when I was trying to figure out how to take a job halfway across the country and still afford to live. I didn’t get the job. Life took me here anyway, thanks to Amanda’s spontaneity.

Outside of how we live, I work remotely in digital advertising, which is what makes this whole thing sustainable. I’ll hike, paddle board, or bike anything — if it’s outside, I’m in. I’m a nomad who’s always looking to meet people and learn something new along the way.

Why we built it

For the first four years we used the same trusty sleep spot app everybody uses. Then a little over a year ago, everything changed.

We were tired of being boxed in by what we could actually look up. If we were near a state line, half the map may as well not have existed. That turned into constant conversations between the two of us — everything we kept running into, and everything we wished lived in one place instead of six. That is Road Wild.

This app came out of how much we love this community and how freely everybody in it gives advice. Whether you’re out here full time or one weekend a month, you’re part of a family that shares sleep spots, good detours, and views worth the drive.

We wanted a place to hold that — one spot for all of it. We’ve used every big-name app, and every one of them was missing something. So: find a place to sleep, meet the people around you, and maybe save a buck, without switching apps three times.

We built it with the help of AI, and we’re still building it. Now we’re asking for your help making it the community we’ve been looking for all these years.

Amanda and Robyn in front of an oversized covered wagon with a Lincoln figure on the seat. — Six years of these conversations, mostly in a moving vehicle.

Where the map came from

Most of it began as public data — the National Park Service, the Recreation Information Database, OpenStreetMap and state land records — pulled in state by state and cleaned up. That’s how you get to more than 20,000 spots without a decade of driving, and we have only driven six years of it.

It’s also why the honesty matters. A pin that came out of a database is a lead, not a promise, and Road Wild says which is which on every listing rather than letting you find out at the gate.

How it’s being built

Three rules we haven’t broken yet

We’re two people building this in the gaps around jobs and driving. These are the promises we can actually keep.

We don’t promise anything we haven’t built

If a feature doesn’t exist, it’s marked in development wherever it’s mentioned. We’d rather lose the sign-up than win it by implying something is there.

We don’t track you

No analytics, no cookies, no advertising pixel on this site. The only measurement is a ?ref= tag on links we post by hand.

A failure never looks like a success

If the app comes back empty, it says empty. If something broke, it says it broke. You should never find out on arrival that the app was guessing.

Six years of ups, downs and deep ruts

Two rigs, one of them built by hand in a driveway, and a lot of roadside attractions nobody plans a trip around.

Robyn at the wheel of Gus, Amanda in the passenger seat taking the photo. — Robyn driving, Amanda documenting.

Robyn cutting a sheet of plywood with a circular saw in a garage. — Cutting the floor.

Amanda framing bench seating inside the bus, cedar walls half finished. — Framing the bench.

Amanda inside an empty white van shell part-way through insulating it. — Rig two, day one.

Amanda sitting at the table in a finished van interior. — Same van, finished.

Amanda beside a spray-painted car buried nose-down at Cadillac Ranch. — Cadillac Ranch, Texas.

Amanda holding a novelty booking board against a height chart at the Uranus City Jail attraction. — Booked in Uranus, Missouri.

Amanda and Robyn underground beneath a ceiling of lit stalactites. — Somewhere underground.

Amanda at the bottom of a flight of rainbow-painted alley steps. — Rainbow steps, downtown detour.

Amanda and Robyn on the rainbow street leading to the blue church in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. — Seyðisfjörður, Iceland.

Robyn grinning in front of a roadside fiberglass lumberjack statue. — Every muffler man, every time.

The beta is open for requests

It’s invite-only for now, and we’re letting people in as fast as we can keep up. There are no testimonials on this site yet, because there are no testers yet. You’d be among the first.

Request beta access