Moby and the Fourth Ocean
It was 1 a.m. in Tuktoyaktuk, and the sun hadn’t gone anywhere.
Scott Bytwerk had driven as far north as a road goes in North America. In front of him was the Arctic Ocean, under a sky that refuses to go dark in late June, and behind him was his camper van, Moby, after 500 miles of dirt road. He pulled out his phone and filmed it. Then he sent us a message.
“Good morning – made it to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. Can’t go any further north! My van is performing flawlessly. And I am having a blast.”
It’s a short note for a very long way. It made its way across laptop screens all over DM Vans, and his words reverberated through us, a reminder of why we do what we do. Over the weeks that followed, Scott told us how he got there, and it turns out the miles were only part of the story.
· · ·
When he sat down to write it all out, he started with a warning.
“There’s an element to my story that maybe doesn’t have a place in this little piece, but I’ll leave that to you. It’s not a happy start.”
Scott and his wife were married for 27 years. They traveled almost everywhere together, mostly overseas, and for years their home was a sailboat. He was living aboard his boat when they married, and they kept sailing it for years. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was always a van, a way to reach the mountain bike trails he loved, and she liked the idea too. But there was a long list of the world still to see, so the van got tabled for retirement. Retirement was the plan. Retirement was later.
In 2022, with no warning, she was diagnosed with diffuse systemic scleroderma, a rare and incurable disease. They both retired immediately, because “later” had just become now. They had about eight months.
She spent some of that time telling him something he didn’t want to hear and has never forgotten.
“During those months, she would often tell me to continue to pursue life after she was gone, but when she died, I was at a crossroad without much direction.”
A few months later, a check arrived in the mail. His wife had a small life insurance policy through her employer that he hadn’t known existed. He split it with their son, and his half turned out to be almost exactly the price of a DM van.
“Talk about direction, suddenly there it was, right? Newly retired, and in a position to go in whatever direction I wanted, so I bought Moby. The rest is spectacular history.”
· · ·
Moby came to him the way a lot of good things do: by luck and by a stranger. He’d been hunting for a camper van that fit his budget, and it was insanely hard. Then he found one in Montana, owned by a woman who was about to move to Portugal. She’d been living in it with a giant sheep dog and a cat. They arranged to meet in Washington, D.C., where neither of them knew quite what to expect. He got in at the airport and drove it home. That was June of 2023.
He named it for the great white whale.
His first trip was gentle, a weekend on the Outer Banks near home, just to learn the van. By Sunday night he’d figured something out, and you can feel how much it mattered to him in how he writes about it.
“In one weekend I learned just how great travel by van is: self contained, highly mobile, affordable, comfortable, independent. Way easier than sailing. Put it in park and you’re set up. Eat your own cooking, pick your own back yard every night. It’s an incredible way to live.”“Well, that did it.”
After that, Scott and Moby didn’t stop. Up the East Coast to Vermont. Michigan, again and again. Florida, Key West, the Everglades. Mountain bike trails from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Moab, and Hurricane, three times over. Death Valley. The sequoias. Palo Duro Canyon. Valley of the Gods. Roswell, Charleston, San Diego, Seattle, Salida. He started spending at least half of every year on the road.
He wasn’t fearless at first, and he’s honest about that. In the early days he needed every night planned and every meal figured out (which a lot of us vanlifers can relate to). He got stuck in sand in northern Michigan, miles from anyone, with no room to turn around, and backed his way out. He popped a mirror off on Going-to-the-Sun Road and patched it, along with a broken blinker, and kept driving. Each time, he learned something. Over time the planning faded away, and what was left was a simple, easy rhythm of waking up, deciding where sounded good, and simply going. There was always somewhere to stay…it was so much more relaxed than he’d imagined.
· · ·
Scott has a way of counting oceans. The world has five. He had already seen the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian. Then, in 2025, he read about a road in Canada’s Northwest Territories that runs all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
“…the Dempster Highway in Canada’s Northwest Territories, which allows one to drive to the Arctic Ocean – my opportunity to score ocean #4. One really grand road trip that includes 1,000 miles of dirt road. And some weeks in Alaska. Hooked.”
He thought seriously about a Baja caravan instead. In the end, the Arctic won. And the reason he felt ready is the part we love hearing most.
“When I first got Moby, I wasn’t ready for such a monumental journey. But in the many trips leading up to it, my confidence and skills advanced quickly; as importantly, my trust in my van became rock solid.”
He left home in Durham, North Carolina, on April 4. In Bellingham, he swapped on four new all-terrain tires. He also added Starlink for the trip, which turned out to matter more than he expected.
The road north wasn’t all work, either. When we asked him about some of his favorite moments along the way, this is what he told us.
“Honestly, seeing Bruce Springsteen in Phoenix on April 16. But after that, I gotta say Muley Point in Utah. One of the best boondocks ever.”
· · ·
Everyone told him the Dempster would be the hard part. Scott had read the horror stories: flats, breakdowns, weather, running out of fuel. The surprise was that the pavement leading up to it was worse.
“The Dempster Highway (the endless dirt road) took me two long days up to Tuktoyaktuk, and three back down… I was nervous; I’d read so many horror stories about flats, mechanicals, weather, out of fuel, on and on. It was supposed to be the worst part of the journey. Given that, what made me nervous was the fact that Highway 2, the paved major artery that I drove up, was absolutely horrendous.”
Stuck in a line of cars trying to pass a truck hauling a huge boat, he hit a pothole so hard that the van’s crash fuel shutoff tripped and the engine died. He coasted off the road with no idea there even was a fuel shutoff, let alone how to reset it. Then Starlink earned its place on the dash.
“Thankfully I have Starlink (one of the things I added for this trip) and was able to learn where the inertia sensor is located. We were up and running in minutes.”
Being able to rely on the ProMaster and the DM Vans build he has is something that creates more confidence while he’s on the road. The expectation was that something would go…at the end of the day, this road is tough on vehicles. But the durability held up, and confidence grew.
The dirt road itself was easier than the asphalt, though far from gentle: windshields take a beating, and the dust is, in his words, the worst he’s ever encountered. Gravel trucks barrel past and the world goes white, with stones flying. He needed a new windshield by the end of it (or three). Did he ever think about turning around?
“Bailing out really didn’t occur to me. Too stubborn I guess.”
· · ·
And then the road ended, and the ocean began.
“Crossing the Arctic Circle was pretty cool; getting stopped by the Arctic Ocean was REALLY cool. Experiencing the midnight sun was unforgettable. As predicted, getting there was hard. But absolutely epic.”
Scott had gone looking for a fourth ocean, but it’s hard not to hear something else in that moment too. A man who was told to keep pursuing life, standing at the top of the continent, with the sun still up at 1 a.m. He drove there himself, in the van that held him together when he didn’t have a direction. And Moby, true to everything he’d trusted it for, never let him down.
“Moby has been flawless, and that’s a huge testimonial. Thousands of miles of bad road and not a single glitch. I attribute this in great part to the KISS philosophy employed by DM Vans: simplicity does translate into reliability.”
· · ·
When Scott wrote to us, he was already on the move again, driving the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Banff, pointed southeast with four months of Road Trip ’26 behind him. The Southern Ocean, the fifth, is out of reach for a camper van. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s eyeing Baja next, and south Florida this winter, and Nova Scotia by land. He’s even thinking about selling his house, because he’s gone so much that a van and a tiny home might be all he needs.
“This is only my third year of van life, but when I look at what those few years have given me, it’s mind blowing.”
We’re honored Scott trusted us with all of this…especially driving his camper van to the Arctic ocean. Moby started as a direction when there wasn’t one, and three years later it’s the thing that carried him to the end of the road. That’s the kind of story vanlife makes possible, and we’re lucky to have been a small part of it.
He had one thing to say to anyone listening.
“To anybody with any sense of adventure, I say don’t wait…just do it.”
**A lot has changed since he first wrote to us. Scott sold his house in North Carolina, and then he and Moby went and bought a boat, a Nordic Tug 32. This winter she’s inside a shipyard in northern Michigan, where Scott is staying in the yard in Moby and working on the boat during the day. Next summer he’ll live aboard, then move back into the van when the snow flies.**
His note ended the way we all hoped it would.
“Truly having the time of my life.“
If you’ve got a story of your own, whether it’s a trip, a build, or a reason you started, we’d love to hear it. Email [email protected] to tell us yours!