On the road.....: full-time

leaving the house in 2009

Four years ago Paul and I made the decision to sell our house, buy an RV, and explore the country.

Our original idea was to travel for a year or so, to see how we like the full-time lifestyle. If we didn't like it, we figured we’d look along the way for a place we might like to live, since we didn't see a compelling reason to stay in Michigan. But, as it happens, we've discovered that we love this lifestyle, and now we have no specific idea on when we might stop traveling. For us, the two Full timer mottoes really hold true:

“Home Is Where We Park It”

“House-less, not Homeless”

Our 5th wheel really has become our home- as Paul says- once we come inside and close the door- we’re home, no matter what town we happen to be in. And sadly, too often we forget where we are!

Some things about our life are different than I expected them to be.

I thought we’d use the boat a lot, and we don’t. We pull it out once in a while but that’s about it.

Experienced full-timers told us we’d soon slow down and not move as often. New full-timers tend to travel in what we call “vacation” mode, rushing from place to place, trying to see everything. So, I thought that after a year or thereabouts, we would slow down, like most others do. But we haven’t. Even during the winter, we rarely stay in one spot for more than a week or so. It seems like the only time we stay someplace longer, it’s because we are visiting friends or family.

I thought I would brush up on my Spanish, and I haven’t. I think I looked at it twice.

That really is the crux of it. We have learned what we like and don’t like and are lucky enough at this stage in our life that we are able to indulge ourselves and do exactly what we want. Apparently I don’t care enough about Spanish to spend the time to learn it again. Apparently I don’t like geocaching, because although it seems a perfect fit for our lifestyle,we don’t do it.

There are challenges along the way, of course. Every once in a while, we get into trouble because we only receive our mail every 6 weeks or so. That can be annoying- one time, because of a mail delay, we found out that Michigan had revoked our drivers licenses. We got the warning that they were going to do it, and the notice that they had done it, in the same batch of mail. Oops. Figuring out where and when we can have things shipped to us is also a challenge..

Not having consistent medical care in our lives is causing me some anxiety. We are both healthy, luckily, so it hasn't been a huge issue yet, but it’s one of those things that we are aware of. At some point, we may need to make adjustments to our travels because of that. On the plus side, if either of us has a serious medical issue, we can go anywhere in the country to get treatment.

One of the biggest day to day challenges is the attempt to stay physically fit. Yes, we hike, and we love to do it, but there are a lot of places where it just isn't possible. Plus, hiking does nothing for upper body strength. We have all the “tools” to do a reasonably decent work out, we just don’t have the ambition to actually do it. It was much easier to just go to the gym 4 times a week.

There are things about this lifestyle that I really enjoy- some of them have come as a complete surprise to me. For instance, I've never been a huge history fanatic, but I have really enjoyed learning about the history of our country, and piecing together the timeline of its development, as we visit each area.

I am happiest, it seems, in our National Parks. Before we went on the road, I hadn't spent much time in them, and now I realize that they were made into parks for a reason- they have something incredible to see and experience!

Most of the time I love the fact that we don’t know where we will be next week. What I love more though, is that if I want to know where we’ll be next week, I can just make reservations in advance. Problem solved. We, like most full-timers, make our plans in chalk, or Jell-O. Not very strong, and easily erased, but we do have what Paul and I call “bookends”- reservations that are made pretty far in advance, that we need to keep. Our next bookend is September, in Michigan, for doctor appointments. Until then, we’ll meander around.

Dozer, at the ripe old age of 10, has learned to adjust to life on the road. He’s adapted to the point that instead of sitting outside locked up in a cage…

…he gets to explore new areas on a leash.

Dozer's explorations

View Full Album

One of the things we “gave up” when we went on the road is our friends. But then, anytime you move, you give up most of your friends. What’s really awesome is that we have made a lot of new friends since we went on the road. These are people that enjoy the same lifestyle we do, so we have something in common right from the get-go.

And then there are the people who, once you've met them, will be your friend for life. We are lucky enough to have those kinds of friends. Some we met before the road…(at age 3)

some we have met while on the road…

One of the perks of our lifestyle has been that we actually get to see family more often than we did while living in Michigan. We travel from my family in Boston to his brother in California, stopping by Paul’s mom’s every time we pass through Texas.

We supplement our visits to the kids by either flying to see them, or flying them to see us!

A lot of people are curious about our lifestyle, and many say they are envious (although I don’t think they really are). Many people think we’re a little nuts. I will say, this lifestyle is not for everyone. If you have a partner, you have to be best friends and able to live in a small space together. That’s really the only “must have” that I can think of. Anything else can be adjusted to suit you. If you don’t want to travel a lot, stay in one spot. If you get nervous not knowing where you’ll be, make reservations. If you don’t want to sell everything you own, put it in storage until you decide what to do (some of our stuff is still in storage). If you need to keep costs down, volunteer in a national park, or work camp. If you aren’t sure you’ll love the lifestyle, have an exit plan. Ok, I was wrong, having an exit plan is the second “must have”.

There are two questions that we get asked with amazing frequency:

First: How do you get your mail?? Easy, since everything is done online these days, there isn't much mail to get. The rest goes to a mail forwarding service, who ships it to us whenever and wherever we want. The second question is tougher to answer :

Where is your favorite place so far?

Paul has gotten to the point that he is consistent with his answer-Yosemite National Park.

I usually say “any national park, with my favorites being Yosemite, Yellowstone and Big Bend”.

View Full Album

Paul and I play a game with each other every once in a while, asking the question “If we had to settle somewhere right now where would it be?” Answer: Arizona.

So, anyway, here are a few numbers from our last 4 years of full timing.

We started with one plan- to spend as long as we wanted touring the country in our 5th wheel. To prepare for this, we sold one house and one boat, had two garage sales, and made countless trips to Goodwill.

We have driven two trucks 106,115 miles and towed three trailers 48,541 miles, using five GPS’s to guide us.

We have visited 25 national parks, 38 states and two countries spending $26,624 on fuel to get there.

We've stayed in 258 campgrounds and met hundreds of people living the same lifestyle as us and Zero of them are doing it in exactly the same way we are.

We've endured temperatures ranging from 9° to 108°.

Dozer has caught three mice in the trailer, and one baby squirrel that he tried to bring into the trailer.

We've seen three different primary care doctors, three different dentists, two veterinarians, and dealt with one broken bone.

And, of course, you are reading this because I have written 355 posts on my blog, and I choose the pictures from my 8.7 gigabytes of photos.