No!
Today marks the start of our 4th year of living full time in The Toad, and I’ll celebrate the occasion by updating last year’s post, which included answers to the 12 Questions We Hear All The Time. Bonus: I’ve added a 13th question to make it a baker’s dozen.
Many answers are still the same; updates are written in this nice shade of purple, and I’ve replaced most of the photos too.
1. Sounds like a lot of things go wrong with the RV. Don’t you miss living in a house?
Yes they do, and no we don’t. Things go wrong in everyone’s RV, from the newest to the oldest, from the high-end to the low — just like in a house. They never happen at a good time, they’re expensive to fix, and although Tim can handle most repairs on his own, sometimes we have to pay someone else to do it — just like in a house.
2. You don’t miss anything about having a house? Really?
Fine. We miss having a bathtub. And I’m not crazy about living without my photo albums and other prior-to-digitization mementos, all of which are in our storage unit in San Antonio. I feel like a big chunk of my history is missing.
3. How many states have you visited in the RV, I mean like, for more than just a rest stop?
By my count, 25: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Virginia, West Virginia, Utah, Wyoming, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Washington, and Oregon, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota. Without really even trying, we’re more than halfway through the Lower 48!
My criteria for counting a state as visited are a bit fluid, which I know will drive some people a little nuts. Did we stay overnight? Long enough to do the weekly laundry? Go on a hike or visit a national park? All of those are valid to me. Just driving through on the way to elsewhere, with a potty break at a gas station? Not so much.
I deliberately left out one-nighters, and some of our stops in WA lack labels because I had to zoom out so far to show our path from end to end.
(source: maps.google.com)
4. Have you found a place in any of those that feels like home? That’s what you set out to do, right? Find home?
Yeah… about that. No. We are no closer to finding home than we were when we started this crazy adventure, and that is because we’ve spent most of our time going from one “Hey, come join us for this” occurrence to another, and occasionally finding spots to explore and play between those events. But we’ve spent time with more friends and family in these last three years than we had in the prior 20, so we have no regrets!
Flagstaff, AZ, was a contender for a while, because we liked the size, the landscape, the people, and the vibe, but when a friend posted a few months later that it was 28 degrees on the morning of Memorial Day? Gone. Dead to us. Off the list. No.
And now, Coeur d’Alene, ID, is a contender. Tim spent his high school years there, and still feels a connection to the place. I like it too, and we’d have a built-in network of friends. The city itself is way too crowded for us, but 10-15 acres several miles outside the city limits sounds appealing. And yes, we’d keep an RV so that we could easily winter elsewhere. I don’t see us pulling the trigger on a land purchase any time soon, but the bug is buzzing about our brains.
5. You sold two houses in 2016, so are you just rolling in dough? Must be nice to be so rich that life is a permanent vacation.
Come closer.
I want you to hear me say this: We lost money on both houses.
I won’t tell you how much, because there is not a big enough margarita on the planet to make me feel better about it, but for a total of 13 months between 2015 and 2016? We were paying the mortgage on a house we weren’t living in, waiting for it to sell.
It hurt, I don’t recommend it, and we should probably not be allowed to buy property ever again because we are terrible at market timing. We are relieved to have the homeownership burden lifted, and we are now rebuilding our savings, thankyouverymuch.
6. So… are you poor? Is that why you’re living in an RV?
No. We’re not poor. We are living on Tim’s military retirement pension, and had in fact been doing so for two years before we downsized to the RV, so we already knew that if we maximized use of his retirement benefits while simultaneously reducing expenses, we could make it work. The RV is simply the means by which we are Owning Less to Do More. It could just as easily have been a tiny home or a boat or a yurt.
We’ve also done a little work camping since last year: the stint in Texas paid us in free rent, and our gig with Amazon Camperforce in Tennessee paid us in both free rent and an hourly wage. With those savings/earnings, we were able to pay off the loan for the new BFT, and we are now living debt free!
7. Are you thinking about getting a new RV still?
No. We’ve decided to keep upgrading and modifying this one until… well, until we feel like we’re done. We’ve painted, replaced some furniture and fixtures, upgraded the power system, added disc brakes and a bit of insulation, and I forgot what the hell all else, but we talked a lot about it in this video by Heartland RVs. We’d still like to add solar power, and get an exterior paint job.
In 2018, the biggest upgrade that I wrote about was our flooring replacement. The biggest modification that I didn’t write about was having our undercarriage stuff upgraded to 8,000-pound axles and H-rated tires by our friends at Performance Trailer Braking (and the fact that I used the term “undercarriage stuff” should explain why I didn’t write about it).
We also replaced our manual awning with an automatic one, helped my brother’s family with some post- Hurricane Harvey work at his house, and went from not-exactly-legal to clearly-and-absolutely legal with our Texas driver’s licenses. I behaved abominably over it. Here’s why.
I crushed a few safety cones.
Sorry, safety cones.
8. How about a new dog?
No. We miss Lola, but this just isn’t the right time for us to add four paws to the mix. Besides, we really don’t look good on paper (no yard, no fence, no vet, no permanent address), so I’m not sure a shelter would deem us a proper adoptive family anyway. Now if a dog finds us? All bets might be off.
Oil on canvas by Tim’s sister, Whitney
9. About that “no permanent address” thing. How do you get mail? Or vote? Or go to the doctor?
OK, we do have a permanent address; we just don’t live in the UPS Store where it’s located. We’d already been renting a mailbox in San Antonio for a while before we started traveling, so we just kept it. It’s the address we use for our driver’s licenses, voter’s registrations, vehicle registrations, banking, etc. Every 2-3 weeks, we call them to have our accumulated mail forwarded to wherever we are.
Our medical “home” is also San Antonio, and we return every 6 months for my cancer follow-ups, and anything else that needs attention. While traveling, we are able to make use of military treatment facilities and VA hospitals, thanks to Tim’s 25 years of Navy service.
10. Do you like the new truck?
Yes! Wow, do we love the new BFT (2017 Dodge RAM 3500 dually). We actually rather liked the old BFT too (2012 Chevy Silverado 3500 dually), and would have kept it until death did us part, but… oh wait. It did die. We just chose not to live with it after the major organ transplant.
But anyway, the advances in comfort, maneuverability, and electronic features between those model years are noticeable even to me, and I don’t really pay much attention to that kind of thing. (“Does it start when I turn the key? Yes? Good. That’s all I need.”)
6.7-Liter I6 Cummins® Turbo Diesel Engine
AISIN 6-Speed Automatic Transmission
Dual Rear Wheels / 17-Inch x 6-Inch Wheels
Black interior
True Blue Pearl exterior
11. How long ya gonna keep doing this?
We have no exit strategy. When we started, we thought it would take a year or two to get all our exploring done and find The Place, but now we’ve decided to play this hand for as long as we can comfortably hold the cards.
Tim is 52, I’m 49, we’re frequently the youngsters of the RV park, and I’m OK with that. If you’ve read our “How we met” story, and are now trying to do the math, let me help you out. Yes, we were young. We married at 26 and 23, had our sons right quick, and that is how we ended up with an empty nest by the ages of 49 and 46.
The way I like to characterize it is that we are living our twenties now. I even got up to a little mischief during a recent stay in an age-restricted RV park.
12. What’s next?
We’ve traveled from Idaho back to Washington for the month of August. We want to do some hiking in the Cascades and/or Olympics, and we want to see our older son and his girlfriend again before we head back to Texas for our autumn round of family visits and medical appointments. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter for updates as we go!
After the first week of October, both the calendar and the roads are wide open.
… and the places we’ve yet to go!
13. Do you make money from this blog?
Nope. The only payment we receive is your attention, and so far that’s enough for us.
We have not monetized our blog or any of our social media accounts by accepting advertising, by promoting products for manufacturers, or by using affiliate links. If we mention a product (or restaurant, campground, RV park, etc.) that we really liked (or didn’t like), we do so without the owner’s prior knowledge and without compensation.
We have lots of RV blogging friends who make use of some or all of those income streams, and we encourage you to support them. It helps fund their travels, or at the very least, the expense of purchasing and maintaining their web site. We’ve not felt the need to take this step, but we’re not ruling it out as an option should we begin attracting a (much, much) wider audience.
Oh, and on a related topic, we do not have a YouTube channel. Appearing in and editing video is absolutely unappealing to us, so you’ll just have to put up with our “old-fashioned” ways.
So that’s it for the end of Year 3! If there’s a topic I didn’t cover, you are welcome to ask your question in the comments section below, but keep it clean. My parents read this.
Other updates: We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.
We just love the rich/poor questions! You just can’t win. You’re either trailer trash or must be a trust fund baby. We, too, are looking for “the place”, but we’re only a year and a half in. We have heard good things about Spokane and headed that way in August to “see about it”. Love the blog and reading about your travels.
We spent some time in Spokane in July. It is an old city, with a combination of both lovely and not-so-lovely elements (vagrants, crime) —no different than many other cities of its size. We preferred its “next door neighbor,” Coeur d’Alene. The entire area surrounding the two cities is beautiful!
Thanks for the updates. We, too, are on the road without a plan and field “those” questions very often! Although not as young as you (62), we are frequently amazed at the FullTimers we meet in their 80’s! Love your blog, keep up the good work!
Thank you, Susan! I just took a look at your blog too. Our Lola’s last “boyfriend” was the corgi who lived two houses up the hill from us in San Antonio. He made her a better dog. Ha!
Just found your blog through the RV love post of the 4 of you. My husband and I are right where you started, and I hope our story will be as great as yours. I’ll enjoy catching up on reading – I love finding a new blog and binge-reading! We are in the process of selling everything including the house – got an offer YESTERDAY that will turn official on Monday! Heartland Road Warrior and requisite BFT are already in the driveway. We both still work, but home-based and home can be anywhere in the 48 contiguous, and we’re looking forward to the next phase of our life adventure. My plan was already to find a pink flamingo to mark home wherever we park, just like Mary Jo does for you. I’ve been on the lookout for just the right one. We are such anti-HOA kind of people – a pink flamingo has always represented that to me. I saw 5-ft-tall one at Hobby Lobby this summer, but honey said that was too much. LOL Happy wandering!
Hey, Monica! I’m happy to have you here, and CONGRATULATIONS on the house offer. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for you!
Marc & Julie are such genuinely friendly people, and we value any slice of time we get to spend with them. You’ll meet so many like-minded RV’ers on the road too, and I’m excited for your new beginning. We’ll be at Heartland’s national rally in Goshen, IN, in June, so maybe we’ll see you there? Join the Heartland Owner’s Club if you haven’t already. I promise you it’s nothing like a HOA. Ha!
Hey there!
Just found your blog and read through your summary of the first 4 years. I also read about your Olympic National Park adventure. Fun posts! Ron and I live in Port Townsend, WA in a rental cottage for this winter after selling our 2017 Winnebago View, beautiful home and most of our possessions in preparation of living the rv lifestyle. Wow, that was a lot of work but somehow feels pretty good now. I spent last winter digitizing all the photos but can’t bear to throw them away so next week we are hauling all photos and important papers to my parents’ house in Kansas… 55 years old and asking mom and dad to store our stuff! LOL! We just bought our 1 ton pickup this week and are now keeping an eye out for a fifth wheel. I have a great job but as my interest wanes in the next year or so we will be ready to head out. Ron is retired Air Force. We both have wanderlust and have family and friends to spend more time with. My daughter is in CDA, son in Utah. Both good places to spend some time while visiting them. Hopefully we will cross paths with you sometime! Cheers!
Wow, Kelly, we have so much in common it’s almost spooky! We spent so much time in PT over the summer that I bet we crossed paths and didn’t even know it. I’ll try to remember to holler next time we’re there, but I’m guessing (and hoping) you’ll have hit the road by then. Best wishes and safe travels.
Yes, I bet we did see each other as we walked about! Does your son live in PT? We will get our RV no later than next May and then live in this area while I continue to work here until……. I really enjoyed reading your posts, and found your FB pages. Let’s stay in touch!
Yes, he does. Left the nest to go to the boat building school in 2013, and he’s been there ever since!
I CANNOT believe that it has taken me 4 years to find your blog. Your story is somewhat like ours with some major differences, (but hey who’s counting?) and I am loving the heck out of reading your prose!
We are late 60s with a 22 year old son, were doing the same looking for a home but prefer the RV and will be FTing it as long as we can. Last year we DID buy a small house in NY Hudson Valley as a rest stop (and after a series of wake up calls about what will happen if we need to get off the road fast) but our legal address is in FL where all our medical and “important” stuff takes place (including my family.) I have an old high school friend (on St Croix, USVI) living in Couer D’Alene and we’ll be passing through there next early summer on our way to BC where we plan to do a “slalom” course approach to the northern border until we get to the Canadian Maritimes.
Right now we are in NY about to set off for Lake Shelby Campground (which is where I found your Campendium review and followed the path to your blog) on the way to Chattanooga where we have to have a new roof put on our 33′ class A. Not happy about the prospect of having to spend beaucoup $$$$ but at least this new roof should provide a little more security and decreased stress.
Welcome, Lisa! Happy that you’ve found us, and astounded that it was through Campendium, where I’ve contributed a whopping two (maybe three) reviews. How funny!
My sympathies on the big cha-ching for your roof. We’ve not experienced that particular repair “pleasure,” but I think we’ve endured most of the major others. Oy. It never ends. One of our many slogans is “something’s always broken.”
A job you might consider while travelling…Sugar Beet Harvest. Show up around Sept 20…stay til its done around Oct 25ish. It’s an experience you won’t forget and makes for quite a story. Sidney Sugar Beet harvest. No…not fieldwork…My husband and I did it a year ago…he’s 70 and I’m 69. BTW.. we are Terry and Denise’s Aunt and Uncle! We sold our home of 20 years and are on the road for 1 year before we return to CDA area. Love reading about your adventures.
You both can make some good money ($8700) together for about 5 weeks of work…have you read Nomadland? Funny insight to full-time Rving. Travel safe and we will talk to you again down the road.
Hello there, Aunt & Uncle to two of our Norfolk friends!
Yes, we knew of the sugar beet harvest opportunity and decided that if we were going to give manual labor a try, then we’d rather be in a climate controlled environment, and that’s how we ended up at Amazon last year. It looks cold up there in sugar beet land!
We hope to return to CDA soon, so don’t be surprised if you hear from us. And I’ll look into “Nomadland.” Haven’t read that one yet.