4th quarter 2022: WheRVe we been?

We went up, up and away in Albuquerque, and then traveled back in time in Sedona, before landing at our winter home base near San Antonio.

Come on. I’ll take you.

Dawn patrol rising at the 50th annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
Not so much time on the road this quarter.
In Road Island (truck camper), we completed the big loop we’d started in April,
driving from Albuquerque to Sedona to Boerne (1470-ish miles),
where we promptly moved back into Tex (5th wheel) on our friends’ property a few days before Halloween.
Other than a Christmas week gathering with RV friends in Georgetown, we’ve been parked here ever since.

Albuquerque NM – Sept. 27 to Oct. 11

Balloon Fiesta hadn’t been on our bucket list. If I’m to be honest, I’d say it held a firm place on our “Oh my god too many people let’s just watch videos online because I wouldn’t even go if you paid me ” list.

Turns out that after being convinced by friends we trust — who also happened to be co-coordinators of this year’s Escapees Boomers Balloon Fiesta Volunteer Crew — we paid them to go (the Balloon Fiesta organization, not the Boomers), and $50.00/night for dry camping at that.

And you know what? Totally worth it. In fact, we got off cheap for the scope and breadth of experience we absorbed, simply by attending mandatory crew training and learning some new skills — oh, and by volunteering to use those skills after walking more than a mile to the launch field at ungodly dark & early hours every day, and then sometimes doing it again the same evening.

We knew before we arrived that being offered a flight was not guaranteed, and we adjusted our expectations accordingly. But each of us got to go up! In fact, our pilot didn’t even have the question all the way out of his mouth that first morning, before I had one leg inside the basket.

We worked hard, lost sleep, learned a lot, made new friends, witnessed jaw-dropping visual spectacles, and enjoyed all kinds of crew perks as we became immersed in ballooning culture. As with other sports and activities, especially those that are more on the fringe, the community is passionate and close-knit, and eager to welcome more enthusiasts to the fold.

Up I went!
The biggest shock is that I didn’t puke.
Nothing like a thrill so unexpected and so intense it makes you completely forget you’ve suffered
from motion sickness all your damn life.
I know that for me it’s as much a mental issue as a physical one, and right here is proof of what happens
(or doesn’t happen)
if I don’t have the luxury of over-thinking it first.

Sedona AZ – Oct. 16 to Oct. 21

We’d first heard about HistoriCorps in the summer of 2021, and immediately signed up for a project in Oregon that October. Unfortunately, it was canceled due to wildfire smoke, and we couldn’t find a project that fit our travel timeline again for an entire year.

When we got to Sedona, we literally parked beneath a rainbow, met the rest of our Week 1 crew, and got to work helping to restore historic buildings at Crescent Moon Ranch, which dates back to the 1880s.

I’ll post some of my own pics in a slide show, and for a better summary of the work HistoriCorps did, I’ll also embed a brief local news video below. We’re not in it, as it must have been filmed during the 2nd or 3rd work week, but we definitely recognize staffers Pete and Sarah — and every structure shown.

Boerne TX – Oct 26 to present

It’s our second winter in a row on our friends’ property, which is a great place to get work done — both theirs and ours, working together. For us, it’s mostly RV maintenance (2 x RV = 4 x work). For them? Well, you just never know what might come up. Or drive by. Or moo at you.

It’s also in a convenient location for visiting friends, family, doctors and dentists everywhere from San Antonio to Austin and into the Texas Hill Country, and we’ve done a lot of that too.

Look at me learning a new trick like a big girl.

Where to next?

A long string of pesky dental and medical follow-ups has us staying put here in TX through at least mid-February. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’ll always take pesky over serious, and this situation allows us more time to catch up with family, friends, the aforementioned RV maintenance, etc.

We’ve also thought about making a return trip to Mexico, but this time it would be a short visit to a single location, not a repeat of our 2-month tour in Feb/March of 2022.

Around April, we’ll start moving toward WA to stage ourselves for a summer touring Alaska in Road Island. So far we’ve made precisely one reservation for precisely one week.

We also plan to register for Escapees Hangouts in Fairbanks, Seward and Valdez, so that will cover another 3 weeks, but mostly we’ll wing it like we typically do.

We’ve got you covered, 4th of July weekend.

Alaska will be our 50th state since we started full-time RVing in 2015. No, we did not RV to Hawaii, smartass. We stashed the 5th wheel at a military campground near ATL and flew there during Year 4.

Checking off the last state doesn’t mean we’re done roaming, but it does open up some space for recalculating and reevaluating our priorities for whatever comes after — and I won’t lie, we’re doing that.

There’s a specific plan percolating, but whether or not it happens is not under our control. Nope, we’re not buying a house or land. Yep, I’ll be able to share the news in our next quarterly update if it’s a go, and if you’re one of the few who’ve heard us talk about it in person, hush.

Until then, Happy New Year, and be sure to check in with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for brief updates, random thoughts, stuff I’m cooking, stuff Tim’s repairing, and occasional selfies with animals.


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.

Welcome to the fleet, little buddy!

Do get ahold of yourself. This is not a birth announcement.

Nor is it a puppy announcement.

We’ve added something else to the family, and although it means we do in fact now own more, we can travel for part of the year with less, and there’s kind of a sweet little coincidence thrown in too.

It’s a lot less.
Like less-than-half less.

But first… my existential crisis

Own more, do more? Oy vey. Let me type through it.

We wanted this, it feels right, and we’re confident with the decision — which was a good two years in the making.

But I don’t know how to sit with “owning more” yet, and I feel like the more I try to justify it, the more it sounds like I’m making excuses.

So indulge me while I examine things with my head tilted and one eye squinched.

Even with the contents of our storage unit considered, we still own significantly less than we did before we downsized to our first RV in 2015 — from a 2900sf 4br 2.5ba house with a 2-car garage, a shed, 3 vehicles, all those sets of sheets and towels, 4 people’s worth of shoes and clothing, formal living and dining areas, multiple desks and dressers, and walk-in closets containing all the we-might-need-these-somedays.

At present, we own one vehicle. As for our “houses,” the 5th wheel offers up about 350 square feet of living space, and the truck camper… maybe 150? All the furniture came with (and stays with) them, and we can travel with only one of these boogers at a time.

Well, then.

No name change is forthcoming. Own Less Do More stays.

So why did we do it?

We’d started talking about it maybe a year after we traded in our old 5th wheel and moved into this Mobile Suites in 2018.

It’s really big, y’all. There are places we can’t take it because of its size. And at great risk of making the poor thing feel fat-shamed, we really thought we’d be happier if we had a more svelte companion.

A lot of places we’d like to go are remote, petite, or require travel along roads that are unsuitable for 60 feet and 10 tires worth of moving mayhem. Plus, we’ve got our eyes on RVing to Alaska in 2023, and although we know folks who’ve done it in large rigs, we’d prefer something more stealthy and streamlined, so that we have a wider selection of places to stay, minimal need to book sites in advance (we hope), and far less worry about banging the thing up a bit in the name of adventure (we hope again).

In a truck camper, we can squeeze in just about anywhere, and scratches and dents on an 8-year-old previously owned unit become the start of a good campfire story.

However, we aren’t ready to give up the comfort of using the 5th wheel as our home, nor are we ready to return to sticks-and-bricks living, so we think of the truck camper as our mobile summer cabin. Our plan is to take off for about 5 months of travel in it this April, so that we can get the feel for a season of use in the Lower 48 before we try schlepping up to Alaska next year.

Plus, we helped Tim’s folks do this same thing just a few months ago, and that definitely stoked the fire. We did first ask if we could borrow their truck camper for Alaska 2023, but those two actively traveling seniors weren’t yet ready or willing to relinquish the rights. They might still be using it themselves, and we quite honestly hope that’s the case, so we bought our own.

This is the one Tim’s folks bought (the in-law suite?).
Joke: Just how old does Tim have to be before his father will let him borrow his toys?
Apparently 55 is still too young.

Got some specs?

Of course we do.

It’s a 2013 Lance 1050S, and I’ve taken the liberty of adding a column for our 5th wheel’s stats, so you can appreciate the differences.

Truck Camper5th wheel
Length19′ 8″40′ 6″
Height during travel11′ 8″ 13′ 6″
Dry weight3,030 lbs17,000 lbs
Mattress size60″ x 74″ (RV queen)72″ x 80″ (RV king)
No. slides14
Fresh tank30 gal100 gal
Grey tank27 gal75 gal
Black tank22 gal50 gal

There are more specs here, an actual brochure here, and I’m not going to give you a video walk-through because this dude has already done that in one like ours, and as a salesperson, he got paid to do it. Ours lacks the slide topper and the drop-down bunk over the dinette. Other than that? Samesies.

This is confusing af. How’s this gonna work, Em?

We are in the right place at the right time with the right friends.

J & K are fellow RVers, they’ve got acreage near our home base of San Antonio, and we’ve been staying on the property since early November. They’re letting us leave one unit here while we travel in the other.

Plus, J is every bit as much of a handy fixit guy as Tim, if not more so, and he’s got a tractor.

Why is that important? Okay, well, when we’re using the 5th wheel, we’ve got a big-ass hitch in the bed of the truck, plus bed-wide boxes full of tools, and a 65-gallon auxiliary fuel tank. All of that heavy stuff has to come out in order to slide the truck camper in, and then be put in again when we’re ready to switch back. So twice a year, we’ll take advantage of tractor-assisted switcheroos and an assortment of outbuildings in which to leave whatever ain’t ridin’ with us.

We pay for the privilege by helping out with projects on the property, and we’re also trying to convince J to accept something more valuable than an occasional family-size bag of peanut M&Ms for this stupid convenient option he’s given us. This would be tremendously more difficult for us without his generosity, and although we could do it without him, we probably wouldn’t.

Number of pairs of jeans I own: 2
Number of RVs we own: also 2
I am now afraid to buy more jeans.

Do they have names?

Not really, but we’re trying.

In homage to the largest and smallest states in the continental US, we’d like to go with Tex for the 5th wheel, and Road Island (misspelling intentional) for the truck camper, but neither of us is doing very well with the mental gymnastics.

The big one is usually “the house” or “the RV,” the truck camper is usually “the camper,” and if we’re inside one, then the other is simply, “the other one.”

What about that coincidence you were talking about?

When we were in San Antonio back in May of 2021, Tim and I spent a couple of days helping with clean-up efforts at an Escapees RV park near here, after it was walloped by severe storms with record-breaking hail and tornado-force winds. Almost all the RVs and vehicles on the lot were totaled, forcing this senior population to start over. I wrote about those emotional, sad, yet hopeful days here.

On December 30 of 2021, while in the San Antonio area once again, and shopping-but-not-shopping like we tend to do, Tim texted me a link to the craigslist ad for this camper. 

I looked at the first photo and could tell immediately where it was: that very RV park.

The owners — who we determined we had not met while we were helping with the clean-up in May, but wow, would that have made an even better story — had bought it in Dallas, after the storms, to live in for a few months until they could obtain a new 5th wheel to replace their totaled one. 

We spent about an hour checking it out the next day (no odors, no stains, spotless fridge and oven!), went out to lunch to talk it over, and texted the owner an offer from the table. He came up a little, but said he’d throw in a bunch of accessories that we might want/need, so we settled on his counter-offer and got approved for a loan that afternoon.

New adventures, coming soon

And that’s about as much as I can tell you without actually having lived or traveled in Road Island, which means I can’t yet say how awesome — or awful? — it is to cut our living space, storage space, and amenities by more than half. That’s coming up when we get back from our 2-month trip to Mexico. (If you missed that news, I included it in our previous blog post. We’re flying!)

Over the past two weeks, Tim’s been tackling caulking, wiring, and other fixits to get the camper ready to go, and I’ve been taking care of transferring and procuring interior items. We’ll have time to spend a night or two onboard to test all the systems before we leave for Mexico on Feb. 1, and we’ll move into it fully when we return at the end of March. We’ll then give ourselves an additional 2-3 weeks to take care of any issues before we roll out of Texas for the season.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got packing to do, but at least the bathing suit decision is easy. I’ve only got one of those.