When do we slow down?

It's been a crazy couple of weeks, again. I find myself wondering when the relaxed, retirement part of this trip starts?  We headed out of Utah and back to Nevada to have our "date" with Penn of Penn & Teller fame.  We helped to fund a movie he made, so we met he and his wife, Emily, and then went to the show.  It was a lot of fun, and my mom was there to help us enjoy it.  She had kindly flown to Vegas to babysit.  Since she left in a blizzard, it has come home to me that we should now be experiencing full on winter.  This is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of this lifestyle. I am no longer driving in wind, ice and snow.  Instead of the blizzard, we had this:

After Vegas, we spent a couple of idyllic days in Lake Havasu, Arizona and then brought Grandma to the Phoenix airport.  It was a bit hectic, more activity and driving than we would normally do. But of course, it was well worth it to have such a beloved guest. 

Now that we're in Phoenix and our "obligations" have once again ended, we hightail it to Texas. I need to renew my driver's license. We also need to register our new truck and RV as we are establishing residency there.  Why Texas?  In a word, taxes. It is one of the friendlier states in the union when it comes to taxation and establishing residency.  We will also be taking care of the nuts and bolts of new health insurance once we get there on December 5th.  We are currently using COBRA and it's incredibly expensive. I'm hoping we can do all of these things in the two weeks we'll be in Amarillo, because...

A new obligation awaits!   Yep, it looks like our Minnesota Golden Gophers are in the hunt for a Bowl Game.  The one that they're projected to attend is the Holiday Bowl. In San Diego.  California.  Where we just were for a month.  So, yeah, if that happens, we'll hightail it back to the state of questionable roads and over regulation.  Fortunately, it's also pretty gorgeous there. 

All of this is to say, we are not slowing down!   I'm starting to face the very real possibility that it won't. Ever.  Maybe that's just what it means to have a full life, I don't know.  But we have places to go and things to do once we get there.  It's made a bit more difficult in that none of it is written in stone.  This is the difference between life in Suburbia and life in an RV.  I always knew exactly where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing in the suburbs.  There was always a plan, a road map laid out neatly for me.  Now, there is no map and no real timeline except for a vague hint of "next month".  Each time we move, we have to make another reservation and project how long we want to stay.  I'm finding it a bit more stressful than I thought it would be.  Where's the boredom?  I truly thought there would be more boredom!

Uncertainty is not yet addicting.  I think I'd like a better map. 

"I wish"

We hear this a lot, actually. "I wish I could do what you are doing."  Or "I wish I could retire."  I find that being the source of someone's envy is a very uncomfortable place for me to be.  So, as I do, I thought about it way more than I probably should and came up with this.  If you want it, do it.  It's just about the trade offs.  I truly think that we are not unique. As we are discovering, there is a large (and growing) community of full-time RVers.  We thought that, by now, the attractions we are visiting would be empty.  After all, the school year is in full swing and people are settled in for the winter, right?  Well, wrong.  The attractions we've visited are perhaps not as busy as they'd be in the summer, but there are lots of people doing the same thing we're doing.  And even more surprising, many of them are doing it with kids.  So, how did we do this? 

We talked about and accepted trade offs.  The things I was willing to give up are not trivial, not at all. I gave up order and convenience. Gone are the days when I could run out to my local grocery store for 1 or 2 things.  Now, if we need milk, we have to plan for an excursion into town. Since we change locations fairly often (at least weekly right now), we have to relearn the geography.  Order is difficult to come by. 

Silence ad space are also largely gone.  When you live in close quarters with three other people, two of whom believe that the optimal volume for conversation is "jackhammer", the sane people in the household relish the hour or so after the children have gone to bed. There is nothing so blissful as the quiet of a half empty campground by a lake.  The silence may be less frequent, but it is also deeper.  And space - we don't spread out.  We don't even put something down for five minutes without someone else asking for it to be moved out of the way.  It's tidier, because it has to be. But being mindful of the space you inhabit is definitely a trade off.  

We've also given up the convenience of infrastructure in terms of our children's education, our electricity and our internet service.  The last of those is a huge, huge deal.  Having unreliable internet service may be the one thing that ultimately stops me from enjoying this lifestyle.  I wish there were a better solution than using my phone's hot spot (which is notoriously unreliable) or trying to hook up to a campground's sketchy and almost always painfully slow WiFi.  When we find that rare campground with excellent WiFi, I binge on it like the junkie that I am. 


We traded permanence for adventure.  In fact, we have doubled down on that.  We said goodbye to our dear old girl last week.  The days of living in our Class A motor home are over.  We are enjoying this adventure much more than we thought we would, so we upgraded.  We now own a truck and pull-behind travel trailer with a separate space for the kids. Their "bunkhouse" has three bunks and plenty of toy storage.  And we can unhook and take day trips without worrying about the 6 miles to the gallon we were getting with the Coachmen.  Our plan is to continue this journey for another couple of years. There's a lot to see out here, as it turns out.

If you already own a house, you can definitely afford this lifestyle.  It's much cheaper if you stay a week or a month in one location.  And it's cheaper yet if you dry camp without any hookups at all.  There are plenty of places where this is possible.  I have given up driving all over a Metro all day and working more than I wanted in order to afford living in our mortgaged-to-the-hilt house.  The trailer  has plenty of room for all four of us, and the payment is a fraction of our mortgage.  I've given up seeing my children for a few minutes a day.  I've also given up waking up at 6am.  If you're truly willing to give up convenience and predictability, the trade off is fantastic views, lazier days and beautiful weather.  All the time.  I say, it's worth it - at least for now.