Becoming a “full-time RVer” was a piece of cake in the strict definition of the words. We moved out of our house and into our 35 foot fifth-wheel trailer on July 17, 2020. We have not returned to sleep in our “sticks and bricks” home since. So by that definition, we have been “full-timing” for a couple of months now.
But in my gut, full-time living didn’t feel real to me until recently. We are still adjusting and finding our way there. That is because living in your camper, trailer, motorhome or RV of any kind is more a state of being or a change in mindset than the place you lay your head each night. It is a much larger and more significant process of change in your life and in your heart. “Going FT” took us about six years.
The idea of living full-time in an RV began as we dated and then married in 2015 and were talking about how we might spend our time together. When you marry in the middle of your life (late 40s) rather than in your youth, you feel compelled to increase the quality of the time you spend together. You have an appreciation for the brevity of life and gain a desire to make up for the time you lost together. So we began dreaming about our time together.
We had about six years of at-home parenting to do with the youngest of our kids before we became empty-nesters. We already were not the traditional family, the typical marriage or the couple we expected to be. With different backgrounds, we needed to explore the possibilities. I was always drawn to travel and had been camping my entire life. My desire to see the country and the world had always been a part of my life, adjusting the distance and types of travel I did along the way for life changes such as college, career, marriage and kids. I always felt like there was a lot of travel ahead for me. Andrew had traveled occasionally for work but aside from a few plane trips to Disney when his children were young, vacation was often a “staycation” and work had been his focus. Before we married, he hadn’t seen himself much outside of the success and growth of his career.
We were both open to great change – heck, our entire lives had been DEFINED by change for years (death, divorce, remarriage). We wanted to really be able to plan these changes carefully and to take our time.
What began as daydreaming about our future travels, turned into an idea about camping together. “Let’s try it!”, we said. My kids and I already had a Coleman pop-up camper, so we took a long-weekend trip to see if camping might be “our thing”. Then we decided to try some nice resorts as well. So we took a couple of fly-in, international, “all-inclusive” vacations. We enjoyed it all. What we quickly realized was that we wanted to see and do a LOT. Our daydreaming evolved into a plan – “Let’s take an extended trip once the kids are on their own”.
Recognizing that we couldn’t afford to travel long-term at high-end resorts, and acknowledging that camping in our 50s would be more pleasant if we focused on the “glamping” end of the camping spectrum, we hatched a rough plan. Let’s upgrade our camper and use these next few years to learn to camp together. We visited an RV show and spent a full two seasons deciding which style of camper would best meet our needs. We joined Facebook Groups, devoured blogs and Youtube videos of people that were taking epic long-term trips around North America. We discovered “full-time RVing” and felt like we had found our plan.
That moment of realization created great anticipation and excitement and created even more fun over the following years as we planned for our plan! We are by nature, big planners and very deliberate decision-makers, but with this big lifestyle change, we made a point to try to NOT plan the travel. We wanted to breed spontaneity and flexibility into our lives as we became empty-nesters.
So we used the preparation years to place our focus on getting ready for “our time”. We wanted to buy the right rig, the right truck, be safe and secure and set ourselves up for great success. We wanted to be prepared financially and made big decisions, such as selling our home, selling our vehicles and shedding nearly all of our possessions. We did all of those things and spent the next three summers building up our camping and travel repertoire and paring down our lives for the big launch.
That takes us, once again, to that summer day in July when we moved out of our house and into our camper. Literally years in the making and all it took was an afternoon to schlep our remaining clothes, food and most important possessions into our 350 foot square home on wheels.
We meandered within 25 miles of our starting point for two more weeks, visiting with family, emptying out the house and putting it on the market and REALLY PACKING the rig with everything the last little chick was taking to college. Down to Florida we went to deposit her at school, help her get settled in her apartment, and to just sit and settle down for a while. Life had been frenetic and exceedingly busy for months and we were exhausted. It had been difficult to enjoy the day-to-day because there had been so much to accomplish in those last weeks and months and years.
Through it all, it took a full month before my dear husband and I looked at each other and referred to our place as “home”. In the end, it had nothing to do with the rig we chose, or the things with which we had parted. It did not matter where the camper sat on that particular day. Instead, it had everything to do with a feeling of contentment. For us, it was grabbing those feelings we sought – slowing down, reducing responsibilities, changing the type of parenting we did, eliminating “stuff” and reconnecting with each other in a way we hadn’t really felt since we had been teenagers. At age 54/53, we now have a simpler life with fewer worries which has given us a giddy feeling of anticipation of what lies ahead of us. We are full-time RVers, exploring life fully – and we are so blessed to experience this lifestyle.
