A New Dream To Live
I think this is my favorite work campsite through our fulltime RV lifestyle.
You know the saying, “All things must come to an end?” But I like to add another word to that, “All GOOD things must come to an end.” This is a hard blog to write, but we have made a decision about our current RV lifestyle. It has been a good time and sometimes not a good time. This lifestyle has been amazing, confusing, exciting, wonderful, hard lessons, learning and growing, but it is time to say goodbye. Yes, we are permanently hanging up the RV keys to this lifestyle and pursuing a new dream.
It is time to dream to live. Or live to dream. Hmmm….
Why you may ask? We put in a lot of time, thought, care, prayer and waiting as we contemplated if we wanted to continue living the RV lifestyle. There are some key points I want to share about why we decided to hang up the RV keys and what we will miss once we are done:
Health: My husband had a heart attack in November 2023 and survived it, thankfully! But it really shook me up to the point I started questioning whether I wanted us to continue to live and travel in a RV. He is doing better and working (yes, he loves to work), but he has some hiccups and we are working on those hiccups to improve his health. I had some health problems come up and working on that as well. It kind of stinks to age!! My concerns are if something really drastic happened to my husband, how will I get back home if we are not there yet? What will I do afterwards? These are true and eye-opening thoughts.
Expense: Living and traveling in a RV is EXPENSIVE! I love watching videos where other fulltime rvers say you can do this lifestyle for under $1000. You really cannot. Everything is so expensive today. Granted, we have a large setup: a semi pulling our travel trailer with a Ford Bronco sitting on the flatbed behind the semi. Lots of diesel fuel equals lots of moola! Fixing our setup is also not cheap, plus the cost of diesel has been a challenge over the years. Even though we do not have any debt and it is a great feeling, however, just living on retirement has been a test and a very hard test. Two incomes are better than one!!
Tired of living small: Yes, this has been a chief complaint from me for quite a while! I understand that living in a RV is small compared to a house or an apartment, and I knew that when we first started. But it has been hard as I miss having space to exercise in my trailer (I have exercised outside most of this lifestyle and that has been an interesting experience), have art projects on a desk that I share with my makeup area and always kicking my husband out of the kitchen as it is only a one person space.
Life is short: Kind of related to the above about our health, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately: life is indeed short and I am the type of gal that likes security, a warm and comfy home to live in, where I do not have to empty the tanks (water and sewer, dear hubby does that), not constantly fix something (this is a definite YEP), not worry about being stuck in a RV if my husband passes away before we sell it and not know what to do afterwards.
Bad weather and jobs: This is a REAL BIGGIE for me!! We have encountered horrendous weather, like hail, severe wind, rain and thunderstorms. Living in a RV and going through bad weather is not the same as living in a house! We had to workcamp as living and traveling in a RV is expensive and I am not retired yet, even though my husband is. Work camping was something I did NOT like. I had to deal with angry and cranky customers at campgrounds, sometimes drama with coworkers, a lying boss and job that was not what I thought.
Washer and dryer: This might sound weird, but I am tired of dragging our clothes to a laundry room at a RV park or a laundromat in a town we are visiting, enduring some clothes and towels ruined, and wasting so many quarters on faulty machines. It really should have been a game changer when we decided to fulltime RV. I have always had a washer and dryer and to suddenly not have one, find a place to wash our items and hopefully not ruin it with other people’s previous washings has been very difficult. There are RVs that have a washer and dryer and they are lucky but we do not. The only good thing I can say is we get our items cleaned much faster than if we had the machines.
Living in an apartment? Yes, we lived in an apartment during the summer months in Arizona in 2024. It was expensive, but we could not see living in our RV during the summer, sweltering in the RV and trying to keep it cool during 120 degree heat. Impossible. We were spoiled as we had a nice size washer and dryer, a dishwasher and lots of room to stretch and move around, plus a fabulous community pool that I generally had to myself!
Our very long and large setup in Colorado!
But here are the things I will MISS fulltime rving:
Traveling: I will miss seeking new places we have never saw, the beauty of our great country and the adventures we could have had.
National parks are amazing! I will never forget the Tetons, Yellowstone nor Glacier NP. It is a must see for anyone at least once!
Living rent and mortgage free (well, sometimes): When we work camped, we did not pay a fee for the site. But when we came back home to stay in a RV park for the winter, we definitely paid and saw the rates go up each season. Not sure why as there were no improvements at the park.
Exploring new places: I know there is much more to see, but maybe someday we can take a road trip to see some of them. Who knows?
We will be selling our large setup as it will help us to settle in our hometown once again. I will be a little sad to say goodbye to our setup as it has been a part of our lives for some time, but I do hope whoever buys it will love it and enjoy traveling.
I will be here on this blog, hopefully a little more than I have been lately. I was in school and it took a lot of time away from some of my leisurely activities like writing and sharing what is going on with us. I will be going back to school soon and hopefully be able to get a job from the schooling I achieved. No more work camping which is fine by me!
Our adventures will not stop, but we are pursuing a new dream to live, a dream of creating new adventures, even in our big city hometown, my husband and I together, prayerfully for a long time. I would like to thank you for reading this update in our lives. I appreciate you for staying this long and hopefully our adventures will be a different delight to you!