Howdy Folks!
Based on this post’s title, I’m sure there are some of you that saw this move coming. Then others of you might be wondering why the heck would someone want to live in a small RV full-time? Well folks, I hope to answer some of these questions and go into more depth on what has been happening the past 3 years and why we made this decision. 🙂
It is probably fairly obvious by now that Deanna and I love traveling, adventuring, and exploring. As I mentioned in The Big Transition Part 1 (yes I will get back to part II eventually and this is sort of a part III before a part II haha), that is one of the main reasons Deanna and I get along so well. 🙂 We are nomads by heart and have been on a great big adventure ever since we crossed paths.
(Photo from https://tab.nucamprv.com/)
Ever since we moved to Connecticut over from New York I was thinking it would be fun to have a small tear drop camper so we could go on some longer road trips without the need of hotels. Then I quickly realized Blaze (our greyhound) complicated that a little bit so we might need something a tad bigger.
(Blaze feeling at home in our current travel trailer)
I then started researching and researching online coming across different options from pop-up campers to single axle RVs we could tow behind the Jeep Cherokee we had at the time. However the Jeep only had a 4,000 lb towing capacity so it really was limited on what it could tow.
(Intro from Chris and G Travels’ Channel!)
During all this research I was hopping around on YouTube and stumbled across some cool people (I thought were slightly crazy at the time) living in their RVs full-time. People like Chris & G Travels (they are building an epic skoolie right now btw), Nomadic Fanatic, and many others. I introduced their channels to Deanna and rather than watching cable TV shows each night, we started binge watching a bunch of videos of full-time RVers. At the time we thought it was cool, but still didn’t really see ourselves jumping into something that adventurous.
After having some transmission issues with our Jeep Cherokee, I decided I wanted to get a truck that was reliable and that would have no issues towing a small travel trailer (still thinking single axle at this point in time). Again, still completely focused on just weekend trips and not full-time RVing quite yet. We ended up getting a used Nissan Frontier with low mileage for a really good deal and I simply loved that truck. It was my first true off-road capable vehicle with all the 4×4 capabilities and goodies one could ask for on a truck.
Not too long after we bought the Frontier, we started to really wonder if we would be willing to consider a full-time RV lifestyle. We had a truck with decent towing capacity and I believe we had just recently started watching Drivin’ and Vibin’ (they were newbies themselves at that time). Their YouTube channel made us start thinking hey, we don’t need a huge rig in order to live on the road. Maybe we can make a setup similar to theirs work for us.
About 4 months after we got the truck, Deanna and I tied the knot and had an amazing wedding surrounding by loving family and friends. (We are a bit spoiled by all the love, not going to lie.) Even our wedding had an adventure theme to it as we had pictures of our adventures as the center piece of each table at the reception. Our honeymoon took us to Rocky Mountain National Park and I remember saying, next time we come here we will likely be in our RV (yet to be purchased RV that is).
(Yea, December may not have been an optimal time to buy a RV to be honest)
The thought of full-time RVing must have flourished in our heads quite a bit, because in only 6 months time we had bought our very first RV travel trailer (recently named Barney). The original plan was to actually head out full-time in the summer of 2017. Deanna and I got right to it and started modifying the travel trailer in order to make it full-time compatible for our needs.
As I mentioned in the video in the top of this post, I had already been working remotely for the past 8-9 years at the time, and I had already seen others working IT jobs while on the road. So our first modification to the RV (once it got warm enough) was to take out the couch that was sitting in there and install our RV work station. This would help allow both of us to work remotely and also be able to use the slide as a dining area/add more counter space in the small trailer. You can see all of this in our quick little tour of our RV.
Our next big RV upgrade was adding solar panels to the roof of the RV in order to keep the batteries topped off. We weren’t sure how much boondocking (or dry camping) we would be doing while on the road, but wanted at least a small amount of solar to enable that possibility and extend our battery life. Quite honestly I had no idea what I was doing even after countless hours of researching online and watching others do their own solar installs. I managed to “successfully” install the solar panels and charger though… after a few choice words and many mistakes along the way. You can watch our solar setup in the video we filmed around that. If I did it again, there are a few things I would have done differently, but for now this system works for us.
Although we were making a lot of progress, we were quickly starting to realize there was still a lot to do and not quite enough time to really make our full-time RVing goal that summer after all. It was quite a bummer as we were super excited to get out and adventure, but we just weren’t ready yet logistically. We did get to test out our RV and the system at a few campgrounds including Cozy Hills Campground, White Pines Campground, and Catskill Adventure Resort. After just those three stays we were really falling in love with the lifestyle (despite me still being horrible at backing up the trailer) and were determined to make it happen by 2018.
Now the REAL work began that we had sorely underestimated. Downsizing.
(Some items we could sell, many items we just had to part ways with and donate)
To be fair, Deanna has always been much more a minimalist than myself. Before I met her, I was just a couple years away from buying a house and I had plenty of junk to fill the house with at the time haha. So this process of downsizing I think took a much larger toll on myself than it did on Deanna. I will probably write another post on downsizing in the future because it really is hard to just simplify in a short paragraph. After we initiated a plan to start getting rid of stuff, it has literally been about a year of downsizing to get to where we are today. We just had the first big garage sale this past weekend, but luckily we have already given away or sold a lot of our stuff beforehand.
Besides just downsizing, we decided to take charge and put together a full-time RVing checklist complete with dates/deadlines in order to make sure we organize this as much as possible to make it happen. Although we do still have quite a few things to do in these last couple of months, we have committed ourselves and things are slowly but surely coming together!
We also just recently bought Betty “The Beast” Behemoth! After doing a lot more research on towing capacities, weight restrictions on both the trailer and our Frontier, and just generally thinking the trailer was too much for the Frontier, we decided to get a bigger truck. This was not an easy decision because we had literally just paid off the Frontier (another main goal of this journey/adventure was to be debt free before we started it). Luckily we found another really good deal on a used F250 (Betty) and she happened to also be in great shape! We are excited to see how smooth she tows on our first trial trip here soon!
I definitely know I left out a TON of details covering this entire decision making process, but please do ask any questions you may have about this decision to live full-time in a RV or anything else. 🙂 Once we get past these next couple months getting through the final bits of our checklist, we should have a lot more time to hopefully have some live streams on our YouTube channel or just go into more detail in future videos/posts. We are so exciting to take you all along on this journey wherever it may lead. We have no specific goal, location, or time frame in mind. We are just going to live the adventure and see where it takes us!
If you enjoyed this blog post or the video to go along with it, feel free to share it with your friends. 🙂 You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our channel’s RSS feed via the subscribe button on the sidebar. If you have any questions or comments go ahead and leave them below and we will try our best to get back to you! Thanks for reading/watching!
Also be sure to check out Deanna’s food blog when you get the chance! A lot of awesome and healthy recipes to use there!
Adventure On!
