Some Thoughts on Full-Timing - Living on the Road
This is the last in my series on Some Thoughts on Full-Timing. If you've missed any of the previous ones, you can catch up here: https://www.braysaway.com/
Our experience has been awesome! We are getting around to as many National Parks as possible and plan trips to all the major sections of the country. We generally go north in the summer and south in the winter running from excessive heat and cold. While we have a 4-seasons trailer with heat and some insulation, RVs can be drafty and chilly in the severe cold which is about 35 degrees or so for us!
We haven’t had any issue finding food, clothing or parts for the RV on the road. My wife worried a bit when we were traveling "out in the boonies" but we’re usually close enough to a town that there’s always a small grocery store or even a Walmart nearby. We’ve not really had any issues keeping stocked up. When we plan to get a bit further out of civilization we just stock up on essentials and are usually back in “civilization” within a week.
One thing that Kim and I are trying to do better is “just wing” it. We started out planning every detail of our 2-month trips before hitting the road. That means we know every campsite we will stay at and have reservations before we start. It’s comforting to know you have a place to stay but it also leaves us no flexibility to stay longer or stop somewhere interesting at some pop-up location.
We know a lot of campers who don’t plan at all and just decide halfway through a travel day where they’d like to stay and start calling around for a site. Others just start looking for a boondock site. Now that we have enough power for a full night, we are more comfortable with that style but haven’t really fully jumped on board yet. We are still in the mode of seeing as many big things as possible, so making reservations to be sure we can stay nearby seems prudent to us. There will come a time when we are more interested in slowing down and staying in one location longer than a couple of days or just kind of see what’s around and stay as long as we like.
One thing we have learned is that there are a lot of snow birds who flock south for the winters and they fill up a lot of the campsites in the south at least in popular places like along the coast. It can be hard to find decent accommodations in Florida for instance. A lot of resorts want long term campers for 3-months or more and others that are just running up their prices to ridiculous levels.
Of course, campgrounds near popular National Parks are pricey as well. As they say, “location, location, location!” When we do plan our trip in advance, we try to do so 6 months or more in advance and have never had much trouble finding good campsites near our destination. Even with that advance planning we almost never get accommodations in a national park. We have yet to crack that code but we keep trying!
One other issue I've covered in an earlier article but needs reiterating here is that our attitude has changed from "we are on vacation" to "we live here for a while". We don't expect to run all day to see everything and spend a ton of money doing everything or buying a lot of stuff. Sometimes we just go see the sights driving around for a few hours and head back. Life on the road is a different mentality!
I think the best part though is that if we tire of a location we can move and if there’s something we’d like to see, we plan a trip to go see it! It’s very freeing! When I was a kid, I never thought I’d get a chance to see so much of the country but now looking back, it’s been amazing and there’s still tons more to see! Nearly every person we meet has a favorite location they pass along and we add them all to a “hit list” and try to work them in. It really is a grand adventure!
