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Pros & Cons For Full-Time RV Travel Round 3

Jonathan Longnecker / November 08, 2015

Once upon a time, Ashley and I were furiously discussing how in the world we might turn this dream of traveling full-time into a reality. Not like, angrily discussing. Maybe furiously wasn't the best description. Anyway.

We made lots of lists, did tons of research and even wrote our own Pros/Cons list. You can check out hers here or mine here.

We did, in fact, make that plunge - and hit the road 6 months ago to travel full-time. We thought it would be fun to re-visit all our pros and cons and see how things shook out. Ready? Here we go.

PRO - NO HOUSE PAYMENT - We actually decided to sell our house instead of renting it, so we don't even have a mortgage anymore. However, we found that staying in decent campgrounds with full hookups cost just about as much as our mortgage - ouch! Not only that, but there's a ton of stuff to buy when you  transition to a different lifestyle. We're just now to the point where we're not spending large amounts of money each month on that. We've been working through this, finding cheaper ways to camp and learning a lot. Ask me again in 6 months if it's cheaper. The answer should be a more definite yes.

PRO - SPEND LESS TIME CLEANING - There is definitely cleaning more often, but we can get the whole place spotless in like an hour if we work together. This has definitely opened up more time for us to spend together. Like tons more time.

PRO - MORE FAMILY TIME - We are definitely spending more time together, but it's not quite as much as I thought. We usually move on the weekends since I work during the week, so that extra time we spent cleaning on the weekends gets spent tearing down, driving and setting back up. This is a long-game kind of goal, though - and I can see us adjusting things in the future as we learn more.

PRO - CREATING WITH THE KIDS - Haven't done this as much as we should have. Partially because of the space and flat surfaces, and partially because we've had so much mental overhead during the transition. Now that we're mostly through said transistion I can only chalk it up to be being lazy. Time to make changes!

PRO - THE OUTDOORS - YES! There has been so much more hiking, biking, exploring and enjoying nature. I'm craving it even more, though. We've been talking a lot lately about what it would take to start boondocking and really be in nature all the time. Right now, most of the campgrounds we stay at are like RV parks - and they're often 30+ minutes from any nature adventures. I hope we can change that soon, but it'll take some more equipment like solar panels and a generator. But in general - yeah we are loving the outdoors.

PRO - MEETING NEW PEOPLE - Ok, I'll admit it. We've met some really awesome people. And I enjoyed hanging out with them. Totally outside my comfort zone, but that's a good thing. Here's to hoping I can get better at making even more new friends.

PRO - FURNITURE MOVING - We really haven't rearranged that much! And I'm ok with that. Ashley may or may not be, though.

PRO - DEBT FREE - Since we sold the house and used the money to pay off the truck and RV, yes we did end up debt free! Personally I quickly moved into the "we need a huge savings account in case anything goes wrong" mode, though and probably didn't spend the proper amount of time celebrating. But yeah - it's pretty awesome!

CON - LAUNDRY - We totally called this one. The laundry is probably our biggest inconvenience. You never know how clean the facilities are or how much it'll cost. Or even how far away. Sometimes it's in the campground, but they're so gross you end up driving 30 minutes to do a couple of loads. Thankfully we only need to go about once a week.

CON - CLEAN SHOWERS - Our fears here were also confirmed. Campground showers are pretty much gross. Thankfully we have a nice tiny shower in our RV so we just use that. The biggest downside here is that we can't take long hot showers. Our tank fills up pretty quick. So we either need to be somewhere with a sewer hookup (or now that we have a honey wagon, just somewhere with a dump station close by).

CON - FOOD & STORAGE - As far as storage goes, we actually have plenty of room. Our outdoor fridge holds anything that won't fit in the main one - and our RV came with a nice full size pantry. What has been really hard is just being near a good grocery store. More often than not, we're 30 minutes from a Walmart, and don't even start talking about anything organic or real. Our healthy eating has really taken a hit these first six months, and we're just now working on a plan to get that back on track. Hint: we're going to have to get creative.

CON - MY WORK - We were able to get an RV with a perfect little space for a stand up desk so all those fears have been moot. Yeah, sometimes the kids noise level gets a little crazy, but I can always go work somewhere else if I really needed to.

CON - THE MAIL - We ended up using my parents house as our address. I bought them a Doxie scanner, shared a Dropbox folder with them and they just upload scans of our stuff as it comes in. They also take our business checks to the bank for us. They're pretty awesome!

CON - HOUSE RENTAL - The more we thought about this, the mental overhead of dealing with renting a house while living on the road wasn't worth the hassle. We just sold it (in 12 days no less!)

CON - WAY LESS STUFF - We did end up getting a small storage unit to combat my sentimentality, but I have really fallen in love with having less. It's amazing how freeing it is to not have to keep up with so much stuff. I'm ready to get rid of even more. Let's do it!

CON - CHIROPRACTOR - We still miss this, but it really encourages us to stay healthy, limber and strong so that we don't get sidelined by a bad night's sleep or a weird twist while hiking. I may or may not have asked our Chirpractor for a few stretching techniques before we left, too.

CON - CHURCH - We're still struggling with this, and don't have an answer yet. We travel most weekends, and leaving our kids at a strange children's church isn't something we feel comfortable doing. While we still do simple church by ourselves, it's a short term solution until we figure things out.

So all in all, a few of our worries have been true, but most aren't that big a deal. Whatever tradeoff there is in those inconveniences are totally offset by the freedom, adventures and time we get to spend with our kids. 6 Months in, and we're just getting started! 

Part One: The Simplified Kitchen - RV Style

Ashley Longnecker / November 06, 2015

I've been thinking about my kitchen, a lot. I cook everyday (nearly) and before we moved in to our RV, I was an avid baker. While I still love to bake, my kitchen has dramatically shrunk in size, resulting in less space to really bake like I used to.

Crazy Mountain Road in Pikeville, TN

Ashley Longnecker / November 05, 2015

So, when you make a reservation at a new campground and they send you a verification email, you should probably read it. They may have directions that differ from your GPS and they may save you from having to replace your transmission in your truck...again.

It was a beautiful drive from Knoxville to Pikeville. We thought we were going to be staying to closer to Chattanooga but, in order to keep cost down, we decided to stay out of the major city and head to Pikeville. 

When we get to this back road and Jonathan starts up this hill and he begins questioning if this is the right way. I had been asleep for a bit so I wasn't paying attention to where we were. He's telling me to look and see if this is where we need to be, I snapped back with, "of course it is...look at the GPS" and he's all like..."I don't think this is going to work!"

We came upon 5 tight switchbacks...while climbing up a mountain...hauling our house. We started panicking. This is how transmissions die! CRAP!! Luckily Jon noticed that the tranny was running hot so after one of the switchbacks there was a place big enough on the side of the road (on the mountain) that we could pull over and let it cool down. I got out to make sure our trailer brakes were ok and woah, just look at the view. 

The Virginia Creeper Trail and Abingdon, VA

Ashley Longnecker / October 27, 2015

We made it to Abingdon, VA and found this really cute little city park called Sugar Hollow Park and Campground. It is so cute and for $16/night we just couldn't pass it up. We got the last RV site due to the Rhythm and Roots Festival that weekend. 

Hard Goodbye in K-town!

Ashley Longnecker / October 27, 2015

We got to Knoxville a day early. After our 17 mile ride in Abingdon we decided to head on to K-town so that Jon could have a full day of work Tuesday. Jon’s brother and sister knew that we were coming early but his parents had no idea. I planned a family cookout at the campground and we were able to get Dan and Cheryll there without them knowing what was going on...until they pulled into the campground!

We had a nice dinner and got to catch up with family that night. It was good to see everyone and we were able to tell Dan and Cheryll that we were actually staying in K-town for a whole month! 

By the way, we choose to stay at Volunteer Park Family Campground due to thier cheap monthly rate.

Now, why a whole month? Good question. We had a lot of things to do!

Lets start with decluttering our trailer. Turns out, we didn’t need as many things as we thought. I didn’t think we loaded our new house on wheels with anything extra but...turns out you don’t really know what you need until you are on the road. We had several empty drawers/cabinets after a couple runs to storage and Goodwill. It was a good feeling for awhile. They got filled with other things that will be more useful on the road.

We traded out our huge zero gravity chairs for bag style chairs in order to free up some space in the basement. I was able to get rid of a few more things in the basement so that we could store our bike trailer in there. 

We had a goal to get rid of the bike rack on the back of the RV since it’s not supposed to be back there anyway. In order to take the rack off of the back, we needed to get Jett a bigger bike with 20” tires so that we could rack his bike on top of the truck with ours and Adali’s bike. We also sold Ada’s Strider bike since she picked up riding two wheels in no time. Now her bike can be stored in the basement as well instead of the back of the RV. For now, the bike rack is in our storage unit until we figure out if we will need it again or not.

My parents! My parents were able to come down from Indiana and brought my sister and her 3 boys too! It was SO great to see them. Even though it rained the whole time they were here, the kids were still able to play outside since our neighbor had left and his lot has a large cover over the lot. My nephews brought their skateboards and showed off some of their new tricks. They also brought their guitars and it was so nice for Jonathan to have people to jam with. Can you believe that we had 12 people in our house at one time and no one got angry?!?! It was so awesome to have a house full of people I love. I am so thankful that they were all able to get down here for a weekend. 

One more thing that we wanted to accomplish is getting our kids Passports. We opted for the books on the off chance that we will get the opportunity to fly to another country. We know that we will be visiting Mexico and Canada in the next year, but that will be via land, not air. We hope that we will be able to have the Passports in hand by December.

Jon had a conference for mid October and I was lucky enough to get to go and tag along. We were in San Antonio from Wednesday until Sunday. Yes, this is all our luggage :) We have learned how to pack light!