On our way to South Carolina, we needed to overnight in Georgia so I found a ‘campground’ via PassPort America. By ‘campground’ I really mean it was a couple’s house and they turned their front yard into a place that 7 RVs could stay at. We were thankful that they came out and sprayed the gigantic ant hills that surrounded the electric box. While it was just a place for us to spend the night, I am so thankful that we didn’t have an ant problem while we were there. The couple was really nice, though. It was Halloween and she brought our kids some candy since they didn’t get to go trick-or-treating, which is something we never do anyway.
We made it to The Oaks at Point South RV Park which is a park in the Thousand Trails system. This makes our 3rd time staying at a TT Park and we have yet to be impressed with any of them. It’s making our decision to NOT buy the full membership very easy. We’d much rather spend the money getting solar and equipment so we can just boondock wherever we want!
The one thing I can say good about Thousand Trails is we have always had very pleasant interactions with all the workers there. Not once have we had any issues with the employees. If TT would just put some money into their parks I think they’d have a great system that a lot more people would buy into. But the run down buildings, huge pot hole roads and lack of irrigation in the parks make for a not so pleasant experience.
This park in particular was a hug muddy mess. It had rained many days before we got there but also the first week we were there it rained the majority of the time. Spaces were blocked off due to standing water, if you walked outside you were immediately attacked by tons of mosquitos and it was a fairly miserable first week there. We stayed 13 nights and by the second week the sun was drying up some of the park but the mosquitos were so bad we didn’t spend a whole lot of time outside unless we drove to a nearby town.
We were able to meet up with some more of Jonathan's friends for lunch one day. Why is it we can NEVER remember to take pictures when we meet up with people?? Geeze O' Pete! I've got to do better about that!
While in the low country, of course we had to visit the Sheldon Church Ruins.
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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!
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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.
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Ashley Longnecker / November 24, 2015
Jonathan Longnecker / November 08, 2015
We’re Jonathan & Ashley Longnecker. We love weird ideas, great food, travel, drawing, music, homeschool, tattoos, dreads, woodworking, design and our 4 amazing kids.