He Said (by Mike)

It’s that time of the year! Yes, we’ve been full time for one year now and figured we’d take a moment to reflect on how it’s going. As a numbers guy, I’ll start with some stats about the past year:

15,500 miles driven on the Newmar Essex
16,250 miles driven on the toads (Jeep Wrangler/Grand Cherokee)
6.5 mpg for the RV (not bad given we weigh 56,000 pounds)
51 campgrounds/RV parks stayed at
23 states camped in
27 states visited
Most Western point: Portland, Oregon
Most Eastern point: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Most Southern point: Key West, Florida
Most Northern point: St Mary, Montana
10 National Parks visited (4 new: Biscayne, Dry Tortugas, Congaree, Hot Springs)

Cooper’s BBQ pit in Llano, Texas served up the best BBQ Mike has ever had

Per my fitbit, we walked a good amount in the past 365 days:

3,056,045 steps (8,372 steps/day)
8,778 floors (24 floors/day)
1,481 miles (4 miles/day)

What all those stats mean is that much like the proverbial rolling stone, we don’t gather much moss. Is that a good thing? Setting up and tearing down an RV for travel is a multi-hour affair. Perhaps we should stay a little longer at our favorite campgrounds.

Hellroaring Plateau Beartooth Mountains Montana

Stunning view along the Hellroaring Plateau Trail in the Beartooth Mountains, Montana

Pros:

My favorite aspect of being full-time was exactly what I thought it would be: non-stop exploration of our country. There is never the need to return home somewhere after a great trip. You just drive to the next cool place and do it again.

I recently read the average American spends 93% of their life indoors. Due to our mobile lifestyle our number is significantly lower, and that makes me happy. We’re out hiking, biking, and/or kayaking hours every day, in addition to spending time outside at the campground relaxing. Being able to move your home every few weeks to ensure ideal climatic conditions plays a large role in spending more time outside.

Mike climbs into the entrance of Buffalo Cave in Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho

Cons:

Are there downsides? Of course there are. My biggest disappointment was lack of fast, unlimited internet access. I’ve taken fast internet access for granted over the years, streaming Netflix movies at will for instance. Not anymore. 90% of the time campground wifi is useless, meaning we use Verizon LTE “unlimited” most of the time, which is actually quite limited. Trying to keep up with app updates, OS updates, GPS updates, our blog, etc. is difficult. Streaming movies is out of the question.

My other disappointment is mainly due to antiquated communication processes at large institutions (like healthcare companies, NHTSA, etc.): lack of regular mail service. You’d think in the year 2018 all communication would be digitized, but sadly this is not the case. Weeks pass before we find out we got important mail from our mail service.

We enjoyed the Village of Hogsmeade and the entire Harry Potter section of Universal Studios Orlando

Lessons Learned:

Our goals for the second year of full-timing are not much different from the first, just a little tweaking:

Spend more nights per campground, increasing time spent in an area and better amortizing RV set up/tear down time
Spend more time “boondocking” (staying somewhere with no hookups for free) on public lands, reducing driving time in the toad to get to the places we hike

Glacier National Park, Montana: Along Upper Two Medicine Lake Trail

She Said (by Karla)

Our first year of living full-time in our RV has come to a close and overall, it was a positive experience. There are definitely pros and cons of living in an RV. The things I missed the most about living in a “sticks & bricks” (a house as RV’ers sometimes refer to it) were not surprises. We are fortunate that both of us equally have wanderlust and wanted to go full-timing, as we have met couples where that is not the case. We both have similar interests and willingness to try new things which also makes our lifestyle work.

Pros:

Spending time with my husband– I believe that living with your spouse in the confines of an RV for an extended period of time will magnify the strengths and weaknesses of your relationship. Fortunately I undertook this venture with my best friend with whom I enjoy spending all of my time.
Less time cleaning house and yard work– Definitely less space to keep clean and no yard to deal with.
Visited lots of scenic places– We visited 10 National Parks, numerous National Monuments, and state parks. We spent time in the mountains, the beach, the desert, the plains and on the East coast.
Spent more time outdoors– The enticement of visiting new places keeps us busy.
Trip planning and learning about the places we visit– We both enjoy planning future travels as well as touring and learning about the many places we visit.
New experiences– We attended Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans and enjoyed Cajun & Creole food, I finally made it to the Disney theme parks in Florida, we kayaked in mangrove swamps, and tried to find the best BBQ in Texas Hill Country. We got chased away from a backpacking campsite by bison, explored some new (to us) caves, and toured the Gallatin National Forest on ATV’s.
New Friends– We meet many interesting people on our travels.
Wildlife Watching – I had ample opportunities throughout the year for one of my favorite hobbies, watching and photographing all kinds of wildlife including bears, bison, elk, moose, alligators, tons of birds, coyotes, badgers, foxes, and more.

Karla and some alligators in the Everglades

Cons:

Internet– I will not go further into this topic as I’m sure Mike covered it.
No Bathtub– While we have a very generously sized RV shower, but I miss being able to take a nice long soak in a tub.
Distance between the cat litter box and our bed– Nothing like waking up at 4 am to the smell of cat poop and not being able to fall back asleep without getting up and removing it. Foxy has never been one to thoroughly cover her waste, instead she scratches on the corner of the box and then runs to the other end of the RV to get away from it.
Not a full size kitchen– We are able to cook and bake, but I miss having larger counter space, more than 2 cooktop burners, the ability to have more than one burner on high heat, and having a larger/separate oven.
Doctor access– Primarily I am referring to having ongoing medical issues that might need follow-up in person but aren’t really “Urgent Care”. We were able to access care for urgent needs.
Snow– I missed not having a winter. This was the most surprising to me. We had several snows while in Colorado in April, May, October and November, but it never really felt like winter. I enjoy drinking a hot chai while watching the snow fall.
Need for reservations– Compared to when we started part time RV’ing in 2012, we’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of RV’s on the road. We’ve also discovered the need to plan ahead and make reservations is more important than ever, especially in popular destinations and with a 45′ motorhome.

Jackson Square in New Orleans

The Mission Espada church in San Antonio, part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

Lessons Learned:

Slow it down– We wanted to cover a lot of ground in our first year, so we had many stays that were no longer than a week. While we got to visit a lot of places, we want to slow it down a bit and have scheduled more 2 week stops over then next year while we are still visiting new or less familiar areas such as the Four Corners region, parts of Texas, Minnesota, and Michigan.
We never scheduled too much time in any one place– Usually the inverse was true, there were more things to do/see and we added places to our return to list.
We still don’t like humidity– Self explanatory
RV’s will need repairs– We had warranty work completed at the 6 and 12 months marks. Additionally, we had to replace our inverter and the over the air antenna.
The rest of the world can have difficulty working with full-timers– I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve had to explain my residency, formal mailing address, and temporary mailing address situation throughout the year. Ordering items via internet from places with indeterminate shipping time-frames was challenging since we don’t usually stay places for more than 1-2 weeks. We thank Mike’s parents for receiving and holding onto at least a dozen packages for us in the weeks leading up to our November visit.
We are looking forward to Year #2!

We’ve started Year # 2 with a visit to the Four Corners Region, including Monument Valley

Itineraries

For more information about our travels over the past year, we are including links to our Itineraries which list all of the campground/RV parks, activities, and places we visited. Each Itinerary has links to the articles from throughout the past year.