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Was full-time travel the right choice for us?

Without a doubt, yes! We’re now at the end of our first year of RVing and it’s been the most fulfilling and joyful year of life yet. Each day we get to wake up and live a life that’s true to what’s in our hearts. The freedom we have to flex and bend around challenges or rise to the level of our dreams and see them come true is the kind of life we’ve been longing for. Full-time RVing may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for us!

What’s it like to travel full-time?

It’s a common misconception that full-time travel is like being on vacation permanently. It’s really not like that at all- we think it’s better!

On a vacation, you’re away from home. You don’t have access to the things that bring you stability, comfort, and health. Vacations are often a struggle to prep for and execute. Traveling to the destination is happening outside of a normal sleep schedule. The chore of packing- trying to anticipate what you will and won’t need- can be challenging. There’s pressure to wake up early or stay up late to see/do as much as possible. Relying exclusively on whatever food can be found often wreaks havoc on the digestive system. And if you’re someone who enjoys being active, there’s not always access to the kind of movement your body likes. In the aftermath, the whole thing can throw off our mental and physical health.

Full-time travel in an RV has felt so comfortable and convenient that it’s made those types of vacations sound less attractive! When we’re traveling in the RV, we’re waking up when we want, traveling when we want- as little or as far as we want, and we have access to everything we might need because the whole thing is your suitcase! We get to sit in an oversized, reclining armchair and watching the world go by from a gigantic window.

Once we get to a new place, the experience of being there is never touristy- whether we’re off grid in a small mountain town or parked at an RV resort in the city with full utilities, we’re working and living in each of these places. We go for walks in the local parks. We buy food from the local grocery stores to bring home and cook meals. We buy pet food at the local pet supply store. We clean our car at the neighborhood wash. Our “daily grind” is uniquely flavored week over week and in our free time, we get to seek expereinces that can only be found in that place. Each day is truly a previously un-lived experience and for us, that’s the magic. It slows time, facilitates living in the present, and fills our life with intentionally.

Full-time travel has forever changed our standard of living and the experience of what it is to be alive. We can’t see ourselves returning to the confinement of living our whole life in one place again. Perhaps we just have a higher propensity for adventure than the average person. Or maybe we’ve discovered something not well known. But we’re so glad we found the courage to try something new!

How did we choose the right RV?

Neither of us had any experience with RVs! But part of the intentionality we practiced during those transitional years was finding online resources to learn about RVing. There’s an overwhelming amount of digital content that focuses on glamorizing RVing and selling an aesthetic, but it didn’t take long before we found helpful resources with real information.

No amount of reading or initial assessment will translate fully into reality, but it did help guide us until we could gather real world experience. What we learned was there’s an infinite number of ways to RV! You can travel in a large RV with residential amenities and large square footage or you can enjoy the simplicity of a smaller RV. You can camp off-grid and utilize resource conservation or park in RV resorts to enjoy unlimited resources. You can travel to new destinations every week or month or season or stay parked in the same spot for half a year or more.

A good starting place for us was visualizing both what we wanted life to look like and what we needed life to look like. We were primarily interested in off-grid camping in the wilds, but starting out with zero RV experience made that something to work towards rather than something to jump right into. We planned to follow a slow and steady learning curve by sticking to parks and campgrounds while learning how to use the RV. We knew we wanted to visit friends and family so having the option to park in driveways was a must. And we definitely wanted to camp in National Parks, many of which have size restrictions for RV length. The most important consideration of all for us? Our pets! Their quality of life and travel safety was a priority. With that in mind, we had a direction to head in for RV selection.

We looked for RVs that were previously owned, but gently used so we wouldn’t invest too heavily in something we didn’t know much about yet. Once we found one that was large enough to accommodate our life while still being small enough to fit almost anywhere, we committed to the adventure and settled on a 30′ Class A Motorhome.

How did we make the transition?

After settling on the idea of living nomadically, we started thinking about how we were going to unwind from where we were. For our situation that looked like finding new jobs that didn’t tie us to one geographical location, identifying our consumer habits that kept us trapped in our current lifestyle, and replacing those habits with intentional choices that provide support to realistically sustain a debt consolidation strategy. But honestly, the key change was shifting our priorities to place ourselves above work. Giving our personal life the best of our energy instead of the leftovers after and between work was a game changer.

It took us about two years of restructuring to untether from a conventional lifestyle. The process required a lot of mindfulness. We regularly reminded each other of what it was all for by doing something each day- no matter how small- to push us closer to our goal. During that time, the sacrifices we made and obstacles we overcame felt incredibly lighter than the ones from previous years because we were truly excited about what was at the other end!

How did we know we wanted to do this?

The short answer is that we were looking for a way to reclaim our time and energy and find a true sense of autonomy. We wanted to own our choices and experiences instead of feeling trapped beneath some perceived sense of entitlement. Living nomadically offers us all of that. But the long answer? It’s a little bit deeper than that.

Before we transitioned to this lifestyle, we lived much like everyone else. We invested nearly two decades into building a conventional life together. Despite all that we achieved, day after day, year after year, we were growing increasingly more stressed, less inspired, and less mentally and physically well. Despite all our hard work and sacrifice to “tick boxes”, we weren’t finding happiness or health. It was only when we allowed ourselves to be honest that we realized nothing about our hard work honored our individual beings. Focusing on work, using weekends to recharge, and scraping up the leftovers to afford moments of joy wasn’t how we wanted to spend our life. From there, it was easy to see that the conventional lifestyle we bought into was never going to lead us to fulfillment.

The clarity there was empowering and we became inspired by the idea of living “off-script”. We spent a good year prioritizing the exploration of what brings us joy and what weighs us down. In fact we started each day with it, ensuring we were giving this idea our best energy instead of whatever was left the end of a day. Through that intentionality and open communication, it was made clear that the flexibility and adventure of a nomadic lifestyle would serve us better than a conventional life ever could.