We’ve been trying to catch up on posts from our adventures in Europe at the end of last year, but I thought I would fast forward to present day for a minute. We flew home for Christmas, left New Year’s Day for Panama and Colombia for a month, and then flew back home to Florida to embark on a new adventure.
If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram (the best place to follow us for real-time updates), then you might have seen this post:
When we realized we’ve seen more countries than states, we knew it was time to explore more of our own country. We purchased a brand new Grand Design Imagine travel trailer and plan to spend the next year (at least) exploring the USA, and (hopefully) eventually Canada and Mexico as well.
Why We Decided to Convert to Full Time RV Living
As we’ve often said in the past, traveling full-time can be really exhausting. We always have this struggle where we get really sick of airports, public transport, packing and unpacking suitcases and figuring out how to pack as lightly as possible (which we are terrible at). When visiting new cities or countries, there is always a learning curve when it comes to navigating the city, language, currency, etc. That’s part of what makes it exciting, but its also part of the stress of traveling. We tend to burn ourselves out after a while and think we want to just sit still. But after just a few weeks of sitting still, our feet get itchy again…
#firstworldprobs
I know.
We started following a lot of YouTubers living the full-time RV life and it started to sound better and better.
Having our own means of transportation
While traveling on planes, trains and buses can be exciting and a great experience when visiting new cities or countries, it can often be limiting as well. We always miss being able to hop in the car and go where we want, when we want. When we can, we always prefer to rent a car and have the ability to explore on our own time (such as our time in the Balkans, New Zealand, and several summers in Europe).
Not packing and unpacking suitcases
Some people are excellent at packing, but we have never been those people. We also hate living out of a suitcase. I love to be able to neatly put my clothes in a closet or dresser, but this hardly ever happens when we are moving around frequently.
Not as limiting on what we can bring with us
This is a big one for me. Living out of a suitcase really limits your wardrobe options. Charlie claims he doesn’t care about this, but you should see him trying to pack 20+ shirts in his bag 😉 We often don’t know where we’re going to be so its hard to pack for the season. For example, we were in Mexico and Thailand in the summer and early fall of 2017, wearing shorts and flip flops everyday. When we left for Europe in November and arrived in snow, we had to pretty much buy a new wardrobe as we didn’t even have a jacket. Many people fear the limited storage when moving from their house to an RV. But for us, moving from a suitcase to an RV is like a dream. Storage everywhere! In fact, we pretty much have everything we own on the road with us which is a great feeling.
The flexibility of moving when and where we want
Technically, we are still living the nomad life and will probably be moving around more than usual this year, but having the flexibility to slow down when we want, follow the good weather, or pick up and leave when we aren’t enjoying a place was the most appealing factor.
Sure, RV life is going to present it’s own challenges. We are quickly learning about pulling a 30 ft travel trailer down the road, backing it in, hitching and unhitching, conserving water, dumping tanks and a whole host of other things that going along with owning an RV. And its definitely a lot of work as well. But once we start to master some of these skills, I know it will get a lot easier. In fact, it already has!
Why We Chose a Towable Trailer Vs Motorhome
This was always a big debate when deciding what kind of home on wheels we wanted to tour the US in. The options are pretty overwhelming. We went back and forth on Class C’s and a travel trailer for a long time. We knew a Class A would be out of our budget. We even considered getting an old Air Stream and giving it a makeover (something I would still love to do someday).
We went to Lazy Days in Tampa, which apparently has the largest selection of RV’s in the nation, and spent all day in and out of RV’s, taking videos and pictures and making notes of what we liked and didn’t like. We left there with the decision that we definitely preferred the travel trailer over the Class C for our situation. I say “our situation” because this is definitely a personal choice, and the kind of RV that is best for you depends on what kind of traveling you will be doing (full-time vs weekend trips, just traveling, or working as well?). We knew we would be living in it full-time, and we would be spending a lot of time in it during the day as we will still be working on the road. We wanted to make sure we had a comfortable work space and a nice, big kitchen as our focus this year is to get healthy. The travel trailers felt more like a mini apartment and a lot more homey.
On the flip side, the travel trailers are definitely a lot more involved. Like I previously mentioned, pulling a 30ft rig, hitching and unhitching, setting up and leveling, backing into tight spots, etc is a lot of work. Its not something you want to be doing every day, or even every other day. But since we will be working on the road, we need to stay in places longer. If we were going to be moving around a lot, the Class C would have definitely been our choice. Already, we find ourselves envious when we are trying to unload, and a Class C whips in next to us, pushes a few buttons, and is hanging out in their zero-gravity chairs within minutes of arriving.
Its definitely a trade-off. And we think down the road we may even switch to a Class C. We could get places a lot easier and a lot faster for sure. But I will say this, once we unload and are settled in, it really does feel like home. We haven’t felt cramped at all, the bathroom is spacious, the bed is cozy, and the kitchen is really amazing. It would be hard to give up now that I’m used to it.
Our Plans for the Year
As I mentioned before, this is all a learning process. This is our first RV after all, and Charlie’s first time towing anything really. He had a lot of practice in the school parking lot when we first purchased it last month 😉 We’ve been doing short, shake down trips around Florida to work out the kinks and really figure out what we’re doing. Its been great practice and we are already feeling a lot better about it and getting faster at loading and unloading.
It’s also been great to explore more of our home state, as its crazy how much we haven’t seen here, and the weather right now has been perfect in Florida. We spent a few nights in Cedar Key, a quaint island community not far from home that we hadn’t been in years. We followed up with a few days at the Devil’s Den in Williston, FL, which draws people from all over. Its only an hour from our house and we had never been!
We are now doing a loop of South Florida, exploring beaches on the east and west coast, as well as the Everglades National Park and Florida Keys.
In just a few weeks, we will be ready to hit the road for the long run. We are still working out a route, but we know we want to explore the Pacific Northwest this summer, possibly into Canada as well. Of course we will be back in Colorado at some point because we just couldn’t stay away from there. But really, we just want to see it all. And there is so much to see. So we aren’t making much of a plan. We don’t want to rush through any of it. We are going to just take it week by week.
We have a tour of our Grand Design coming soon and why we picked the one we did. Here’s the latest video on our trip down south!
If you have any recommendations on your favorite “must-see” spots in the US, please send them our way!! I’m keeping a list of places we want to visit for each state and would love to have some off-the-beaten-path type places to see (not just the national parks).
We are Brittany and Charlie - we traded the 9 to 5 and the so-called "American dream" to live our own dream and see the world. We sold all of our belongings and left the US in August 2013. For 5 years, we lived primarily in Thailand and built our online business and location independent lifestyle while we traveled to over 30 countries. We’ve had house sitting gigs on 3 different continents and we’ve even appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters International.
Have fun you guys! Nice write up. 🙂 Hopefully, we cross paths in the US soon. It’s looking more and more like Austin will be our home in the short future.
Thanks, Rob! And Austin?! How exciting! We’ve still never been but we’re definitely going to be checking it out. Maybe by the time we make it, you can show us around 😉 When are you guys looking to move?
Get new posts with travel and budget tips delivered straight to your inbox!
Your information will never be shared or sold to a 3rd party.
Loading Comments...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
