Working the dream life for 17+ years.
Living the dream full-time RVing nomadic lifestyle working as location independent entrepreneurs.
When you live somewhere long enough you develop a circle of friends and a sense of community.
The same can be said for fulltime RVing, at least among the cool online RVers.
Recently we’ve hooked up with various road trip bloggers who we’ve grown to know via the internet.
After getting to know these folks through their travel blogs, twitter tweets, and forums, it’s been great to put some faces to the names.
Jim and Rene complete first circle of coast to coast fulltime rving sabbatical adventure roadtrip.
Take a RV road trip and slow down enough to meet great people and learn more about strangers from other parts of the world.
If you’re going to spend just a couple thousand dollars – or the rest of your life – in a travel trailer, do yourself a favor and invest the extra money on a decent electronic brake controller. You might just save yourself from a complete brake system overhaul.
We discovered the hard way that a good digital controller can make all the difference in the world, compared to the cheap pendulum based controllers most RV dealers will install upon purchase of a trailer and hitch. Why they don’t try to upsell unsuspecting fulltimers – like they do with the special toilet paper, levels, wheel chocks, fridge fans and all the other “necessities” – is simply beyond me. But buyer beware, a good brake controller is well worth the money!
After we replaced the brakes on our truck, and discovered we had cooked them, I adjusted our trailer brakes tighter thinking they might be worn out. The opposite was true … we hadn’t been using them!
Back in the day when we lived the conventional life, I had some pretty conventional hobbies. Sewing, baking, scrapbooking, you name it.
Out of all the stuff we’ve put in storage, about the only things I miss are ny scrapbooking and stamp stuff, my gardening tools, and my cookware, like my bread machine.
I wish our RV was bigger so I could’ve brought some of these things along. Even if I could, where would I draw the line? You bring one stamp, you bring ’em all!
To satisfy my urge creative urges, I’ve managed to find ways to do some of these things in our RV.
Sixteen months into our road trip journey, we feel comfortable making some conclusions about our future.
With this in mind, our travels are taking on more of a sense of urgency these days.
We’ve been wandering around the Northwest, taking serious looks at places we’ve been curious about. Based on what I’ve heard about Missoula, Montana, it always sounded like a great fit for us, and consistently makes “Best Small Towns” lists. Recently, we visited to learn more for ourselves.
We stayed at this RV park just outside of town. A great park, with a great name; Jim’s parents were also “Jim and Mary.” The days were getting cold, so we only spent a few days there, looking around, talking to economic development people, and getting a feel for the area. We were so busy I hardly took any photos. Here’s what we learned.
Report on cell phone service and satellite internet connectivity at Madison Campground in Yellowstone National Park.
Jim raves about his manly Stanley classic bottle Thermos and refers to lyrics for the thermos song sung by Steve Martin in The Jerk … I’m picking out a Thermos for you …
OK. Life must go on I suppose, as lonely as it is without Jerry …
But enough about my hay stories. By now, I’m sure you’re as tired of the hayin’ as I was when we finished. How ’bout some fishing?
This isn’t exactly timely anymore, but consider it my summer fishing report for Lake City, Colorado – from the Vickers Ranch fish ponds, to their upper ranch mountain lakes, to the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.
A fun time was had. No gear was broken. And a few fish were caught. But not too many.
How we found the courage to say goodbye to our 10 year old canine cancer hero, Jerry, on our RV road trip.
Fulltime RVers say goodbye to their three legged best friend, 10 year old Jerry G. Dawg.
While sitting in the Dodge dealer today in Jackson, WY, as they did over $2k in repair work on our truck brakes, I realized that I’ve finally discovered a couple of real downsides to living the fulltime RVer lifestyle.
Fulltimer Downside #1: when you pull into a town with out-of-state plates, and tell the local auto shop that you’re having vehicle trouble, who do you trust? You gotta wonder; Is that service guy really drooling? Are those actual dollar signs in his eyes?
From Florida to Wyoming, three different shops have looked at our truck, to find out the cause of a loud, chirping sound coming from the wheels. One wanted to charge us $700 for what they claim was the real problem (we said “no way.”). We paid another shop $75 to determine we had dirty brakes.
But the sound keeps getting louder, and we have some steep mountain passes to tackle on the way to the Pacific Coast. So today, we took it to a third shop.
The problem, Shop #3 said, is that our entire brake system is blown to hell. We are left wondering: why didn’t the other shops see this? The service guy said that’s because they didn’t tear the break system apart to investigate. We have to go on faith that he’s not a scheister. Jim saw our parts lying on the floor, next to good ones from another truck, and verified that ours looked blown. The caliper seals were all indeed shot. And the rotors had a deep blue tinge to them – discoloration indicating they had been cooked pretty hard.
So what would you do, dear reader? Take your vehicle to another no-name shop in town, and pay another $60 estimate fee? Or run away, hoping the dealer was lying while praying for the best on those seven percent downhill grades?
We were recently asked to review the new Library of America book, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Edited by Bill McKibben, this anthology covers environmental writing from Walden Pond to global warming.
It sounds like a great read, and we’re honored to review it. But that might not be very soon since we’re on the road again. We’ll have the book forwarded as soon as we have a steady address for a while, or we’ll pick it up at Thanksgiving.
Until then, check out this overview from the publisher and see what major publications have to say about American Earth …
The Vickers hay Chronicles features The funny short film Hay Country! with Larry Vickers mowing the hay field and workamper Jim helping Paul get the John Deere out of the mud. Part two introduces the fifth generation of Lake City ranchers and workamper Boll Weevil. In part three, meet old Perk Vickers and find out how life on the ranch used to be.
What does a gay horse eat? Haaaay-aaaay!!!
You probably gotta hear that one to get it. Or have gay friends. But the point is, ya gotta have a good sense of humor when it comes to hayin’ because things can go wrong which may ruin your day, or entire season. And when you’re a hayin’ there are an awful lot of things that can go wrong.
We actually got all the hay in the Vickers Ranch barn a few weeks ago now. But with so much that happened to halt the hayin’ this year, its amazing we got it in at all. In fact, according to the Vickers we still finished earlier – and with more hay – than any ever before.
Collecting and stacking hay is hard work, but first it must be baled. Before that it has to be raked into windrows. But to do that it must first be mowed.
All of the above depends upon the weather. Oh, and the equipment working properly. And nobody getting hurt.
Luckily no one got hurt, which is amazing in itself. But apparently, the weather was on our side this year. Holding out just long enough for us to deal with each of the myriad mishaps…