Working the dream life for 17+ years.
Living the dream full-time RVing nomadic lifestyle working as location independent entrepreneurs.
There is one good thing about visiting Los Angeles.
Aside from seeing La Familia, that is. OK two things … Oh, and the food. I guess that makes three things.
Anyway, access to the right tools makes working on your rig easy. And that can help you save a lot of money.
And believe me, El Jefe has all the right tools … and the shop, and the brain, which I picked to learn how to to pack the wheel bearings on our fifth wheel trailer.
When you’re camped out in the middle of a wild desolate landscape, without a cell signal and a silence so deafening that its roar squeezes your brain like a vise, it’s tempting to believe that you’ve fallen off the radar. You look around for miles and see nothing but desert landscape, imagining that there are no rules, laws or entities that have power over you.
But the truth is, you can’t escape. Ever. Because it doesn’t matter if you hightail it to Patagonia, or just hide out in the woods; the Man will find you.
In our case, the Man was the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Houston Police Department.
While boondocking at Three Rivers Campground at the foot of Sierra Blanca near Tularosa, NM, Jim confirms his love for the mountains. Videos include the road to and the view of camp site.
Well, our Workamping savings are a thing of the past, and February gave us a current reality check of what our expenses look like when we just play tourist and go out looking for all of the cool music, food and entertainment we want to experience.
Our biggest expense last month: fuel. We went over our budgeted amount for the first time ever. This is mostly because we went 1600 miles out of our way (round trip) for a quick trip back to California to visit my family. More on our L.A. experience later.
Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us feuding
Like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
And blue eyes cryin’ in the rain, out in Luckenbach Texas
Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain …
I’m not one to join another RV club for the sake of getting a sticker to put on my rig. But I sure wish we had joined Passport America months ago!
We had seen the Passport America club signs at campgrounds but didn’t think twice about it until recently.
A fellow fulltimer explained how much we could save, so we went for it.
For our visit to New Orleans, we boondocked on the BioLiberty compound down on Bayou Liberty in Slidell, Louisiana.
This is where our old Humboldt friend Gordon Soderberg now calls home.
Living full-time in his RV, he has established quite an impressive green enterprise with the help of a local dentist who owns the property.
As I previously mentioned, artists are flocking to New Orleans. My new artist friend, Skinny Chef (aka Mary Kate), likened the city to a blank slate, a place where great art is rising from the ashes of Katrina. We met Skinny Chef and her partner Flux Rostrum, down on the Bio Liberty compound in Slidell. They are moving to NOLA, to further her art, and expand Flux’s mobile broadcasting studio’s capabilities.
Younger fulltimers are workamping in parks across America while seeing the country in their RV
So this is paradise, eh? Well, if your idea of paradise is parked in a crammed, dumpy RV “resort” for a whopping $40 a night, where you are so close to the next RV that you can’t roll out your awning, where you have snotty French Canadian neighbors that refuse to say hello or make eye contact, then Paradise RV Resort in Fort Lauderdale is for you!
What we learned as Workampers while living on the oranic farm at White Rabbit Acres, Vero Beach, Florida.
When our freshwater fill spout started coughing up water when we filled the tank, there was no need to call a doctor. I knew I could handle this one. But I did wonder why it started happening all of the sudden.
While filling up our freshwater tank a few times, we noticed water backing up and burping out of the fill hose. Upon closer inspection – which any good RVer should always undertake in circumstances like this – I noticed the freshwater tank expanding with air whenever this happened.
Out of everything we have in storage, one of the biggest things I miss is our home gym. We had a lot of workout equipment, which actually got used for workouts and not as clothes hangers. We used to work out at least four mornings a week, running and lifting weights. So when we hit the road and all that went away, it was hard for me to observe any hard-earned muscle tone I had turn soft and pudgy. Now, even though we alternate between running and bicycling, without the gym equipment, gravity takes its toll, fast.
What not to do if your RV tow vehicle gets stuck in mud and sand.
An interesting debate came up while troubleshooting and fixing our RV slide out leak.
El Jefe suggested that whenever dry-camping, we should turn off our water pump at night and when we leave the rig unattended for a long time. I didn’t like the idea of doing this because the water heater needs to remain pressurized or the element could burn out.