Half a year on the road has flown by! It’s hard to believe we were leaving the ice and frigid temps of Virginia and heading south just six months ago. While we thought we were well prepared after all the YouTube videos we watched as we remodeled and packed up, we have learned so much more. We’ve learned about ourselves and each other and we have been stretched and are growing as we travel.
By the numbers
Our total state count is now at 18 and miles traveled a total of 12,315 miles. Those are just the miles with the trailer in tow – we’ve covered many more as we drove to cities or parks to explore. Full-time RV living also brought us to Canada for a little more than a week, so our country count for this adventure now stands at two. We’d love to add Mexico to the list, but we’re not sure if or when that will happen (if you’d like to join us on a trip to Mexico, please let us know).
Over the past six months, we’ve also grown our YouTube channel. We now have more than 2,000 people who are subscribed to watch our crazy RV adventures. We’ve put in countless hours and have published 52 videos to the channel. While most of them only get a few hundred views each, we’ve racked up over 150,000 views. We really appreciate the support that everyone has shown for our RV life and love all the comments that come in.
Places we’ve been
For those who don’t know, we left Virginia in early February and headed south to warmer weather. From there, we explored Florida for a while and then started making our way north. For the most part, we stayed close to the coast, but we also swung through Tennessee to visit some friends along the way.
One of our highlights was stopping in Wilmington, NC to visit the filming locations from the TV show Dawson’s Creek. We were disappointed that we didn’t get to see Dawson’s house, but we looked a bit too suspicious driving down a half-mile private road with our truck that had four bikes mounted up top.
In May we made a stop back in Virginia to celebrate Rachel’s hometown Apple Blossom Festival before moving on to Hershey, PA for a few days. The Boston/Cape Cod area was also amazing. We had a chance to catch up with friends while we were there and also went on a Whale Watching cruise.
Cutting back through New York we stopped in Herkimer to mine for Diamonds. But that was just a quick stop on our way to Canada. While RVing in Canada can be a bit expensive, Toronto was a blast and visiting Niagara Falls was one of the most memorable experiences we’ve had so far.
From there, we made our way back to the US, stopping off in Chicago for a few days to see the sights and visit family. The month of July was spent mainly in Minnesota where our family started. It was good to catch up with close friends and visit our townhouse to check in to see how things are going there since we still own it as a rental property.
We’ve now officially made it “out west” and look forward to visiting more National Parks and trying our hand at boondocking for longer stretches. From what we’ve seen so far, full-time RV living in the west in going to be a lot of fun.
So how’s RV living going?
We’re not going to lie, full-time RV living is a challenge. There are days when we ask ourselves why we’re doing this, but fortunately, those days aren’t that common. Our girls have mixed feelings about life on the road and living in the RV. They love it, but our oldest daughter does often ask for her own room and a bigger house. She’s a lot like her mama who likes her space, but they’re both learning to adjust and be happy with what we have in the moment.
The travel trailer has been treating us well, but we had a few issues along the way. We nearly dropped the trailer twice during our first two month on the road, we’ve had to replace another tire already and discovered that the water damage we fixed during the renovation wasn’t fixed as well as we thought it was.
The good news is that none of the issues have been big enough for us to throw in the towel. We’re still committed to full-time RV living for at least another year or so. While what may sound crazy to some of you, it just means that we’ll be having more adventures and visit more friend and family along the way.
A few other RV videos you should watch
As mentioned above, we’ve published a total of 52 videos to our YouTube channel so far. Not all of them are related to RV living, but most of them are. If you don’t have the time to watch them all, here are a few of the highlights that you shouldn’t miss.
The grand tour of our renovated RV
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a renovated travel trailer, you’ll definitely want to watch this video. Rachel and I give you the grand tour of the RV and show you the renovation projects we did and how we’ve managed to organize our tiny home.
Camping At Walmart, is it really that bad?
When living in an RV full-time, you’ll inevitably need to spend the night at a Walmart. Since we’ve had camp at a Walmart more than a half dozen times already, we put together a video to share what the experience is really like.
A month into full-time RV living, we attended the Full-time Family rally in Florida where we got to meet dozens of other families who are living on the road, just like us. Apparently, RV living with kids isn’t as uncommon as you might think.
