Hello RV Full Time

After $2,000, poor Orbit was recovering from surgery while I was like, Did I just make a very bad decision?

Ultimately, that did not work out, but it planted a seed in my brain about what was possible. I could travel and be anywhere in order to have more opportunities for us to learn, train, perform, and compete?! That might have been a light-bulb moment for me, where I visualized how we could live full time in an RV and play frisbee always.

Why not? I work remotely, my dog has been highly trained in various settings, and I love this idea . . . but I would need to sell my home. I considered renting my home, but that was short lived. To sell it meant a clean break toward a new life.

During this time, I was listening to a lot of motivational speakers and reading a lot of those “what if you were to be diagnosed with a horrible potentially lethal disease” books (always searching and asking about what you might regret).

Finding “The One”—Tibet

Wall patched and dog healing on my couch . . . It was around this time that I found “the one.” My perfect RV floorplan for this epic trip! The one with enough space for us to play frisbee indoors on rainy days, high ceilings, and where I’d have a separate office space for work calls. This beauty had forty plus feet of RV living space, four slide outs, a human-sized shower, huge bed, and laundry hookups. I was psyched and thinking, This will be our home for the next seven years.

This plan started to take shape. I said, If I/we could do this for seven years, I will be debt free. I will call my rig “Tibet.” All of this happened in my head before I even go to see the RV in Vermont, where it was located (six plus hours away).

I made a fast phone call to the family selling the RV and made plans to go and see it. It is, in my eyes, the best RV I have ever seen! It was even better than the pictures and it was just waiting for me to make it mine.

I instinctually knew what I’d need to do to sell my home and downsize my life. Although it did take my brother showing me what downsizing really meant; he listened to the departure stories of many a forgotten treasure that hit the dumpster shortly after the story crossed my lips. Everything became a domino effect once I started moving toward this “road trip life” idea. Selling furniture, donating past treasures, and wrapping up interior painting projects, all before putting the house on the market. By April, two months after “project road trip life” was initiated, the house was sold.

No Truck? No Problem—Call Ed

There’s only a few more things I needed to do. I needed to find a truck during the three months post-covid-craze truck shortage that would be big enough to haul the RV. What does that even look like? I have NEVER hauled anything. Well, except a landscaping trailer once and that promptly whipped around and gouged the side of the car for an expensive repair. The next step was to haul a forty foot fifth wheel around the country. Even my closest friends said they didn’t want to discourage me, but they were worried.

I would need to obtain a hitch to install in the bed of the truck, and I would need to learn how to drive this new huge truck with a forty-foot RV connected to it. Oh, and get it out of Vermont, where it was located six hours away (one way) and between two mountains.

Once I purchased the RV, the people selling wanted it off their property immediately. I couldn’t blame them, and I responded by hiring Ed. Ed is a guy who I was referred to by word-of-mouth. I called a guy who gave me a number who referred me to a friend who said call this guy, blah blah blah, he works as a “contractor over at Camping World.”

I called Ed on the telephone (I didn’t text him), and I said I was in a bit of a pickle. I told him I had a forty-foot RV fifth wheel that I just purchased, but I didn’t have a truck to haul it with yet. I continued speaking with him over the phone and as I smiled, beaming from ear to ear like I was a big shot, he was smiling back! I provided more details, like its location in Vermont six hours from us, and that I needed to move it, ahem, “Oh, by the way, tomorrow.”

Then I asked if it was possible that he would be interested in taking on this job? “I do not have truck yet, but I am working on it, and I will have a truck as soon as I find one,” I told him.

Ed, still smiling on the other end, offered me to accompany him to get the RV! He said he could tell I was smiling, and I was serious about picking up my RV. I noted this was very kind, but I also come with an “Orb.”

He said as luck would have it, he didn’t have his dogs with him, and as long as Orbit was good in the truck, he could ride in the back on the “dog platform.” This was a heightened flat platform in place of a backseat with carpeting on it for traction and a great view of the countryside.

This was the start of an epic adventure. Ed and I took the long trip to Vermont and picked up my RV, Tibet. As we made the left-hand turn out of the sellers’ driveway, we headed up the most direct route over a small mountain. It became clear that the most direct route might not have been a great idea, and I vaguely remember the former owner mentioning something about the mountain, but nonetheless, we chatted while Ed continued driving up, up, up . . . and he was saying that I picked a great rig!

We were discussing trucks and what would be needed for hauling my new home when we started to feel Ed’s truck struggling to pull Tibet up and over the crest of this very steep hill on the side of the mountain. I pulled out my cell phone and this is where the video picks up. Ed’s truck overheats as we go very slowly up and over the hill. On the way down, Ed is remarking that he might need to get his truck looked at.

We made it all the way to New Hampshire by midnight. We dropped my new home off at Camping World-North Conway, where it would be serviced and inspected before my journey. I had noted to Ed during our thirteen-hour trip that I was excited to learn how to haul my RV.

Downsizing?

Next came the realization about downsizing. You see, I jumped feet first into this plan and said the rest will fall into place. Now I am in an RV in a parking lot with the rest of my “plan” taking shape. I rented a U-Haul that I would drive from my storage unit in Maine to the RV in New Hampshire to move my belongings into my new home. 

Let’s call the items in my storage unit the first round of essentials. I took not one, but two trips from the ten by twenty storage unit to the fifth wheel. The facilities manager that had a shop across from where my fifth wheel was parked was quite the character. He taunted me, calling out to me in his thick New England accent, “Do you think it’s all going to fit?” as he gestured toward the U-Haul. I am most certain they were making bets when this bubbly chick shows up with an RV that she doesn’t know how to haul and her U-Haul of stuff that’s never going to fit.

Onward I pushed forward with task lists that seemed never ending. There were so many details way beyond just selling the house. I finally had the truck and the RV and the upgrades list completed. Steven, my brother, was key to helping me realize my downsizing was going to need to continue until we donated or junked about 75 percent of everything I’d moved from Maine to New Hampshire. The best part my brother said was the stories I had about many of the items I’d saved.

A few friends explained how it was just stuff and to think about how all of the new experiences will replace the temporary sadness I feel about parting with “stuff.” This was all a really impactful process I needed to go through. It was stressful as it all seemed to happen so quickly, I really didn’t have much time to have any real lasting thoughts about much of it. It was happening.

Ready for the Maiden Voyage!

After one month in the Camping World North Conway parking lot and the task lists to get the rig road ready for the maiden voyage are complete. I got a sixty-minute lesson on Here’s how to hitch and unhitch, here’s how to raise and lower the legs, and here’s where you hook up your hoses.

I videoed the walk through of everything because the next morning I was taking Susan and Orbit to New York. I had planned to be in the Midwest by the end of our first week.

In the morning, I learned the importance of releasing the water pressure at the spigot before trying to disconnect the hose at the rig. I was completely soaked for my first RV experience. I was so excited and still in that cheery honeymoon phase that I laughed it off. We were on the road by 6:00 a.m.

If you can imagine, North Conway, New Hampshire, is pretty quiet at that time. I hit the open road and learned how to haul that forty foot fifth wheel with the F350 truck on my way across the country. There’s no looking back until our next stop in New York, where I will need to back the RV in for the first time! Oh by the way, I forgot to learn that part, but I did watch a ton of videos on the subject.

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