In this post we look back at our first year traveling full time in our RV. We have had a lot of fun and made some incredible memories, but there have also been plenty of difficulties along the way. Read on to see why we are planning to move out of the RV as we celebrate our one year traveling anniversary.
When we started our journey we were so optimistic. The road was wide open and we were free to go wherever the winds blew us.
Our basic plan was to travel to the North East to visit with family for the summer.
From there we planned to travel south along the east coast, then west across the Great Smokey Mountains to Missouri for a stopover around Thanksgiving. November in Missouri starts to feel like winter, so we hitched up and headed south to Texas for the winter.
We spent New Years at Magnolia Beach in Texas. What a change from our winter in 2021!
But it wasn’t all fun.
There were nearly constant RV repairs. It seemed like we were still in the “shakedown” phase well into July when the black tank vent suddenly became taller. Water leaks were a constant issue. We had to replace the factory provided China bomb tires, thankfully before they blew out. You may have noticed that our posts about our RV far outnumber our travel or metaphysical posts.
In January of this year, while we were busy repairing the water leak in the back wall of the RV, we found that the RV had developed a stress fracture in the sidewall.
We had planned to leave Texas shortly after New Years to begin our trek across the southwest. We were going to see the Marfa lights, Guadalupe Mountain, Carsbad Caverns, Roswell, White Sands, City of Rocks, the Grand Canyon and more before turning north into Utah. Instead we contacted Forest River about our sidewall issue, and then spent all of February and March bouncing around the Houston area visiting repair centers.
When Forest River denied any responsibility for our RV in April we decided to have the RV diagnosed independent of Forest River, but at one of their authorized repair centers. We had to leave the RV at the shop for two weeks, which meant a new level of homelessness that we were not at all prepared for. With no other option we took out a two week rental through Airbnb in Galveston. Why Galveston? Because Houston is, well … Houston.
We had always planned to be on the road for at least one year, but also regularly talked about being on the road for two or three years. Of course we accounted for one constant in that – having the RV! This episode made us realize how unprepared we were in the event that the RV was unavailable. Not just because of Forest River’s apparent lack of quality control, but for anything. Where would we go if someone hit the RV and it had to go to the shop for a month, or longer?
Before we hit the road we sold our sticks and bricks, but purchased a small parcel of land nearby. We intended to use the land as “home base” as it has power, water and sewer already on the property, making it a fine place to park an RV. Provided that we had the RV.
So as we celebrate our one year “nomadaversary”, we are drawing up floorplans to build an off-grid cabin on the property that we own. We have realized that we need a proper home base because our RV is broken, and getting it replaced is going to take a while. We do not feel that we can ignore the issue and keep using the RV because of the signs of other structural problems which have begun to develop.
This is not the end for our RV adventures, but the the direction of this blog will be changing in the coming months as we build our home base. We plan to do all of the work ourselves. We have built smaller buildings, but this will be our most ambitious project yet.
We hope you will join us as we embark on this newest chapter in the wild adventure that is our lives!