I found myself so restless last week. Things were just starting to warm up but weren’t really comfortable yet. I started daydreaming about vacations instead of grading papers. Next thing you know, I’m on Google Maps, have my iCal opened, and I’m making plans!
So we now have spring break, summer, and Christmas all planned out (or sort of planned out).
I went to my first-ever RV show today at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. I walked through dozens of rigs, visited a number of vendors, picked up literature from several campgrounds, and drank really pricey fresh-squeezed lemonade. It was a good couple of hours.
Of course, we’re not in the market to buy, so it was all strictly window shopping. I expected to walk away feeling envious of all the shiny new things, perhaps deprived because I didn’t have some cool gizmo that the new ones have. I have to tell you, though, that I didn’t see a single RV that has a layout that I like more than mine. I saw ones that were much more expensive, had fancier fixtures, full-size refrigerator/freezers, nicer cabinetry, etc., but not a one of them had the things I like best about my RV all in one unit: the galley-style kitchen, the big living room slide that we were able to convert into an office, huge picture window in the rear, a pass-through bathroom with a utility closet and hamper, and the big dresser in the bedroom.
And I know I paid less for all of these things than any of those buyers at the RV show did because I bought used. Their shiny new RVs will depreciate up to 35% the second they are driven off the grounds. The previous owner of the Big Blue Beast took that hit for me.
I did see some pretty interesting stuff, though:
I’ve spent a lot of time in the blog describing the hardships we’ve faced thus far and much less time talking about the upsides to RV living. For the sake of brightening up a dreary winter day and to keep from scaring off those of you who might be thinking about fulltiming, here’s a little list of things we love about this life:
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Tags: fulltiming, pros, rv
Often folks want to know how much it costs to live in an RV. Well, I have to preface this by saying that the way we fulltime is not the way most people fulltime. Instead of living on the road, we are parked most of the year. We both still have our day jobs and a mountain of debt. We aren’t retirees who sold our house, paid cash for a new Class A, and still have a nice pension to pay the bills while we are on the road. We also aren’t super-frugal people who saved up, paid off all our bills, used the money we got from selling our possessions, and then paid cash for our rig and now do a lot of boondocking or workamping so that we don’t really have much in the way of monthly expenses.
Those are the smart ways to go. Naturally, we didn’t take either route.
We didn’t own a house when we got into this. As I’ve said before, we were renters. One reason we chose fulltiming was that we weren’t prepared to buy a house. We didn’t have the downpayment nor the creditworthiness, and neither of us was really interested in being locked into home ownership in an uncertain housing and job market, especially given the high cost of real estate and property taxes here on the East Coast. We didn’t want to become another statistic in the foreclosure fiasco, but we were also sick and tired of apartment living.
So what we did was save enough money for downpayments on the RV and the truck and finance them both. We don’t own the land on which we park, so that means we also have monthly site rent, rent which also includes our water, power, sewage, and trash. We pay for our own propane and cable/internet/cell phones. All in all, the cost for living month to month is similar to (even a little more than) apartment dwelling.
Let me break it down:
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As it would turn out, the very first winter we try fulltime RVing is Maryland’s worst winter on record. We have had not one, not two, but three — count ‘em, three — massive snowstorms in less than two months. In fact, we’re in the middle of storm #3 right now, and storm #2 was just this past weekend. We’ve also had several minor snows, the latest of which was about a week ago, so when these two blizzards hit, we still had two inches of snow on the ground. There are drifts upwards of 6′ deep on the ground. We are tucked into our fifth wheel, gale-force winds are blowing driving snow past our windows, the governor has declared a state of emergency, and no one is going anywhere anytime soon.
We knew these two storms were coming, thanks to Foot’s Forecast, so last Friday morning before storm #2 began, I went out, had the propane tanks filled, stocked up on groceries, drinking water, beer (gotta have the essentials), and made it back home as the first flakes fell. Storm #2 raged through Friday and Saturday, leaving 26-30″ of snow on top of the 2″ already on the ground.
It took us three days to dig out, so on Monday I was able to take our back-up propane tanks, exchange them for full ones, and get more groceries. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, storm #3 began. We’re at the peak of that blizzard right now. Before it’s all done later this evening, we’re expecting another 12″-20″ of snow and gusts up to 55 mph.
We’re not done with it yet, obviously, but we’re learning the hard way how to weather the worst of the worst. Here are my top ten tips for fulltiming in a snowstorm:
Tags: blizzards, fulltiming, rving, snow, survival, tips, weather
Last night as I was falling asleep to the sound of the wind battering the outside of the RV with gusts of up to 50 mph, temperatures in the teens, and sub-zero windchill, my final conscious thought was, “I should leave a faucet dripping.” I promptly went off to the land of Winken, Blinken, and Nod without ever stirring from beneath my toasty electric blanket.
This past year was an adventure, indeed! We’ve spent the past six months actually living in our fifth wheel RV, but three months before that we spent preparing for our move. It’s not been one big vacation, to be sure, but this life has its upsides. I want to take a moment to think about the bad and the good and to consider where we go from here.
Tags: 2010, fulltiming, New Year, rv
Our repairman, Patrick, finally returned yesterday and managed to get the power restored to the curbside outlets in the RV. Turns out that the problem resulted from Eagle RV drilling holes through the outer wall into the box containing the outlet for our bedroom TV when they mounted the wrong awning. We’re lucky. That short had been arcing. Our house could have burned down with us in it. Just another reason for me to be absolutely furious with that dealership.
I called them yesterday and asked to speak to the owner. As usual, he wasn’t available. I spoke with his wife who claimed they were coming to fix the awning next weekend. Uh huh. I don’t even want them to touch my camper again. They screwed up the awning twice, left a bunch of holes in my house, and caused me to have to get $500 in repairs to my electrical system!
If we ever do get the awning issue sorted out, I can guarantee you that I will never, ever, ever deal with them again for any reason.
I’m so glad that Patrick got the power back on when he did. We were down to only three working outlets which were overloaded with appliances. Now we’re back to having them distributed more evening across the breakers and I feel a bit better about it all.
Hopefully we can weather this winter storm without losing power altogether.
So I’m sitting inside the 5er here in Baltimore which is currently experiencing the biggest snowstorm it’s seen in years (possibly ever…remains to be seen).
When we moved, we had to get rid of a great many things. Some of our kitchen gear was hardest to give up. We had a LOT of it! There were certain items we couldn’t bring ourselves to part with, however.