A Travel Path Podcast

www.atravelpath.com

Andy and Rachel:

Andy and Rachel - YouTube

Andy Rachel (@andyandrachelvlog) • Instagram photos and videos

AR Treasures (artreasuresphotography.com)

What an exciting show! Andy and Rachel sat down with us to share their interesting and inspiring story of how they manage to travel and creating a work life that supports them meeting their travel goals.

In today's show you'll learn all about:

🏠Using real estate to house-hack your way towards your goals

🐶Finding creative ways such as pet-sitting to stay in places for free

🥚The importance of not putting all your eggs in one basket, so you have multiple streams of income to rely on

And much more!

🔗Links

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

💵Hacks

International house-sitting community - Nomador

Google Flights - Find Cheap Flight Options & Track Prices

🏠Real Estate

Airbnb | Vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, & more

Travel Nurse Housing - Search For Monthly Furnished Rentals (furnishedfinder.com)

💡Influencers

Eamon & Bec - YouTube

The Nomadic Movement - YouTube

Kara and Nate - YouTube

Create & Build Wealth With Real Estate Investing | BiggerPockets

Scott Trench Set For Life: https://amzn.to/48HxJVH (The book mentioned during the show)

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript from YouTube:

Andy and Rachel thank you guys for joining hope and I on this episode of the travel path podcast hey thank you thank you guys so we know you guys on Instagram and YouTube as Andy and Rachel you've got a ton of content everything from product reviews you've traveled all over the world you have your wedding photography business and it might be a foreign topic to most of our audience the house hacking and Airbnb hosting but it's speaking our language we're excited to dig in there why don't we start by having you share a little bit about yourself and then letting the audience know what your current travel lifestyle looks like so I'm ra obviously and um I actually right out of college did social work for 14 years I had a huge life change and um went through a divorce I have three daughters and when I met Andy I had three daughters and was kind of like done with the social work thing I had done it and I wasn't I just thought you went to school for one thing that's what you do the rest of your life and he comes from an entrepreneur background he's like what do you want to do like that's like an option so but I'm also um um kind of like jump into a person like I'm like ready for adventure so I quit my job like really soon like a month into knowing him or so and tried different entrepreneurial things and so wedding photography was what stuck so that's currently my full-time job as a wedding photographer we tried a lot of things and we'll probably touch on that a little later with the whole entrepreneurial and house hacking and all that I came from an entrepreneurial family my dad was a big entrepreneur we started a business a family business buiness early on so that I kind of knew it was possible I uh grew up in Ohio I went to college in Florida I lived out in Los Angeles for a while uh San Francisco eventually came back to Ohio met Rachel know we uhhuh and first he had bought a van was running a business I kind of like always wanted to travel and I was thinking well I can I can work remotely I might as well like buy a van and and fix it up and live in it and and and travel around the world with it and stuff and anyway so that's basically what I did for a year because you know the the rent was you know $1,500 a month and living in this van I could basically essentially save that $1,500 a month and and then I would would take that money and kind of snowball it into the next kind of investment and that's kind of what led us into our first property was using the income that I had saved from living in My Van Into the rental income and then you know once that rental income turned into another house and yeah then we we created a photography business and kind of worked our way up and you know along with other entrepreneurial things so awesome so it sounds like that goal of travel came first and then and you were putting systems in place the real estate the photography business to get you towards that goal right you mentioned house hacking what exactly is that so B yeah so so basically I had heard about it a while back my brother bought a a duplex and he lived on one side and he rented out the other side and um the person that he rented out the one side basically paid the entire mortgage so he wasn't paying any money for you know he was basically living for free and so me and Rachel kind of talked about it and we were like yeah it would be ideal to to eventually get a property to do that so we bought and sold one house before we finally found our first house hack it was ended up being a Triplex so we had three units we lived in one and rented out the other two yeah there's a lot of work involved I me we had to remodel both the the two units we we rent it out and so we learned a lot with and we happen to rent them app through Airbnb actually right great yeah think I saw that when you had a video posted on that it's the studio you have two studio apartments up top right and then you were living in the downstairs when you were renovating yeah that's great I'm I'm glad you bring up the the work involved because we're the same way we did the whole YouTube University thing and I like the the point you brought up too about how you can accumulate wealth so quickly and I tell people your cost of living is like the biggest expense you're going to face and if you can buy something that essentially either eliminates that or reduces it greatly you're limiting that huge expense you can put that towards whether it's another property towards travel whatever it is right yeah and there's tax incentives if you you know and you can get you can get deeper and deeper with it because the you know the the government gives you tax write offs for owning real estate and so yeah it can compound really quickly you know so it absolutely does yeah so what would you say to somebody who doesn't want to get into real estate because of the headaches they hear you know you're you're a landlord especially Airbnb host you're getting text communication all the time there's leaky toilets what would your response be to someone who's avoiding real estate because of that yeah that that was my concern because my my brother was renting out the traditional way with with monthly or with yearly rentals and and he has problem clients and and that and I I didn't really want to deal with that type of stuff so we started we aligned kind of kind of like Sy Synergy a little bit we we rent it out we were like well let's Airbnb first and rent it out to vacationers and just kind of see how it goes and that seemed to work pretty well for us we didn't have if there was anything to fix we would catch it when we were doing our cleaning or or whatever um and it made us more money than the traditional route and then we had discovered that we lived near a big Medical Campus so we had a lot of doctors and nurses and those people coming through so we eventually transitioned our model from vacationers and travelers into like 90% traveling nurses and and doctors like on rotation on rotations and so we would advertise that way we would say great for medical students and it was a quiet place that was really close to the hospitals as well so we just we would just say it in the wording but then most of our reviews they would also say like I'm a medical student or I'm a doctor most of them were medical students and so so they were semi longterm renters I mean like a month to three months month sometimes or six months and they were paying premium so you know cuz it's furnished and yeah do you use furnish finders have you heard we looked into it yeah our area where we live isn't as big city so it's so there's less you know what I mean we're kind of five 10 years behind the we're lucky in a way because it's it's like we're cutting edge all the time when we're like behind yeah that's true we're a big fish in a small pond so ahead of the crowd yeah something else I would say if someone hesitates because they don't want to get into it um we no longer own that property yeah we we ended up selling because it just worked out you know you you got to kind of time the market and yeah like I kind of thought well I could make 10 times as much as it would take me to work 10 more years at this right now and then do like we were talking about earlier I can take that capital and roll it into the next so we ended up selling this year yeah so the point could be too is like it might not be a long-term thing for you maybe if you just think of it as like a temporary thing of dealing with tenants and communicating and stuff that you can use that money when you sell it there's always exit plans yeah for sure so you had that property I'm sure that helped fund your business it was a passive income source for you it eliminated you know your your cost of living essentially and then did that allow you kind of that opportunity to start that wedding business or how did that work we basically did it kind of at the same time yeah the winning business was kind of going ahead of time actually yeah yeah we we we started the photog every business around the same time we bought our first property our first property was uh we got it for super really cheap property it was but you know it was a it was a 1880 Historical house that was like 70 grand and it just I mean and it was like pretty much dumb but no one could see the vision it was a very odd house and so and it was like a cabinet shop and it was just very odd so we ended up buying that we sold it unfortunately we wanted to keep it for a little while we ended up selling it making a profit on that took that profit Prof bought the triplex and so but yeah while doing that we also built a photography business and we you know did e-commerce Amazon eBay we dog walking dog sitting driving buil yeah we built a dog sitting business and and uh yeah I mean we I think at one point we had six or seven businesses just you know K going so but like you know each one is like one makes five grand a year one makes 30 grand but what I had told is it's like you're diversifying your income so like if you have three incomes going at once and you lose one you're still still above doesn't hurt as bad yeah right so and that's kind of what's scary for a lot of people who work N9 to-5 is like they're you know the 100% of their income is built on this job and and so it can be scary you know people don't want to quit when they should quit you know and I will say what's he had asked about how I'm starting the photography business so in general we try to start businesses where there's very little money forward like he already had cameras because of the business he already had so our startup C was essentially nothing so we didn't really need anything to help start the photography business yeah that's a good point that's a great tip we could talk about real estate all day but this is a travel podcast so why don't we switch gears and talk about what your current travel lifestyle looks like are you traveling full-time part-time so that really goes back to um like when we met how where we were at so I have three daughters and I have them half the time so that's why we are based in Erie Pennsylvania and so our travel schedule really for now really has a lot to do with the girls sometimes we travel with them but they're in Traditional School so that's very much based around their school schedules besides occasional I just brought my daughter for her first our first trip just a daughter of me she turned 16 we're going to do that with all the girls so we tend to go on short trips actually throughout the year so like when the girls are with their dad we go on a trip here and there or if they go on a longer trip with their dad we go on a longer trip the two of us or sometimes we take the girls on longer trips when they're off school yeah I think I think at our Peak we were like we do 10 to 12 like three or four day trips throughout like once a month we would go on like a three day or four day yeah and we do some still because of photography as yeah so because you had so many businesses rolling at one point how did that affect your travel lifestyle when we had a whole bunch of them going it was tricky you learn what works and and what doesn't for example we stopped doing Amazon FBA and and e-commerce stuff a lot because you had to be home to package things to ship out you know and same thing with the dog sitting and that type of stuff it it limits your your availability to travel and so we we learned that and we were like Okay cool so we're focused more on you know remote type of stuff I still do graphic design remotely for you know businesses and we can do editing on the road and you know that type of stuff so yeah so honestly it was like we learned that the ones that we couldn't travel with as well that we weren't interested in and and I think we just put more energy then into the photography business and that's probably why it grew I know you have some videos on YouTube you talk about it sounds like you have these weddings that you shoot all over the country how are you marketing that so that you know you're living in Ohio but you're shooting a wedding video I think the last was in Florida right yeah yeah so mostly I think it's just because we share on Instagram we got we've mostly got travel weddings through Instagram which is not how we get most of our weddings in general however um I just put on there that we travel and I put that like on our stories when we are traveling and then I share weddings and I just think it just comes together that way where people who are more open to where their photographers from sometimes just reach out to us because they like our style and it works out that way but um I'm also on like Facebook groups at various locations when people are looking for a photographer I'll say oh we're interested there's also like SEO and you can add in alopen and you know that that type of stuff which we're working on that's kind of like our new kind of goal is to to try to get more like uh organic you know people to come to us for that type of stuff sure that's great I wasn't sure if it was like I know we have like the mobile RV techs they just drive all over the country and they'll just update their website for where they are and then if you need someone you can call them and you just do Google search so while you're traveling what are some of the biggest frustrations that you face so the camera debate oh yeah I don't know if you guys have this but it's always like the biggest um decision for us to decide what cameras we want or don't want to take with us for vlogging obviously if we're doing a wedding we take the big nice cameras but it's not necessarily sure it's how much we can fit in our bags but also like how much you want to worry about when you're on vacation like if we want to go to the beach do we need to worry about if our camera is safe and so it's really funny we always have this huge debate like what we really want to capture and the quality that we care or don't care to capture when we're traveling sure now when you're traveling is it did you sell that van Andy that is that where you're still traveling in or do you fly stay in airbnbs what does that look like our favorite ways to stay are is home exchange so it's similar to Airbnb but instead of cash you use points so people can stay at your house and you earn points for it to go stay anywhere in the world it's actually based out of Europe um but it's growing so there's more and more places to stay at you can switch actual places at the same time but we've never actually done that house to house like complete swap right yeah yeah it's hard to do that was where it's it was founded like that but that's it's hard to do that when the stars have to kind of line up for both to be going to the same place it's it's already pretty difficult to to get it to work perfectly um because it really depends on where you're going like if you're going to New York City like it's pretty easy because there's a lot of people doing it there but like like we're we're trying to go to Kawai next year and so finding people there to let us you know do the home exchanges hard because there's only like four people on the entire Island you know so on the yeah when we first started dating and and traveling we actually did a lot of taking care of people's pets because we didn't have to pay um any money to stay at their house so that was that was really nice but then we slowly learned over the last four or five years it's kind of just this added responsibility where you know you need them to take care of their pets and their house and and you know we're responsible people so so it limits the amount of time um that you can go on vacation but we still do it from time to time so yeah there's there's options out there you know a lot of people don't travel because they think it costs so much money but um there's a lot of ways to to to do it for cheap so there are yeah and that's one thing that we discovered when we first air beat our house we were living there and we rented it out we took a vacation and we realized that renting our house out basically paid for the trip and it's similar with home exchange where it's that point exchange but yeah it's incredible that that hack right there if you're going to take a two-e trip just furnish your home it takes a little bit of work if you have a home office you need to lock some things up but it does it it makes it way worth it for sure yeah that's a good point we we we talked about that we never actually did it though renting out where we actually live no there there's not a lot of big interest to people coming here that's probably why but yeah we we actually ended up owning um we bought a property in uh Southwest Florida we rented rented that out on home exchange and that was an Off the Grid tiny house in the jungle so it was a very different experience all the great tiny house in the jungle let's hear about that yeah a goal of mine like I don't know at least 10 years ago um one of my best friends I I've wanted to live in Hawaii and buy land there and he kind of got me onto it and and so I'd look every every once in a while and at some point he sent me a link to this Craigslist posting of of uh like three it was like three and a half acres in basically the Everglades it wasn't in the Everglades but very close to the Everglades um it was only a 10 10minute drive to Marco Island which is right on the right on the Gulf Coast and you know it was cheap it was like 40 Grand it had a off a fully Off the Grid um tiny house on it with solar and just it was brand new brand new it was beautiful and uh so anyways long story short we went down there and my friend and I checked that out you know I bought it and and we originally planned we were like well this would just be our place we come down to and vacation at and and then we were like well we can rent this thing out we ended up renting it out basically letting people a lot of people from France came and stayed there and we did home exchanges with them and but then we had to like constantly go to Florida and clean this house and yeah it was so yeah so yeah cut back that literally had to cut back the jungle with a machete to get to the house is maybe a little too much adventure for us yeah it was it was it was a three and a half acres like dense jungle with only like 5% of it carved out into the middle with with the tiny house there there was only six months of the year where you could live there because during the rainy season during the summer it's just filled with mosquitoes and rain and the weeds will grow up like six to8 feet tall and just we would go down in October like October what the hurricane season would be over we'd go down and I like the first couple years I I literally used a machete and would just like cut and just be out there with like you know all this mosquito gear on cutting it down and getting it prepped and stuff and then he felt like a Rambo yeah totally it was it was he got to live his childhood dream it was and I have to like buy a knife every time we flew down because you couldn't fly with knives that's a good point yeah because I was scared that a that a cougar would jump out because um there's like Mount they like introduced mountain lions and into Florida to like rebuild their like cougar population and anyway so there were black bears alligators Turtles it was a pretty nutso experience but that sounds like an adventure yeah and I know what tiny house is something that's on her list she really wants a tiny house really bad apparently our van doesn't count so we're gonna have to buy one at some point yeah it's it's a nice upgrade from a van you know I I lived in a low top van with like I don't know 70 square square feet so upgrading from that to that tiny house it was a little extended it was it was 10 by 16 um so it was nice we had a little area for living uh you know like a living area with with a couple chairs and table and it like took too much of our vacation time up yeah it took too much you know too many plain chicken too much too much time cutting down the jungle turns out that's not fun in the long term yeah so we so we basically learned that when you get into real estate the best thing you can do is that if you if you're owning property is to own it really close by because even that like 20 minute or 30 minute drive when you need to go do something over there is plane ticket yeah yeah it really takes a toll on you so miss real estate prices were cheap like that but I guess there was a reason for it now You' mentioned I know the home exchange you had mentioned there were a couple of other travel hacks that could potentially save money what were those um so pet sitting no matter is a app that we use and so that's really cool you can like literally travel and take care of someone's pets have a place to stay and often they have a carf to use especially if you're on an island which we like to go to Islands actually Hawaii we did with that yeah three three or four years ago we stayed in the Bahamas the lady we got to stay there for free in her house she took care of her two dogs and she left her car for us you know so you didn't have to pay for a place to stay and you got a free car like you get the authentic experience they usually have food in the fridge for you that's like local food yeah it's definitely a game changer when if you want to travel for for on a budget it's it's a big game another really epic one we had right away as soon as we got together was um watching what kind of dogs were they called it's a great pise yeah Great Pyrenees so it was like mountain dogs and one of them she was like leave her off the leash because she'll protect you and I'm like oh I'm not comfortable that like you don't want to lose someone's dog she's like no there was a house sitter it was a house sitter there and she went ahead and she literally fought off a bear so that the house so that the sitter was okay okay yeah we'll let her go ahead of us I will take your word for it yeah yeah we that one was fun too we we arrived the lady had like bread with like butter and just like we had their own little like studio in their basement a hot tub hot tub that's awesome if you're a pet lover you're watching a dog and it's really not that big of a commitment yeah it it was fun and and yeah we stayed in Hawaii once with twice yeah twice through that yeah twice where where we you know got a car and cool uh puppies to play with and if you're into that type of stuff stuff you know it's definitely untraditional but it can be cool awesome yeah so no matter home exchange I'll put links in the show notes for all the resources we talk about today so that's great through all your travels what is the coolest experience you guys have had together or it can be you each can have your own cool experience too we actually landed on to they actually were both of our girls yeah the first one that came to mind for for us was uh we got married at a courthouse but then secretly secretly and then um you know the a day or two later we surprised our our daughters and the next day we had a flight out to California so we brought them to LA and then the next day we got married on the beach in Malibu in Malibu and it was like a Valentine's Day weekend it was like they had a long weekend from school and so like everyone else knew that they were going but they didn't know and so so was fun yeah it was their first time on the west coast and they were just like Jaw drop the whole time yeah so our other one was to the Bahamas with our girls it was like such a local experience it was an Airbnb actually and it was right on the ocean it was not in a tourist area at all and so it could have gone either way we didn't rent a car we were trying to save costs and trying to just be like chill and give them a chill experience of like just being on the ocean and they're like older they're like teens so it's like you don't know if they're going to like miss all the excitement and they didn't want to leave it was phenomenal it was the person had a pool and it was an Airbnb with like four units in it on the ocean and it wasn't even like a nice Sandy Beach it was just like you're basically like in the ocean yeah we walked to the grocery store so they like saw locals like we literally had to walk every day to get groceries because we only had whatever our hands to carry the food so we would go to the grocery store every day and our big like final meal was literally everyone came to the grocery store together and ate outside the grocery store for a big fancy meal yeah there weren't there weren't like restaurants nearby I mean it was yeah we walked to like this little convenience store and they had like a food truck that was like closest thing to to a restaurant we told the girls a while ago that like we we would we buy them stuff whenever they needed any clothes we'll buy it but for Christmas and like uh summer break and stuff like that we we we'd like to buy them experiences you know through traveling and so that they can just be a little bit more you know well-rounded a as an adult when they grow up and kind of understand there's more out there than just you know your your surroundings and your kids so then not renting a car thing is kind of a new thing for us so we've been doing that a lot lately we've been trying to find like cities that have a lot to do within itself so like San Juan Puerto Rico was like one of the first times we were like well let's just go here and just not run a car and we'll just kind of see if it's fun you know we don't have to drive around and go see mountains and all these different areas because we which we love to yeah we love that but we were so we were trying to do the opposite thing we were trying to to figure out if it was doable and and so far it's been fun mhm we did add one question I don't think it was on your list but we we asked um if there was one thing you learned that you can't live without while you're traveling and then also contrary to that like one thing that you learned that you thought you would need but didn't need does that make sense I will preference this by that we are extremely minimalist Travelers we only travel with a book bag yeah we just do we just do a carryon which just a backpack small um the only time we do use a a check bag or even a carry-on we don't even do car we do personal items when it's included we'll bring a carryon uh but most of the time we're trying to keep the cost down so we use like Frontier spirit and we don't really we're young enough we don't really care about extra room and you know and all that stuff so we we'll min max it so we'll we'll spend as at least amount on airfare as we can and then spend the rest of our money on experiences or like fancy restaurant or whatever I since we travel around town a lot and stuff it's nice just to have a book bag instead of carrying that's another big tip too especially if you're in a place that's like kind of dangerous you don't really want to be that person rolling a carryon down the road you know oh but he asked for something we can't live without and I think we have one I maybe you'll agree with me just goggles we actually love snorkeling but if you like make it into a really tiny thing really you just need to see underwater so yeah small goggles are great to have I love that tip on Min maxing too it's kind of that goes hand in hand with the whole real estate delayed gratification you can you know suffer on that plane ride for a couple hours and then just Splurge when you're down there exactly yeah you can stretch your dollar and not a lot of people do that I don't know I feel like I grew up that way or something because I I I do it with like everything if you could have listened to this podcast when you were first starting out traveling what is one question you wish I would have asked tonight and how would you answer that now I think we kind of already talked about this a little bit um and I don't really know exactly the proper way to to say this question but basically something to the effect of like how do I get to the point where I can travel as much as I would like to or you know have a job that I that allows me to travel and explore the world my answer I think we already kind of touched on this a little bit you kind of have to be doing two things at once at least it worked for us was we were building our long-term goal of having a successful photography or successful wedding business but at the same time we were also building these other businesses and rentals and uh you know e-commerce businesses and dog sitting and all these other types of things to to help push that goal into where it needed to be and I think yeah I think a lot of people just kind of stick to one thing and and and they just do that but like if you're if you're able and capable of doing a couple other things and it doesn't necessarily mean you you spend like you know instead of spending eight hours a day working you're spending 16 hours a day working but just like a little extra every day on another couple goals and and really it's like it's like growing plants and stuff all you got to do is plant the little seeds and you know you just you water it once in a while and and eventually it grows that's great advice if you set a goal you want it bad enough so you can set up those side hustles while at the same time making sure you have a lifestyle while you're trying to make it there and then keeping that mindset knowing that one day you will be there and at the same time those side hustles you're not going to be doing those forever either and so thing that makes us jump right into things I just feel like it's just worth mentioning is both of us lost a parent really early and so both of them had Big Dreams for their retirement that they never got to and so when we met that was like a very joining point and like a very important thing to us is that we live now and plan for the future right very inspiring story and I'm sorry to hear about your parents but it's I'm glad to see you guys put the work in and it's working out for you guys are enthusiastic and happy I can tell yeah so how many trips have you guys taken this year we're almost at the end of a year we went to Mex meico oh yeah January we went to Cancun we brought her parents Honolulu oh before that we went to New York City with the girls like a million small trips all over the place but it sounds like all those little travel hacks you're doing all those moneysaving things they're really allowing you to take all those small trips because most people will be like oh I didn't go anywhere in a year right so just the fact that you went to three plus a bunch of other small trips throughout the year shows that all these steps you guys have been taking really do help you get to those travel goals throughout the year right yeah it adds up you know if you're you're saving money you're able to kind of look for deals and and and uh one of the big travel hacks that we have is we use Google flights to find cheap cheap flights places and so you know some people don't know this they just go to like American airlines.com and they type in roundtrip to whever we spend an extra 20 minutes and and and look okay what's the cheapest one way to Chicago and then we find a new search what's the cheapest one way from Chicago back and they could be two different completely you know Airlines but you're saving like hundreds of dollars and so so yeah like over the course of the year if you do three trips that way you're saving a thousand bucks so yeah you can you can do you can do a lot and especially if you're doing it in all areas you know you're saving money with Airlines you're saving money with uh rental cars and you're saving money with your with your Airbnb you know is I have to say one thing in case in case Talia watches this I I can't forget I just got back from s ju with my daughter too so at least four big ones this year yeah like we travel from like Michigan to Pennsylvania Ohio at least for weddings throughout the wedding season pretty much went to Philadelphia we went to Vermont West Virginia we did yeah starting to come back I'm like okay yeah we went on like 10 trips this year it's a good problem when you're starting to lose track of how many trips you took said 3 to five whether it's 3 to five or 10 plus that's a lot more than most so you guys are doing it right I love that analogy about it's it's every little thing that adds up yeah sure the plane tickets might not seem like much but you know not doing a rental car and that's a good analogy for life you know if you can save a couple bucks here and there it it adds up you know your weekly monthly expenses if anybody did an audit on themselves with you know you're streaming bills uh there's a there's a platform for everything nowadays Netflix Hulu peacock everything if you sit down and figure out what am I actually spending money on is it worth it and then you could start saving a lot of money pretty quickly and the money save you're not getting taxed on I I read somewhere and it blew my mind is when you try to pick up an extra job you're getting taxed you know whatever that tax bracket is but when you start saving money you're saving 100% of that Penny yeah that's a good point that's a good point for anyone listening who is just starting out and they want to be in a similar travel lifestyle as you guys what would be one thing they could start doing today one of the first things that you know I had helped Rachel with when we first started dating was she was in kind of uh you know the typical way of life where people have like a brand new car and they spend $700 a month on their car and and so I was giving I was kind of like let's start correcting these these things because I was just brought up that way I I just figured everyone else did this but so we ended up buying um you know we bought like a $3,000 Toyota Sienna minivan because she had a sedan which is like with me and her and three kids in the back seat like it just didn't it wasn't very practical so not little either yeah so I'm like well let's get a minivan that's very reliable and that we own outright so so yeah we bought this $3,000 minivan and ended up eventually selling her car and so that takes care of a monthly payment like that's a huge difference in being able to travel just that one thing yeah so I I did the math you know a couple years ago we were we were spending on average about $75 a month on this minivan for taxes Insurance uh maintenance tires oil change everything so 75 versus 700 you know it's $625 extra in your pocket every month so multiply that by 10 or 12 like you're at $66,000 a year and that's just one thing yeah you add that and then you start you start house hacking and so instead of spending 12 Grand a year on rent you're making 12 Grand a year on rental income so now you're at 20 grand extra in your pocket or even like if you can't afford a house yet you don't have a down payment yet or something like you encouraged me to find a rental that was like way smaller than the rental I was in and like yeah if you think of people in other countries like it might seem like everyone needs their own room and everything but it depends what's important to you and like for a while we sacrificed yeah and now we have a big house again but you know sometimes you have to make sacrifices yeah she lived she lived in a in a one room apartment it was a big room three girls with three daughters for like six months it was like 400 bucks a month so it was like she went from 850 to 400 so she cut her rental cost in half and I was living in my van at the time you know it's doable and like like you were saying earlier it's just for a brief amount of time it's not saying saying that you're like well I want to live in this $400 a month one room apartment forever like you only did it for six six months at the most yeah so yeah and so I always put my myself in perspective other it helps to put yourself in other perspectives there's tons of people around the world that are like living in dirt houses with you know no shoes and happy yeah and they're like happy running around with one toy it's good that if you can kind of switch your brain and go like you know this is really nice that I live in my tiny little van you know and like it's all perspective absolutely yeah Tyler always said we need to live below our means yes I know what not to contradict what we said earlier about all those little things adding up but at the same time if you have big things you can slash immediately you know for that house hacking or getting rid of that van payment or getting rid of the car payment that would be worth way more than cutting out those small little things if you have those big things you can slash do that first and then little things add up after that there's a million different things you could do you know you could sell stuff sitting in your closet for 10 20 bucks a pop and you just you you spend an hour one night listing it all on eBay and just get rid of it and all right one more question before we start wrapping everything up um were there any YouTube channels or other influencers that motivated you guys to travel first of all I will say that like I had like a deep burning passion to travel but I wasn't traveling really much besides for work I was traveling for work when I met Andy when I had like the idea to to get a van and live in it and stuff I remember typing in YouTube I had well I originally bought this really crappy like $2,000 uh Ford E150 that was like rusted out it was just like a total junker and I remember I bought it and I did like what I call like the Walmart special where I put like a mattress in the back and like a cooler and like you know a sleeping bag and just I was just like well this is I'm going to live in this my hack at the time was where we live it gets to zero degrees in the winter so it was like you freeze to death so I would pull my van down I I worked in this office building and I and I rented a a heated underground garage spot for like 40 bucks a month and so I would pull my little low top camper band down into that spot and it would keep me like pretty warm you know during the winter as he was running a successful business no one really inspired me to do it I just kind of did it myself and then and then I was like you know this kind of works I'm gonna buy I'm gonna like build this thing out and so I like remember typing in YouTube like how to build a camper van you know and this was this 2016 so I like typed in like how to build a camper van so then I went down that rabbit hole of like travel influence was like Aon and backck and nomadic movement Jordan and Kaye and well car and Nate but they weren't doing that yet yeah Karen Nate was like later in the game but yeah I found all these van life people that were building out their Vans and stuff and I was like well this is like a movement actually ended up buying a totally built out camper van out in Oregon and I flew out there sight unseen bought the camper van and drove back to Ohio cuz I didn't had the time to build this thing it died on me in the middle of the mountains and he decided you needed a girlfriend yeah but yeah they're they're yeah Jordan and Kayley from nomadic movement aing and back sure yeah we've definitely heard of most of those channels and we'll put a link below in the show notes for all those channels you mentioned there and while my audience is checking those channels out where can I found out more about you guys uh we're primarily on YouTube We also are on Instagram yeah Andy and Rachel Andy and Rachel excellent all right guys Andy and Rachel thank you so much for coming on you guys are a proof that you don't need a camper you don't need a trailer you don't need a van to travel fulltime and you can do it with kids and you can travel and meet all your travel goals and dreams so guys thank you for sharing your inspiring story and um looking forward to meeting up with you at some point soon yeah thank you I appreciate it thanks guys

**Note: The Clay County Recreational area have two different campgrounds. The Recreation Park and Gibson Cove. Today we are discussing Gibson Cove, which offers the lake views as opposed to the more wooded sites at the Recreation Park. You can request to book at either with the link below.

RECREATION PARK SITES | Campgrounds (claync.us)

www.atravelpath.com

Adrian and Ruth Social:

LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTIONS (rvlifeproductions.com)

RV Life with Adrian & Ruth - YouTube

RV lifeWithadrianruth (@rvlifewithadrianruth) • Instagram photos and videos

Adrian and Ruth (@rvlifewithadrianruth) | TikTok

So You Wanna GoFull Time RV NOW WHAT live series - YouTube

Ruth • RV Life • Esthetician (@thervesthetician) • Instagram photos and videos

In today's episode of Travel Tips we welcomed back Adrian and Ruth from "RV Life with Adrian and Ruth!" In case you missed the first episode, check it out here:

https://sites.libsyn.com/491798/7-adrian-and-ruth

🔗Links

🏕️Clay County Recreation Park:

RECREATION PARK SITES | Campgrounds (claync.us)

Chatuge Dam Trail, North Carolina - 452 Reviews, Map | AllTrails

Adrian and Ruth's video of the campground:

LAKE HIAWASSEE - LECTRIC BIKE REVIEW (youtube.com)

🏔️Helen, Georgia

Helen, Georgia - Georgia's Official Outdoor Destination (helenga.org)

Home - Georgia Mountain Coaster

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

all right Adrian and Ruth thank you for joining hope and I for part two of the travel path podcast today we're talking about the travel tip segment so we talk about one destination before we begin we'll quickly go over part one in case you missed it if you want to tune into part one where Adrian and Ruth talked about how they balanc life on the road by working full-time and some of the emotional challenges they faced and getting on the road and if you're watching this on YouTube uh Ruth talks about an accident they both got into a little while ago where they were lucky they had their trailer hitch on the back of their truck so definitely tune into that one Adrian and Ruth thanks again and what are we talking about today so we are talking about one of our favorite campgrounds which is Clay County recreational park and is in North Carolina which is but is literally on the border of Georgia North Carolina so it's the hawasi area Lake haasi yeah but then on the North Carolina side it's called lake chatou so it gets a little a little confusing if you but if you put in Clay County wreck you'll find it you'll find it yes perfect and how many how much how much time have you guys spent there we've been there a bunch of times um not enough one of the first plac I wish I could be there now actually one of the first places we went camping to um and and she fell in love with it so um and I guess I I I affirmed it because I said to him you know I love this area I love this place here I don't want to leave I don't want to go back to FL South Florida I could see myself living here and little did I know that within a year and a half we actually would be um living in the area we're 30 minutes away from where we are right now so it's uh it's K came full circle which is weird it really did really did and we totally found it accidentally like we were looking for it was it was actually only one of the places that were available we were planning our trip our two week trip um with RV life and um it just came up as one of the places I had availability yeah and I saw that it was right on the water and I kind of like staying on the water and so we booked it and I was like oh my God I love this because it's literally you walk out of your RV 100 steps into the water y very cool now what type of amenities does this Campground have so it doesn't have a whole bunch of like a pool or anything like that but it's it's in a in a in a lake system that has a dam there's Trails there bike trails that are paved so you can ride your bike you can walk your dog you can you know there's fish go fishing um we like every once in a while to go up there and just rent a pontoon boat and just cruise around the lake and fish or the cool part with that is that if you know because you're camping on the water you can pull up the boat right up to your campsite have lunch and then go back out and the dam is right next to it literally within like walking or riding your bike distance and so that has a beautiful Trail to go also and take pictures um so it's just um really not a lot to do but it's somewhere where you want to go if you want to kind of be off grit and not look at your phone not answer your phone stay off social media be present if you really want to enjoy your family time or time together with your partner then you go there yeah it definitely sounds like an outdoor Enthusiast stream and it sounds like something we definitely want to get into so I know you guys have been there several times you can probably go there for weeks months at a time what would you say would be the minimum time frame somebody go there to get the full experience I would definitely not go for less than three days and even that you're going to be like I want to stay because just when you get comfortable and start enjoying your you know watching the sunset being on the water or even being in the water because you could go into the water um you're going to not want to leave so I would say minimum of three days I mean you could most certainly I think you can do overnight camping there but you're not going to want to leave so yeah and the way it's cool because every camp Camp spot is literally they're staggered so you don't have like an RV in front of you they're kind of one every other one so even if you're on the back side there's between the two RVs there's this opening that you can see the lake which the first time we weren't right on the water but we still have water view yeah so it's a it's really nice so there's no bad bad spots no perfect and you said Son so is this is a really good spot for just sitting in your campsite and watching sunset and sunrise or for sure because it it's it's all facing west and they designed that well um where you know you can you can sit there and the cool thing is you know Georgia and and North Carolina there's a lot of red clay so the water on the lake the water kind of glows different because of the red clay so when you have that that Sunset coming down it it makes it glow and it looks like a sunset on the water and in the sky like it's all kind of reddish pink it's pretty cool is it seasonal it is seasonal it it's open from April until um October right right beginning of November it it does fill up quick because a lot of people want to go there so we we usually plan it out like a year in advance very good what's your favorite season to go we stayed here in April and we stay during the summer and I think September is yeah September because in the summer it gets also very hot here um April it was still kind of a little bit chilly um but in September it was still warm enough for you for um when he went to work I since I work from home I would still get in the water I would take honey for a walk I it was still warm enough to get into the water and still nice and cool at night but not too cool right April chili are we talking Connecticut chili or are we talking Georgia chili cuz those are two completely different chilies yeah I'm used I know the Connecticut chili um it gets it's a little warmer probably like 60s yeah that's cold for me remember she's a Florida girl so I'm a Floridian so that's cold for me-irt weather that's what he says too no I'm not a Florida girl but I'm right there with you 60s cold y so you obviously have honey so you take her with you so I assume this is a very kid and dog friendly Park yes definitely the first time the well one one of the times that we went she got actually out and we he chased her for an hour and a half and she finally got tired and jumped in the truck but every single camper was trying to get her enticing her with food and she would take the food and run cuz she's a runner and go to the next one and go to the she thought it was a game she was having the ball so I say she was getting treats everywhere you never know what going through when every trying to catch them yeah too funny that's great so obviously this is a campground what are we doing at night so there's not much to do at night besides you know fire which is my favorite thing I love putting a fire sitting out there and because there's very low light pollution you can see many more stars that you would anywhere else if you wanted like to go out to dinner or something you have to go kind of to the next town which would be Helen Georgia um and Helen looks like Germany in the middle of the mountains oh cool you can go um bowling there's tons of things you can do you know family friendly things you can do in the surrounding areas not too too far away Helen is cool because it's like I said it's like a little German Town there's there's beer there's October Fest in October you can find a lot of German restaurants um there's Sushi there if you want sushi there's we went I took it for a birthday ax throwing there ax throwing place so it's it's kind of tury in a way a little bit but there's a lot of cool stuff up there too but I think that's perfect for a family that's going away if they want to stay somewhere a little bit more remote for the week and enjoy you know the lake and the fires at night but then have that option to get out and let everyone walk around do some fun activities like axe throwing or you know visiting October Fest if it's an adult trip so I think that uh think that's there's there's also a lot of um waterfalls there's also a lot of surounding hiking trails in the surrounding areas um and and actually I have a back problem so we have found a lot that are very very short distance like within a half of mile a mile yeah um waterfalls waterfalls you can walk behind beautiful places all within a all within a 30 to 40 minute time my favorite thing about Helen there's a Mountain roller coaster and I never saw one of these things until I went there and it's literally a roller coaster that you get on the mountain on the top and you kind of go all the way down and then wow yeah that was cool so it's just gravity I think we had heard of the town of Helen pre it's a very small town right yes just like said middle of middle of the mountains and middle of nowhere but yeah that sounds like a really fun place to check out so you guys have a bigger rig but you've seen tent campers smaller RVs bigger than your RV I sure everything will fit this Camp around we've seen class A's all the way to tents the last time we stayed we had U our neighbors were tent camping they had their tent where they slept in then they had their you know like netted tent and kind like the kitchen area but all the kids had their tent to sleep in they use the same the same pad right they're usually all gravel so it's not dirt but it's it's uh yeah it's you know there's power and and water there so the the tent camping is but there are dumping stations and there's bathrooms and trash bins and stuff nice so super accessible for just about anyone at any camping level correct yep we talked about some food in Helen obviously we're in a state park there's no restaurants right in there so do you guys like to bring in a lot of stuff when you go and Grill and cook or is there a store close by that you like to go to there's good barbecue everywhere right because North Carolina Northern Georgia so there's a couple spots there I don't know their actual names barbecue barbecue is the staple food around in all this areas so you can get like 10 minutes down the road you can go place and it's pretty good I like to I like to grill out I like to cook I got a small Blackstone I have my my charcoal grill and then I have a little outdoor kitchen in the outside of my rig so between all that I can we cook usually when it's nice out we cook outside and we hang out outside my one of my favorite things to do is sausages um there's a brand of sausage I can't think of the name um they make them in Alabama and then I like making shish kebabs and trying different recipes of shish kebabs and I let them I say and you like to eat it right yeah Shob the sauce that's a nice simple meal very limited dishes which we like when we're camping so yeah good stuff yes yes and just sitting out there watching the Moon on the water because it is a beautiful yeah there's a chain of grocery stores called Publix and they have this uh bourbon marinated salmon so good and it's like to make a salad or you can eat it with rice or you delicious like it's so good good and you said that it was a pretty inexpensive Campground right so you have a little bit more on the F it's like $27 a night yeah you can't find a place like that not anymore that much and if someone were coming to this Campground and they had two complaints but not necessarily complaints things that they weren't prepared for what would those two things be not dumping their tanks and not having full hookups is one but there's a service you can call and they'll they'll come and you can they you know they'll they'll dump it for you and a lot of people have those little behind toeing little cart things but um but they have the servers that you can call and they'll come around to so that would be one and then internet they they have a decent internet for being in the middle of nowhere and actually the last time this last time we went we noticed that they had put more antenna up but when we first went there there was like kind of like yeah so non-existent kind of made you not go on your phone yes yes I take it even since it's a campground kind of out in the woods even if you have a starlink you're gonna have a hard time getting signal well it's funny because when we first got our Starling that's that's the first place we ever used it literally it came in literally yes I drove half hour home because I got the the notice that it was it was delivered we drove to our home base I picked it up drove back and then we set it up you know say you're right by the water it was opened enough and luckily where was had a point was perfect yeah it sounds like an amazing place is Clay County recreational Campground one last question we have and I feel like we'll get two separate answers here but what is one thing you simply cannot leave this Campground without doing not just the campground the park in general I would definitely venture out on the trail into like the woods because it leads to where the dam is and you just think go it's just another Dam but it's so beautiful and you can see out and there's an area where you can walk a walking trail so it's really pretty it's a really pretty um Trail so I would definitely do that Y and I would definitely try to get on the water yeah I was going to say more whether it's skiing or on a boat or yeah that's what I was going to say go kayaking go you know get in the water go fishing jump in the water it's usually for being up in the mountain you would think it's cold all the time but it actually warms up pretty good and it's not it's refreshing and not only that I will I will tell you I'm kind of a not like a water snob but coming from Florida and the beaches that are basically clear I don't like anywhere where you can't see your feet Y and this water's yeah and this water's pretty clear this water's pretty clear probably why I like it so much CU I can see my feet yeah I don't like walking like murky water not knowing what you're stepping on yeah

no well perfect thank you for sharing that I think this is definitely somewhere that we are going to put on our list of places to go on our next trip when you go there let us know and uh maybe we'll come camp we can meet you guys there we will yeah we're hopefully planning another southern trip in the next couple months here so we'll be in touch for sure but yeah Adrian and Ruth thanks again for coming on like I mentioned before if you haven't seen the first episode definitely check that one out too guys thank you thank you thank you for having us

www.atravelpath.com

Adrian and Ruth Social:

LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTIONS (rvlifeproductions.com)

RV Life with Adrian & Ruth - YouTube

RV lifeWithadrianruth (@rvlifewithadrianruth) • Instagram photos and videos

Adrian and Ruth (@rvlifewithadrianruth) | TikTok

So You Wanna GoFull Time RV NOW WHAT live series - YouTube

Ruth • RV Life • Esthetician (@thervesthetician) • Instagram photos and videos

In today's show, Adrian and Ruth from RV Life with Adrian and Ruth join us to discuss their full time RV life. In this episode you'll hear all about:

👶🏻Making sure you are still spending time with family/children when you go full time

📃Some important steps to take when choosing your RV

📽️How they combined their passion for filming and travel to make money

And More!

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

🔗Links

🐶Dog Apps

BringFido on the App Store (apple.com)

Waggle Pet App-RVing with Ease on the App Store (apple.com)

📗Books

The Adventure Challenge - Your scratch-off guide to adventure.

📺YouTube Channels Referenced

Traveling Robert - YouTube

Changing Lanes - YouTube

AirStreamer - YouTube

⛽Fuel Rewards

Get fuel rewards in the myRewards Plus app | Pilot Flying J

Best Rewards Program On The Road (loves.com)

The Fuel Rewards® Program | Shell United States

Good Sam-Club Discounts, Roadside Assistance, Insurance

🛜Internet

Starlink

Reliable 5G Home Internet service | T-Mobile 5G Home Internet

Applicable Blogs: The Importance of Mobile RV Techs: https://atravelpath.com/mobile-rv-technician/

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

all right Adrian and Ruth thank you for joining hope and I in the travel path podcast oh thanks for having us thank you for having us yes our pleasure so we know you on YouTube and Instagram you're RV life with Adrian and Ruth you cover videos on content creation RV life tips and tricks youve traveled all over the country and you've got content from Puerto Rico why don't you start by sharing a little bit about yourself and then letting the audience know what your current travel lifestyle looks like all right so I'm Adrian and that's my wife we lived in Florida close to Miami about an hour north of Miami and we decided to sell everything sell our house almost everything we should have sold everything but sorry my job I've been with them for almost 13 years so position came open uh to cover Georgia and Eastern Tennessee so that gave us an opportunity to travel even more because I had a bigger territory so we decided to pack it up and keep and just move GRE youve been down the road for about three years now I know you sold your house in 2020 so you're working full-time you want to tell us kind of what your travel work life looks like and how you're balancing your work and your travel life because I have such a big area of a territory um that I cover um it's it's wild it could be 250 300 miles with between one point to another so a lot of times like when we go to Tennessee we'll take the whole RV with us and we stay there for the week I work I just come home there um and then we do the same thing um throughout Georgia we and and it gives us a good way to learn the area so I work you know throughout throughout the day and then you know in the afternoon I'm home I'm just home somewhere somewhere different uh every couple weeks which is pretty cool we were actually when we lived in South Florida we were basically weekenders or sometimers now the job you have right now currently Adrian was that something that opened up because of Co and there was more remote work allowed or you're actually going two job sites it sounds like when you're driving back and forth yeah so what I do is I'm I'm in I'm in I'm a technical sales rep I go to Distributors that sell my product and I go to job sites so like construction new hotel new mall stuff like that they're using our products the product we manufacture is uh cement mortar that you use to install tile or stone like let's say the tile in the mall um or in a hotel lobby all that we sell this the cement to stick the Towes down with or the gr that goes between them or the waterproofing for like the showers and the rooms I deal with Distributors on one end I deal with the contractors that are installing it and then I deal with like Architects or Engineers or whatever on the actual job sit but uh you know it's pretty cool job because it's different every day very cool Ruth I know you touched on earlier you work you do a lot with the content creation the video editing but you also have your own business um how what does that look like and how are you able to work your own business while traveling full-time I guess you could call it a side hustle that's what some people call call it I uh sell makeup and skin care I am a licensed ascian in two states MH about to be three here in Georgia that will be my third state and that I have been doing for a long time since 2014 I did just recently change it from Ruth for beauty to the RV esthetician ah you know we live in an RV so so it's a little bit harder you make it work you know skin care tips for on the go we're skin care beauty tips on the Go I mean what woman who lives in a small space doesn't want skin care and beauty tips so I do that and because I have had that for a little while I'm able to supplement our income um but the channel does and our other RV channel does keep us me pretty busy um so I help him because he still does work full time he's a major bread winner I do basically all of the social media and all have time for it sounds like a good team then yes it is it is a good balance it is it was a it was at first was like trying to figure it out but um but we got to the point where we're good now so yeah I know in a previous video you mentioned Adrian that you've been making videos since you were 14 years old so it's nothing new to you just probably so there there's probably a lot of were you showing Ruth kind of the Reigns and editing we we started it actually as a way to document our travels which a lot of you know content creators tell us that that they start as a way to document their travels and share with their family and it evolved as we we we went to fulltime it evolved to meeting people and then posting on then we became monetized and then it it became something else and from there we started um getting all these opportunities and we were like you know what we can make this work I was always so busy working you know like I love doing video stuff um they having picked up a camera in so long like it was cool to be able to just practice again or like just do what I love you know so very cool it was a way for me to get him to do what he loves but also document our adventures we'll do both it once right absolutely yeah and you can revisit them at any point and rewatch your videos yes so we'll backtrack a little bit so you were Weekend Warriors like you mentioned before um and then you made the decision to travel full-time so at some point there was that decision and there was a gap between when you were actually able to do it how long was that time frame and what were some of the biggest obstacles you faced in getting there it was about about a year was about a year because I was actually afraid to because one we had just started um we had just got an RV at the beginning of covid and literally January 2020 we bought our first RV we would go along with a lot of other people right we would go um on the weekends and I didn't even know if we would like it and to me it was a big commitment I took care of my grandson basically raised him since he was a baby till four all day long every day and it was I I couldn't fathom the idea of leaving my grandkids behind and not being able to see them every day so that was really hard at first and then the thought of living in different places and not my house yeah she she was attached to the house and I get that you know like that's you know the other side of that is we you know my job Florida it was such a small condensed territory compared to what I have now and there's not many campgrounds or places to stay in South Florida so it kind of limited us to like doing what we're doing now so we we looked at all those things and those are all factors that kind of delayed or made us you know kind of have a pause on on doing it so my colleague that did the same thing I did in South Florida up in this area was retiring and I've known him for years so he called me and then told me hey I'm you know I'm going to retire if you want you know put in for the for transfer so that's what we did and uh that's how I ended up here so so everything kind of aligned I was like oh this is fate yeah we won't get We're not gonna get this chance when he said you know I have another opportunity I'm like we have to do this because this is supposed to be this way like this is the universe saying do it now or you're never going to get the chance it sounds like the stars lined up there so in terms of I know you mentioned Ruth briefly the the challenge it sounds like was more of an emotional challenge in letting go of the home life and you had your grandkid you were raising for his entire life what advice would you give somebody who was in that same position who they're not sure what to do they want to travel fulltime but they're thinking the same thing you were thinking I would say to First do small trips rent an RV if you can't buy one at first borrow one if you're able to you may not even like the lifestyle yeah you may not even like going into a smaller place if if you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be living in a 300 square foot less than a 300 square foot RV fulltime I would have told you you were crazy yeah but um here I am and I couldn't think of he keeps asking me are you ready to look for a house and I'm like yeah that was at the beginning I listen I wanted to make sure she was happy she was comfortable you know it's a big step so as far as the emotional yes it was a big factor and um we discussed it and I said as long as I am able to see my grandkids minimum of every 3 months truth of the matter is I probably spend more quality time with my grandkids and my family now than I did when I was there all the time because I now am present I put my phone down you know if I'm going to post I'll post in the morning I won't pick my phone back up until a certain time I schedule out my time I make sure that when I'm with them I am present and before I didn't realize how much I valued and missed that and how short life was that's a great point I'm glad you're bringing that up Ruth and it's coming up with a plan first of all that you're going to be able to see these people whether it be once a month every three months and kind of reassuring yourself that okay we're traveling full-time but this isn't goodbye we're going to be you know continuing to see each other and then yeah like you said I mean I'm sure when you were living with them previously there were there were routines it just became normal looking at your phone and now you're able to activities more memorable experiences so that's a great way to look at it yeah well and then the other thing is like our grandkids get to come with us so like my daughter came up last year for my birthday we went to Stone M they came camping with us and it was my birthday but I got to spend it with my grandkids like it was the best best thing ever they had the most fun I took them fishing or right by the lake like it was awesome yeah those are memories your grandkids are going to remember forever yeah the yep before because we saw them every day it was a mundane everyday kind of thing okay they're here you know I'm on my phone most some most of the time I'm not pring I'm not um making every minute count I'm not um making sure that we're making memories and now that is our number one priority to me and I am with them y I think that's a good reminder for people just everyday living in general I mean you you fall into routines whether you are traveling full time you know you're living together um we ended up we purchased a while back this book called the uh what was that book called The Adventure the adventure challenge book where it's just like you you scratch off a a challenge and you guys do a challenge together like we ran like we one day were doing um I was I had to bake a cake blindfolded while she told me what to do just some like really you know fun silly things that you yeah that you really wouldn't have done um in your everyday life but just a memory that stands out so we'll put a link below to that Adventure that is awesome that is awesome I've heard of stuff like that and I it's it's something that I'm sure we would enjoy doing um you know people ask us like how do you guys like stand like being in such small spaces for days out of time to tell you the truth it probably made us closer because you know we go on our adventures together we do everything together but we do have two bed two rooms he has an office in the back I have the bedroom if we need our own time then we each go into into our own home a couple a couple days a week so like I I made a desk area because there used to be a bed a bunk bed but nobody you know the grandkids don't come with us anymore really so I made it you know workable space where now I have like my own little office there so I can close the door go behind there ways to make it work absolutely all right so we'll fast forward a bit to the day you actually got on the road and you're currently full-time like we mentioned before what are some of the biggest frustrations that you still currently face I don't have many many but my biggest frustration is in my refrigerator we have a small fridge like a cubic foot and I need I need at least a 10 cubic foot I know that doesn't sound like a big difference but it is what happens is it's so small that you know you live here so you buy groceries you can't buy a bunch and things go bad faster because the air doesn't circulate as much but that's my only grip that I would uh look and redo if I could got have have a unit with a bigger fridge if if we were doing it again and I know what I know now I would say I would want not necessar neily a fifth wheel but an RV with um more slides we only have one I love the the size of our RV it's perfect for both of us the space is limited and I would definitely definitely definitely want a washer and dryer we thought many times about buying a new one and we just said why don't we just make this the way we want I mean we listen we We Own It All right we don't owe it to anyone it's ours and so you know might as well your own you bought brand new and I watched a video a while back where you you had a pretty substantial issue like pretty immediately do you have any advice for people who are buying brand new RVs and maybe to something to have their expectations definitely hire an inspector to to even if it's brand new even if it's brand new because especially if it's brand new seems like especially with ours the one you're referring to we bought it brand new we upgraded from the first one we bought right before Co happened we did a trip up here South Carolina everywhere it didn't leak other than when the slide was out because what happened was I mean was in which is usually opposite it would leak the other way around but because the slide would come in it would put all this weight was so big it was bad design and basic and and it moved the walls on the outside of the RV enough to where the seals opened up the water would come in and we had the hardest time dealing with that basically so basically you know just do your homework check on reviews go to go on YouTube there's a lot of like we made a video about it yes um definitely you know and then try to reach out to someone that that's been doing it for a while right they can give you some good advice because the hardest thing is to try to jump in with two left feet and then find out that there's no yeah whatever company you decide you go with like let's say you you you narrow it down to three research those companies you know Google those companies Google their custo more importantly Google their customer service because if somebody has had a bad experience with them I can tell you you're going to find a Google review on that customer service and that was the very thing um that when we started after four months of owning it and only making one big trip with it we they this company this manufacturer stopped taking our phone calls yes just just deal they wanted to basically give us a cover a Band-Aid it had been Le we didn't know what kind of mold and most importantly go to a reputable dealership because at the end of the day even if the manufacturer doesn't stand by the RV the dealer will the place where we got ours they gave us 100% of our money back we tell people that and they're like what and that's so having a good sales rep kind of helps too because right you got those one guys are just trying to get paid and don't really care what you buy but if you get a good one they're actually you know so it's really imperative to do your research and I think research is the biggest thing right I think that's great advice and we would definitely we couldn't agree more with hiring an rvtech we've had great experience with RV techs multiple RV techs and one of the reasons we bought new is because we didn't really have any education or any knowledge on RV so if we bought used we wouldn't know what to look for I didn't want to buy from someone privately um so I figured if we bought new there'd be no issues and we were definitely in for a rud Awakening but um as great advice I thank you for sharing that so we'll switch gears a little bit to the finance aspects of living on the road so you've been on the road since 2020 um if you could put kind of a ballpark number on what you're spending monthly what would a budget look like with us it's kind of different right because we travel but we also keep a home base so our home base is where we're at now and and this is a space that we that we don't own we rent this space um and it's it's there's everything here we we have a residency here we have get our mail there's but we did that because if something happened we could always have somewhere to go to well perfect example like right now I know everyone's probably wondering why she's in the ne yeah we were in car accident coming back from the the Thanksgiving holiday luckily I had my hitch that I used to you know tow my trailer with in the on the truck that got most of the impact the reason why we keep a home base is like right right now if we were in a campground we would be paying it through our eyes right because be so expensive or we'd have to figure out because I don't know if I could tow with my truck because I have to get it inspected insurance it's been a week a week and a half we're still battling that trying to get it somewhere to get it looked at so that's all that stuff takes time so so we have a home base and this is one of the reasons why told too I'm not I'm not I'm GNA be transparent part of the reason why we got a home base and I'm glad now we did was also fear fear of what if we don't like being on the road so now going back to the cost part of it yeah 2500 3,000 a month give a take sometimes more if we're more on the road right and if we travel outside of his area uh for work and um and or or even less because remember we don't we we own R RV so that's that's not a month so we have our truck you know like just the basics Bas everybody else has the big spending part of of the whole thing is our we have storage units right our our Nemesis so we have three of them because originally we had one in Florida and we had one up here I went to get the stuff from Florida the UA truck was full and nothing else fit so I still have a pod down there and we have two up here need us to say we're we're slowly going through things and and and we're going to make it to one and then thinking of going full time sell it all sell it all all but yeah don't you don't have to save everything no because that's just you're throwing money away we found that out the hard way if we have if we would we have added up how much we have paid on storage jit and pots and we could have bought a whole another RV no we could bought new furniture if we doy we could have we could have brought home a Furniture three times well that is a good lesson to learn that sounds like a similar conversation we had with Jim and Michelle from Air streamer last week where they were in the same position weren't sure what to do and they ended up selling everything but thank you for picking that up and including that in your monthly payment because a lot of people probably wouldn't have considered that since it's not technically an expense you're facing every day but that's a very good point to bring up just think we spent almost what $800 600 $700 on pot and and storages just think we could do more traveling we could do yeah I mean it's there's something to think about and I I know you mentioned it was kind of a fear thing I think it's a smart thing to have that fallback plan and have that home base um because like you said you never know when you're going to want to use it and you treat it like insurance it's something yes you're paying for when you aren't using it when you're traveling but it's a fallback plan and in this case you needed to have it so you're thankful you had it well prime example too like we have had really good experiences with most campgrounds but there was a campground we went to that was I I was sick with Co and I didn't know at the time it was Co I was seriously sick we had just come from a Meetup I'm typically the one who plans everything and I didn't look on the website I'm typically good about looking at space size everything and I didn't just do research on that one and it was a no it was it was built in the 40s right my our rig is 35 feet it was built in the 40s like I could barely fit down the roads to get into the spot was this weird real weird uh angle against I'm like yeah so we ended up just leave it was what a couple hours away from our home base so we ended up just making the decision for our own safety to just go and if we didn't have that security of a home base scramble and like you know where you going to go next so so it's kind of nice to have yeah then you're probably paying more for home base because you're desperate at that point so yeah great Point have you discovered any travel hacked money-saving tips so far in your full-time Adventures pilot loves they all offer for you know for using their apps they all if you have diesel um there's tons of apps uh there we also do you know good sams good sams um good sams gives you a nice discount now we're both veterans so that also helps veterans just whenever we call uh uh campgrounds we always ask any kind of discount that they have good sams military um I just turned 55 so I always ask now hey take advantage of it right yeah she's

gotp you got to take what you can get right yes yeah just those those couple little things over time yes will help because like like so we always do a big trip um we went to actually to Connecticut Niagara Falls Ohio all that stuff um West Virginia Pennsylvania Maryland and we we took about two and a half weeks and did that trip and a lot of these things help help the cost of that especially when you go up to the Northeast so so basically if you see an app on whether it's on a gas pump or it's in a store just download it you can save some money and then just ask there are ones specific for diesel but we have regular gas but um loves has them um shell has an app yeah and shell is good because typically you can save like five cents per gallon yeah and we'll put a link in the show notes for those apps we talked about so switch Gees a little bit to the work aspect uh obviously you need sell service and data when you're working full-time how do you set that up originally being in a home base it was like a DSL kind of thing and it was like I don't know 55 bucks a month it was terrible plus we had the hot spot at the time and we had the hot spot which if you you ever use those things they're good for emails or something like that but soon as you watch a movie it's done G starlink we I had signed up for it way back when it first was announced and it was great until too many people had it right um and in Georgia became an area where it wasn't available yet so I paused it because you know it got to the point where it kept going up there was a RV plan there was a travel plan it was well with the RV plan you can pause it with the other you can't which is a nice thing right so we were able to pause it we still have our account and then whenever we want we just reactivate it and then we get charged for that next month but primarily we just used it right now but right now T-Mobile T-Mobile home internet um and it works great that trip that I just about 50 bucks yeah awesome going up north and all that like all the way in N everywhere it works we take it even when we're going on a trip in our car we take it stop at at you know well we could just plug rest areas we could upload videos it's it's awesome that's good to know and that's that's been the the hotspot plan and the T-Mobile home in and that's been kind of the fan favorite so far we downloaded that or we tried that once in our house and we had like really bad service but I think now that I'm thinking can have we probably did something wrong because everyone if you're getting good service when you're on the road so here's a hack that I found out right I have a I have a friend um he has a YouTube channel it's called J Christina and he does a lot of these reviews especially Starling stuff with the home T-Mobile home internet there's four antennas on if if you got the block there's four antennas on either side the one with the screen is the main one you got to point that one out window app yeah so then the app you can actually look to see where the antenna is and then you point that towards that antenna in the nearest window and it works pretty well we're getting ready to order an external antenna and they have a new version of the modom that you can actually just plug it in because the old ones don't um and that's going to just make it a lot a lot faster perfect cool okay all right so you have honey with you and uh the question I wanted to ask was what would you say to somebody who says they can't travel and commit to a full-time travel lifestyle because they have a dog I would say in all the the time that we've been full time I have maybe found one place that um didn't allow a specific breed but I would say 90 probably five% of places our V parks are pet friendly and allow you to to bring them as long as you have them on a leash yeah and adhere to their you know pickup after them um it's it's awesome now if you have I will say sorry if you have a a smaller RV or or you're traveling in a van then don't travel with a German Shepherd yeah I mean then you want to stick to a smaller breed but absolutely we love traveling with her and she she loves it she sits at the windows you know and she just loves it this is her home it's weird because no matter where we are she knows to go back in here the other thing I would say is like let's say you do travel a lot and then you go on an adventure making sure that your AC's working if it's the middle of summer yes or if it's cold out make sure you got heat you know like you don't want the pets to suffering anyway because you forgot something um so we're or they have pet apps like waggle or monitoring systems tells you temperature that you can keep track of them but um she pretty much goes everywhere with us if we are going like we just did a trip to to Tampa in our um in just a truck um thank goodness or that could have been bad we have and this is another benefit from having a home base we have found a um pet sitting where we board her so don't be scared it's you can do it you can do it again that goes back to that testing the waters right practice do the weekends yes those are all parts that that you got to figure out if it's if it's what you really want to do you know get them up to date on vaccinations you know make sure you have all their paperwork with them because God forbid she that was a disaster itself at the beginning of the year last year at the Tampa RV Show she was actually hit by a car oh man because she's a runner she's a runner she does like being if she's off the Le she's gone sounds like do some test runs find out local pet sitters and for everything else there's an app right yes yes there is it you know what there is it also I was watching I don't I don't know the name of it but I can find out there's an app an actual app where you can find pet friendly plac is along your route to let your dog out yeah doesn't surprise me wow they have for everything check that out on our next road trip yeah yeah all swi gears and start wrapping this thing up a little bit what has been the neatest most memorable experience you guys have had while traveling so I would have to say um this past April we went to Puerto Rico I was born there I grew up there for a long time haven't been there in a long time but we rented a Class B a van and we slept on the beach for almost what a week and a half and we went drove all around the island different places went to waterfalls it was the best experience we ever had of all the camping that we have done in the past three years I would have to say that that was my favorite y talk about like being present like there is nothing like waking up and opening your doors and looking at the at at the ocean and listening to the water the and feeling the breeze and and I know sounds kind of corny and being one with nature like I was that I was not that tree hugging kind of uh feet on the sand kind of place but person but I became one when I became a nomad I guess and it was it was definitely but it's something about it it's like just sitting there and enjoying the ocean and walking on the sand and breathing the Clean Air and being able to sleep on the beaches and it was just except for the one night we got beat up by yeah yeah I don't think those were mosquitoes I think those were noos or whatever you call Y they St John those those are no

joke you can't see them but they hurt yeah other than the no seeum it sounds pretty grounding yeah even after that I would still do it again yeah for sure having spent a couple days in a van I guess when you went back to your camp or what you're in now um what were your thoughts for me it told me that I could live in a van for a couple weeks for a month you know a short trip too small I was freaking out like if you could watch our videos like leading up to that and I was like freaking out because I was like I have to go to the bathroom in a van you know I was freaking out because of chophia and it was fine she was fine it was totally fine and I was like that just proved to me like even further more that I could do more to step out of my comfort zone just even the thought of like camping for a couple of days and not showering I was the type of person that was like what she's never she's never been camping other than never I never been 10 so that was the closest so we kind of went backwards in camping right so but I actually loved it I actually LED this van and I told him I could see us buying a van for for short of trips you know yeah because I mean look the this size RV for what we're doing or even just going on vacation is great you got plenty of room the van the cool part with the van is you can pick up and go somewhere like that and get into places fo right rig couldn't you know feeling more stealth certainly pros and cons of each yes yes if you could have listened to this podcast when you were first starting out is there a question I didn't ask tonight that you would have asked how would you answer that now I would say do it because you're not going to regret it because that's the first thought that everyone thinks am i g to regret am i g know what am I doing I'm leaving my family I'm pretty much selling some of my possessions I'm getting rid of my house am I GNA regret this and the only thing I regret is not doing it sooner the other thing I would say is it saves you money right because you don't have the mortgage you don't have a lot more to pay for but is not as cheap as people think either right so make sure that you have income that allows you to live this life so you want to live and then for someone who's listening to this now who wants to start out and set up a lifestyle that you have currently what would be one thing they could start doing today research listen watch YouTube I know it sounds cliche and dumb whatever but that's how we learned a lot cuz like like when I first bought an RV I didn't know how like how do you level an RV how do I do that so I looked it up on YouTube St it and like oh I don't have those little ramp things that to make one side bigger and or higher up or lower so I had to go and buy them and like so like I learned and I did that before we went even on our first trip so like check out there's videos out there talk to someone who has an RV I had one of my Old Navy buddies had one you know I picked his brain a bunch of times so stuff like that I would tell them go watch RV life with Adrian and Ruth look at that playlist so you want to go fulltime now what and do everything they didn't do yeah learn from their mistakes right learn from their mistakes yes that's great did you have any other YouTube channels that you were watching when you were carving your path guy out of Miami called traveling Robert we we would watch his his his his uh videos sometimes we would fall asleep he and he has these three hour long ones where he puts like a whole series together and they would just play the whole night so there's and we would joke about it this is like before we even thought about buying an RV and we would be like imagine that you think you could do that and you'd be like I don't know I don't know if I could live on the road for that long and I'd be like I know I don't know man I need I need all my shoes and you don't no no and and here we are like I mean sometimes we sit here and think about it and and say like I can't believe it sometimes I can't believe this is our life um so yeah him changing changing lanes um you know to see that they did it full-time um and that you know that kind of stuff so that that was cool and then you know to come full circle we got to meet those guys at the tar show so it was kind of cool to actually meet the people that kind of inspired you to go do this stuff that's awesome yeah very cool we'll put a link in the show notes for those channels right there and while my audience is checking them out where can they find out more about you our website's currently under the construction but it'll be um RB life productions.com and that us usually has everything on there about us um our Channel you know what we do but I am on social media every single day RV life with Adrian and Ruth Instagram the RV esthetician um uh we're on uh Facebook we're on Tik Tok we're on Instagram and YouTube RV life with Adrian and Ruth we um it's the same everywhere we do lives every Sunday and um we typically do series like right now we're doing vlogmas but next month we're going to do a um Latin rvers series and we had van life in Puerto Rico Series so we try to do a fun little Series yeah um but we also do informative stuff too yeah so we try to help people with some of our experiences like like our serious so you want to go fulltime now what that's a serious because we had a lot of people ask us um you know questions and we were like totally like we'll tell you exactly what not to do you know so it's a good way to to get other people's perspective of those same questions and share with audience that's great and like you said you guys are very active on social media so and I think in about 40 minutes you're jumping on a live stream pretty quickly here so everyone go check him out Adrian and Ruth thank you guys so much thank you thank you for having us thank you

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Connect with Jim and Michelle at:

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Vintage Insight Photography - YouTube

Jim and Michelle Fisher from Airstreamer are back to teach us about one of their favorite destinations, Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In today's show, you'll learn all about:

🔵Beautiful cold springs

🌅Sunset locations

🥟Some delicious, native food you have to try

And more!

#travel #michigan #michiganupperpeninsula

Resources:

Manistique Tourism Council (visitmanistique.com)

Indian Lake State Park | Michigan

Palms Book State Park | Michigan

Manistique Tourism Council - The Big Spring (visitmanistique.com)

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Keweenaw Peninsula | Michigan

9 Things You May Not Know About the Soo Locks | Michigan

Home - Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (shipwreckmuseum.com)

Gordon Lightfoot - Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald (Official Audio) (youtube.com)

Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum & Whitefish Point Light Station | Michigan

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

Jim and Michelle fiser thank you guys for coming back on the show today hi hi thanks so much for having us all right great so in case you missed the first episode Jim and Michelle came on the Travel path podcast they talked about their really cool story of how they retired saved up for a while they bought a airst stream a couple months ago and they're living life fulltime so if you missed the first part check that out and today we're going to be talking about a destination that you guys know best so where are we talking about um we talked about it we're going to talk about Michigan's Upper Peninsula and in fact right around manque Michigan there's a wonderful State Park up there called Indian Lake State Park uh that we've been to a number of times and we really really enjoy it there oh awesome what makes that Park so special for you guys well so special for us is um 30 years ago when we were married um we did a honeymoon trip a camping honeymoon trip in a tent and we ended up at Indian Lake State Park there was a park in Wisconsin we wanted to go to I went to as a kid and we went there and it was an awful experience it rained on us all night the raccoons broke into all of our food and it was terrible so we just left and then drove into Michigan supper Peninsula and stumbled across Indian Lake and it was just a magical place for us uh we had this wonderful campsite we set up our tent and um it's just a beautiful beautiful area um it's kind of on the upper end of Lake Michigan but it's on its own little Inland Lake Indian Lake and then there's an adjoining State Park really close to it that doesn't have camping and that's Paul book State Park and there's a spring in there called kitch ity Kippy which means um land of the Cold Spring and it's this absolute Crystal Clear Spring that you get to go out on a raft and you can look down and see the trout and because of the minerals in the water it's all tinted this really pretty copper green and um it's just just amazing and because the water is cold it's like 45° the fish it's almost like it's in slow motion underwater when you watch the fish um but it's just a a really nice area it's a nice small town there's some really nice little restaurants there um the last time we were there there was a brand new Indian restaurant open oh my gosh the food was delicious just amazing oh perfect what type of um so obviously there's you know there's sounds like there's a little town somewhere you can eat some camping you can do what other activities have seen around in the area around there that's kind of enough for us um but there's um a lot of hiking um you could do bicycling around there a lot of exploring but especially the up is great for hiking it's really not a touristy type of place where you're going to go and you're going to do ziplining in water parks or anything uh Michigan supper Peninsula is is just you're experiencing nature and very very beautiful nature um up in that area it's just stunning people go up there um just generally love it they said they had no idea Michigan was that pretty now to get the full experience how many days do you think someone should plan if they're going to go vacation there um I would say that you could see um everything probably in a week so you really could in there like at that one Park you know but if you're going to experience Michigan's Upper Peninsula about a month maybe even six weeks um it's a pretty big area people don't realize how big the Upper Peninsula is and everything is quite remote and takes you a while to get from here to there but there's all kinds of things up there you've got pitched rocks you've got the KY or the uh Kian oppen I think is what's there um you've got the Su locks which is a whole lock system for freighter Transportation um through the great lakes and that's right up in the Sous St Marie area of course the upper peninsula touches Canada in a number of places you got Lake Superior um there's shipwrecks up there um there's a shipwreck museum and of course it was in Lake Superior that the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk um the song by Gordon Lightfoot and the Shipwreck Museum has a bunch of stuff dedicated because it's right at White Fish Point um right where he sings about in the song um so but it's just there's just so much that quam and waterfalls they call root beer Falls um because of the coloring the tan in the water there's just so much to see in Michigan souer Peninsula oh very cool now obviously it's Michigan so we're going to get pretty chilly in the winter what do you think the best time of year is to visit summer definitely summer um and all in fact we're planning on going and spending a month there this summer um kind of In The Heat Of Summer um because it's fair it's a little cooler up there especially if you're up near uh Lake Superior uh Lake Superior is a very cold lake um it's very deep I would say the latest would be September latest you'd get some beautiful fall color but things start closing down very true now you're not traveling with any pets you don't have any small children but when you've been there is it a good time to bring your pets to this area bring your kids yes absolutely we went there um I say we honeymoon there did a unexpected honeymoon stop there and then years later when we had our other camper and the kids we went back there with the kids and we all had a great time and again did the kitcheny Kippy um thing and did some other stuff pretty much all Michigan state parks are pet friendly and definitely children friendly they usually have Camp around host and they'll do uh crafts and different things for kids in the week um or especially on the weekends there's usually great play areas for them to play now you've gone and you said you've done tent camping you've also obviously taken your first RV or camper that you had a lot of Hotel options too have you been up there and seen you know ins and hotels bed and breakfast we we actually did we did a bed and breakfast we've done a couple hotels in that um in the St ignis area which is right as you cross into the Upper Peninsula Across The Mao Bridge we've done some trips there or one Motel we stayed at like a little log cabiny Motel very 1950s um and then um a bed and breakfast but in the upper peninsula things are a little more rustic don't expect a five-star Motel experience or hotel experience in the up of Michigan things are a little more simple that's the charm and that's the beauty of it yeah and like you said you're really just there to enjoy the nature of it all right so you want to be spending your time outside yeah but I would I would strongly suggest if somebody's going to be up in northern Michigan to cross that Mao bridge and make then stay in the upper peninsula rather than the lower Peninsula lower Peninsula has some beautiful places to stay as well but if you're going to be that close jump over and uh it's a whole different world up there yeah we we have not been but that's what I've heard I heard it's just fantastic to go and visit so much to do in the summer in the summer well if you're a skier there's some Michigan has some pretty good ski resorts for downhill skiing in the winter um I wouldn't do that in an RV but um you know in a in a resort area or something there some there's some really worldclass um ski resorts smaller Hills Hills Hill um and it's a little more icy snow not powder snow like you're going to get out in Colorado or someplace or Utah Michelle you said that in run September time frame it tends to shut down is that literally like restaurants hotels closing for the season or does it just really slow down I think it more just slows down ma Island though closes down you know things ice up and often the the Waterway to even get to the island will freeze solid the only way there's people that live on the island and sometimes the only way they can get across to the mainland is across the ice or fly off so when things are open do you have any favorite breakfast lunch dinner tasty treat spots no favorites but for most people who go there they're going to want to experience um traditional Upper Peninsula food and that's a PTI um which is like a it's sort of like a meat pie and designed to be portable and carried and I would suggest that pretty much everybody find a place that has pasties and try one out oh those sound good they do sound good yeah I've not heard not tried or heard of that before but I will uh definitely try one out if I venture over there that'll be on the list for sure and they would use them because there's a lot of mining a lot of iron and copper mining in the upper peninsula and so the wives would make these for their husbands and they would pack them with them and in the colder months it would help keep them warm and then it was a very filling and Hearty meal that they could eat with their fingers because they couldn't have um utensils or anything in the mines and so that's kind of where PES came from well I'm glad you clarified that cuz I was thinking for some reason Pie Pizza it was almost like a me like a meat pizza but it's not it's almost like a shepherd's pie or chicken pot pie but just with meat it sounds like potatoes and meat and potatoes very hearty and then again a pinched clo pastry so kind of like a like Empanada empata yeah yeah that's what I was gonna say but bigger I think like a ravioli but that's not quite right um but yeah so but again designed to be eaten like a fully warmed up sandwich designed to be eaten with your hands oh wow that sounds good I want one even more yeah perfect all right we're going to Pivot into what we call the 321 countdown so our final three questions before you wrap up what are three things you'd recommend people do in the upper peninsula Kitty Kippy for sure what else would you want to do up there sunsets yeah the sunsets over Indian Lake are just gorgeous so in the evening people um will migrate to and it's a not a big Inland Lake but they'll migrate and there's actually walkways you can stand outter platforms and watch the sunset people do that are is pictured rocks near there or picted rocks is close enough you could get there but it's it pictured rocks um is on the Lake Superior side um so it'd be about an A little over an hour drive hour and a half drive from there and that's worth a visit too yeah just it's a gorgeous it's it's wonderful looking from the land but then even better if you have the opportunity to take a boat and go in the water past pictured rocks that's the most amazing great if someone were to have two complaints or things they wish they had considered before they visited what would they be flies black flies check online when the area you're going to their in season um cuz like a lot of places have where bugs hatch or whatever and you if you're there at that time it could be a bad experience since things AR remote up there and you're going to be traveling some distances just make sure that all your equipment is in good repair um because the last thing you want to do is break down on a road and then have to wait six hours for the next person to drive by and um help you out yeah really good point and there's no there's very little sell service or connectivity up there great yeah two excellent tips thank you so what is one thing you simply cannot this Upper Peninsula without doing the thing that michiganders have to see in the upper peninsula is toquam and falls and uh I would suggest that there's two sets of waterfalls there's an upper Falls and a lower Falls and it's very easy to get to when you cross over into ma or off the ma Bridge into the Upper Peninsula it's just about an hour up in the town is called Paradise that's right there and there's actually state parks right in that area we've not stayed at those oh that town is really fun too yeah Paradise there's a lot to do in that town and some really good restaurants MH yeah yeah we ate at last time we were there was a brand new restaurant just opened up I think it was Wagon Wheel or something like that remember I can't remember their burgers were awesome yeah awesome all right guys well thank you very much I think there's definitely enough content here for someone to plan their trip I know we definitely would um use this as an itinerary guide so thank you for sharing that we appreciate it oh you're very welcome very welcome and I'll put some links in the description in the show notes for everything we talked about here and while my audience is checking out that where can they find you guys can find us on YouTube as air streamer and again if you search probably put the at symbol in first at and then airstreamer and then on Facebook Instagram Twitter which is no X um but we're all on airstreamer dolie and then our website as well which is of course www.st streamer. lifee great everyone check them out Jim and Michelle thanks again thank you guys so much we enjoyed it thanks for having us on

www.atravelpath.com

Connect with Jim and Michelle at:

Home - Airstreamer

AirStreamer - YouTube

instagram.com/airstreamer.life

twitter.com/AirstreamerLife

facebook.com/AirStreamer.life

Vintage Insight Photography - YouTube

In today's episode Hope and I sat down with Jim and Michelle Fisher from Airstreamer. The newly retired, full time travelers shared their insight on many helpful topics, including:

🥺The emotional toll of downsizing and

📆How to plan your stays around the big destinations you want to visit

🥳How attending Airstream rallies have given them a new sense of community

And much more!

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

#travel #airstream #fulltimetravel #rv

Resources:

🏕️Stays

RV Camping at Wineries, Breweries, Farms & More with Harvest Hosts

Top of Georgia Airstream Park (airstreamclub.net)

RV LIFE Trip Wizard - RV Trip Planner & RV Safe Routes

Corps of Engineers Camping Locations and Information (rv-camping.org)

RV Parks, Caravan Parks and unique RV Camping locations - Campendium

🎈Things to Do

Airstream Club International | We Rally Together

Red Rock Balloons | Hot Air Balloon Rides in Sedona, AZ

Their Video: Hot air BALLOON ride over Cathedral Rock: fly high and conquer your fears! - YouTube

📫Mail

Americas Mailbox | South Dakota Mail Forwarding Company

Free Rewards Membership: Earn Shopper Rewards – Kroger - Kroger

📶Internet

AT&T Official Site | Our Best Wireless & Internet Service (att.com)

Reliable 5G Home Internet service | T-Mobile 5G Home Internet

YouTube Channels:

How to Be a Digital Nomad With Kayla Ihrig - Zero to Travel (the podcast mentioned)

LuvSubbin: https://www.youtube.com/@LuvSubbin Keep your Daydream: https://www.youtube.com/@KeepYourDaydream Today is Someday: https://www.youtube.com/@todayissomeday The Grateful Glamper: https://www.youtube.com/@GratefulGlamper Bound For Nowhere: https://www.youtube.com/@BoundForNowhere

Applicable Blogs: The Importance of Mobile RV Techs: https://atravelpath.com/mobile-rv-technician/

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

Jim and Michelle fiser thank you for joining hope and I on the Travel path podcast hey thanks thanks for having us here thanks for having us so hope and I know you on YouTube as airst streamer you guys sold your home in 2022 you're on YouTube you make all sorts of videos on travel tips things to do in your RV how to take care of your RV even a video on how you floated your 28t Airstream across Lake Michigan which I have to get into um why don't we start by having you share with the audience a little bit about yourselves and then what your travel lifestyle looks like sure absolutely we retired um both of us um in September from multiple jobs um we had doing a number of different things what we say we're empty nesters and we do um we did retire but we work travel basically we still are um working while we're on the road doing the new um YouTube channel and uh filming content for that and and editing and all of the stuff that comes with that so I know you asked about um what does travel look like for us we're still fairly new um it was on Labor Day this year that we actually left um Port here on Michigan and started our track South and for this full-time adventure and we're still trying to get our Rhythm so there's been sometimes we stayed just one night at a place they got a harvest host other times we stayed a week um where we're at right now top of Georgia um Airstream Park we've been here for 3 weeks we're just about to head out and then later on this year we're going to have our first month's day um at one location so we're trying to see what works for us and what we enjoy very cool yeah we can definitely relate to quite a bit of that um everything from beginning the editing process with the videos and all that and then trying out Harvest hosts and um just yeah just kind of learning as you go on the road so it sounds like that's great you guys sold your home you've been on the road for a little while now from the day you decided that you wanted to travel and do this full-time until the day you actually hitched up your Airstream and hit the road how long was that time frame it was about a twoyear process from when we decided that we wanted to do this and kind of the spark is um we actually did a two-e road trip we um our niece was getting married out in Arizona and um we both had time available so we decided why whyfly will drive instead so we packed a whole bunch of stuff in our little Jeep Cherokee and drove out to Phoenix and back and did Adventures along the way and since I had the photography YouTube channel I said well let's find some spots along the way to photograph and we found we we really travel well together we really enjoy traveling and it was on the way back Michelle looked at me and what' you say could we do this full-time do you think so we're actually driving I think we were coming back like in Missouri or someplace and driving along we started looking at other people Towing campers and different things and what do we want to do and the whole rest of the trip became a huge discussion about what would this actually look like what type of equipment would we need how big how small where would we go and uh what all does that mean that we have to do that's a really cool story and it sounds like so something you didn't really intend on doing when you did that road trip but after spending some time on the road you just considered we could actually do this full time would you recommend somebody do something like that instead of jumping right into it on our last podcast with brus they had mentioned that they knew many people that just jumped right into van life um with really high expectations and didn't really consider all like the downsides of living on the road forever um so it probably helped out having just being on the for two weeks to begin with to at least kind of get your bearings uh We've camped our whole life basically I my family we always camped and then when we had our kids we camped so we had camping experience you know one of the ways that we made this work was to be able to downsize if someone doesn't have to get rid of everything um and can just buy a van and go try that out um that's that's one thing but it definitely was a planning thing for us and I I think it just depends on the person and what their situation is and downsizing going from gu it a five bedroom Colonial a five-bedroom Victorian home down to 28 foot hairstream that must have been somewhat challenging what did that look like and were there any other big challenges you had to overcome before you got on the road yeah the downsizing was pretty interesting because it was a five five-bedroom 3200 ft High Victorian in a historic district so it was decorated to the at Christmas time I mean we're filming this pretty close to Christmas we put up five Christmas trees every year and invite a bunch of people in and and do all kinds of stuff so going from that size of a home to about 200 square ft was a pretty serious downsizing our kids had moved out at that point and it was just the two of us and we're starting to you know knock around in a big house with lots of empty rooms and um it was a lot for us and a lot to take care of yes a lot to clean a lot of to repair I would do pretty much all the maintenance on the house and um and I did all of the landscaping and garden work and you know keeping up the house we never hired anybody to do that it was we always did it yeah so it was you know kind of like why are we why are we doing this yeah the house the house was beginning to own us rather than us own the house so we were very fortunate in that the person that bought our house um loved how we had decorated and wanted to know if they could buy all the Furnishings so that made it easy for us but we were ready everything is becoming a burden rather than a blessing I guess the takeaway there is if you can sell your house with everything in it before you go fulltime then do that because that makes it a lot easier to take the downsize and plan when you're traveling I think it's a pretty pretty unique story in that one so it sounds like you got through the whole moving process downsizing process pretty easily um were there any adjustments you had to make once you were actually on the road full time I don't want to say it was easy cuz it took 2 years the furniture and stuff and some of the Furnishings he bought there was still we had an estate sale additionally to that and then we moved out of our house and moved into an apartment for a year continued to downsize and then you know eventually transitioned into the camper and we were still working full-time so it easy is not a word I use it's a lot of work it's it's a lot of emotional because he he bought the stuff but you have the things that are memories that are that are personal to you and your family and raising your kids in the home and um we homeschool our children all the way through so you had to kind of walk through the emotional parts of it and be able to you know recognize that your memories aren't in the things yeah that's a good point I think a lot of people might Overlook that aspect of it when they're down sizing it sounds easy on paper to maybe get rid of everything but yeah like you said you have a lot of emotional attachments whether it's know pictures you can't bring Furniture your house right a lot of memories in your house you've been living in for quite a long time so not very easy doing that we did make the decision to not get a storage unit or anything that you know a lot of people do that they because they just can't emotionally part with it there's some things that are sentimental but nobody wants them and so they do end up in a landfill and and but that's what's going to happen after you pass anyway someone's got to deal with it at some point we didn't want to burden our children with having to deal with all that stuff so I guess what would you say to someone who's on that edge where they do want to make this commitment and go fulltime but they're just really emotionally attached to whether it's their house their Furnishings things they own they just don't want want to get rid of what would your advice for them be they're not ready yeah unless they can handle financially having a home and and there's people who do that but um and then just kind of check in occasionally at their home base and mostly travel you know it's expensive to travel too we had a lot of people say to us you're so lucky um there you're so lucky to be able to do this and um I jokingly have started to say well you you too can live on the road fulltime if you just sell everything you own yeah that's funny we've gotten the same the same exact feedback as well like someone will look at us and say you guys are lucky you can travel and we say the same thing realistically anybody can do it it took us our kind of path to get there was three years we you know invested in things and quit our jobs and we I worked a job with scalable income so we could save up so you know it's that shiny picture perfect thing from the outside but there's a lot of work that goes into getting on the road that people often times don't see yes yes so since you've been on the road what are some big frustrations that you fa today or faced when you started out that you didn't expect to have to deal with we um knew we were going to have to change our domicile and everything so we did that and we got a mail drop service so we have an address um and then we just you know contact them like um once every other week and say forward our mail to us and that works great that works smooth one thing I didn't anticipate was packages if you order and we've had two pretty severe difficulties now ordering product from Amazon usually it's very quick it's very nice everything works great but I try to take advantage of the one of the Black Friday specials they had and course digital content creator you know you need uh flash or the the external ssds you need a ton of them so I ordered some and where we were going to be in about a week to one of the Amazon's drop boxes you know they have those little drop boxes you can have them shipped to they only store it for 3 days if you don't pick it up in 3 days it goes back we didn't know that we didn't know that we know that now we know that now and um so and I ordered a few of these things so it it's a few hundred and then when it's that much money they don't instantly refund you the money um they have to wait till they get it back and it's a lot slower going back than it is going there so it took them about six to eight weeks yeah for to issue a refund on that you know and then in the meantime I had to order more anyway because I still needed them and I then I missed the special that it had so we spent a few extra bucks not a lot but a few and then uh another one of all things it's Christmas time we were big decorators for Christmas at our house but I got rid of most everything and just brought a couple little things because I knew I'd want to have some festive but once we started putting it up I thought oh I brought a few ornaments with me and we don't have a tree um I didn't think we'd have room for a tree at all but we got looking at it and we fit a little you know just a little tree and so we ordered one online we're here 3 weeks we're like that'll be no problem it's been a problem we have yet to get it and it keeps saying out for delivery and and then goes back that the who whatever whoever truck get going on actually never makes it this far to deliver it and it goes back so I've called FedEx a few times and Amazon says if I don't get it by Friday they'll refund our money but we're leaving Thursday morning H so if they deliver it Thursday or Friday I don't know then it's delivered here and I don't have it and I can't get it so that's that's been the biggest thing um totally unanticipated well it's always those unanticipated headaches that you don't expect that are that tend to be one of the you know some of the more painful ones and that's a good tip I did not consider that you know you see those Amazon drop off locations pretty much everywhere nowadays but I did not realize if it's there for 3 days they send it right back so thank you for sharing that yeah there's a specific number that's not on their website that you can call to extend that stay but we didn't get that until afterwards they said you should have just called this number it's like you didn't have the number yeah it's on the drop box it's on the location but we weren't going to be there till you know so that's something good for people to know get that phone number so that they can contact the company direct yeah yeah good point now you said for a regular mail what are you doing for regular mail cuz I that's always something where I'm like how do you get your mail yeah yeah regular mail what we've done is we signed up with a mail delivery service in South Dakota um Box Elder South Dakota we chose America's mailbox and then we actually changed our domicile from Michigan to South Dakota so now our vehicles are out plated in South Dakota we have South Dakota driver's licenses and South Dakota Insurance on everything and so our mail is delivered there and then they will forward it to us um when we say please forward it to us to this address and they just pack it up and send it to you um you know there a fee for the service and you know they have money on hold and they just kind of chip away at that and as soon as that's gone then they grab some more but that's been very I mean very efficient and they always send it when they say and we always get it within a few days good tip okay and how much was that fee for America's mailbox well they have they have uh at least five different tiers services and I can't remember all of them um but they have a really basic um entry level service that is just enough for you to establish domicile where they'll you can get your vehicles registered before you go out and get your driver's license and get they'll mail them to you and all that and then you move up a step and different things and then they have all the way their top tier step is actually a digital service where everything is scanned and you can go online in a secure Dropbox and you can look at all of the envelopes they don't open it unless you request and then you can say forward these or open these or throw these away and they'll do all that that's really good if you have something that's really time critical I should say and then you can read it right on your computer on the road well hopefully you guys get your Christmas tree we have about 20 days left before Christmas and it's going to be tough going from the five trees you had in your old home to not having any so we're Ro for you thanks thank you we need all the rooting we can get all right Perfect all right we'll transition a little bit to some of the financials of living on the road so you've been on the road for a couple months now if you could break down a budget on what you spend per month what would that look like uh more more than we want um and a little more than we thought yeah and part of part of the trouble is we've only been doing it a few months and we kind of have an idea of what we spend for groceries and that's been more because inflation the prices of grocer have gone up crazy so and when we first left you know we're kind of like woohoo we're retired and um we'd eat out more because it was fun and and we were moving more often so that's harder when you're going from location to location in only a couple of days to figure out a menu and to figure out a grocery plan and cook so we figured out pretty quickly that we can't keep doing that this time we're here 3 weeks so we had a chance to sort of plan a menu and plan grocery shopping and then cook more that definitely is going to save us a lot more money um doing that gas has been about what we expected gas to be um and it's about about $3 a gallon roughly and um you know varies about a quarter well about two 290 is about the least yeah up to about 350 um and we get about Towing we get about 13 miles per gallon um with our r a setup so it's not too bad um but again that varies if you're traveling every three or four days then your gas expense is going to be higher than if you go somewhere and stay for a month sure and then you get discount stays if you stay you know for those longer periods of time and I think that's a good point is when you're starting out you're kind of in that honeymoon phase so you're probably going out more than you're expecting to so maybe the advice would be to somebody starting out you know on a retirement trip just to kind of expect to overdo it a little bit when you start out and just get a feel for how much things cost and then maybe you can kind of tighten it down and go over a budget after you've got a couple months of experience yes yeah sure okay yeah and if you save somebody here you can Splurge over there kind so it's got to balance out right yeah so we're trying to find less expensive places to stay day then it gives us some more funds to maybe go out to dinner every now and then or um treat ourselves to an Adventure how are you finding places to stay I know we've interviewed in the past we've had on like you know the van life people where they're it's a little easier they're more mobile and more hidden they blend in a little more with normal cars when they're overnight parking so Towing at Airstream obviously someone looking at that they know you're camping are you doing a lot of boondocking Harvest hosting what does your night stays look like we haven't really done any boondocking yet we want to try that I think we have about a three to four four days to be stretching it with our setup because we're still running lead acid batteries we have no solar um so we'd have to really conserve and really be careful but um I know with our old camper when the kids were little we could do three to four days with the four of us and one lead acid battery and that's before LEDs um we like Harvest host between travel we'll try to find a harvest host halfway um we try not to drive more than 3 hours um when we go somewhere because travel days are pretty taxing you got to pack everything up make sure everything is buttoned down you got to make sure everything is correct go through all your checklists and then you got to drive and then get there and then you got to undo all that so if you're doing that every day it's a lot it's a lot to tear everything down and put it all back together and that's when mistakes are made and bad things can happen so um so we do that but you asked how do we find places to stay we like a lot of State campgrounds and a tool that I found invaluable is the RV trip wizard from RV life um that is that is how we book or how we plan pretty much our all of our stays like we'll look at an area we want to be in the country or a a site we want to see and then start to look for places to stay around that and figure out what fits the budget and kind of fits our lifestyle so we'll put the big rocks in as we travel and then you try to to fill in the little stuff and harvest HS are nice cuz usually you don't we don't unhook we've also recently just started um using the Coe what they call Army core of engineer core of engineer parks and they're beautiful the everyone we've been to has been beautiful and very inexpensive and pretty easy to get into yeah in fact the last core of engineers we were at even had free laundry facilities um when you stay there now there was only one washer and one dryer so it was kind of hard to get to um to use that but we were paying what we pay $617 a night for Water and Electric we had 50 amp electric and water but that is because I have the national park pass and I have the lifetime senior pass I turned 62 um last year or this year some at some point in the past I turned 62 and and so with that the Army Corp engineer campgrounds are half price um that's really handy so if it's a $30 a night the normally is you're only paying 15 really cool all right and you mentioned the RV trip wizard we'll put a link in the show notes for all the resources mentioned in this podcast so I know you've had a kind of a limited time so far in your full-time Adventure have there been any money saving tips you've discovered along the way so far we like to do grocery stores that have the um Loyalty cards we from home we always used Kroger and and Meer but they don't really have Meer in the places we've been and you get you know when you spend money then you get money points towards gas so uh We've sort of chosen some more in the areas we've been and made sure we got that loyalty card so I think if if a store offers that it's really a really a good thing to do because you save off of the groceries and you also get points toward gas MH it's especially a good tip because when you go from home where you have a normalized fridge you're spending more money already because you're going to the the grocery store more often that's one thing we learned pretty quickly when we lived in our camper was we go to you know wholesale get buying bulk and you cannot do that when you're living in a van or an RV so no no no Sam's cup or crossco trips NOP do work Switching gears a little bit to some of the experiences you guys have had so far it doesn't have to be on your full-time Adventure recently but what has been the most memorable experience you guys have had while traveling the rallies we've been going to for Airstream that's really where we started to feel um plugged into a community one of the hardest things about leaving um all our friends and family and you know neighbors behind was the relationships and I'm a pretty extroverted person and I need close relationships so I mean they're still in our lives but they're still working so they have life they've got to keep doing so we knew we would meet people and we knew we would um be able to plug in but a lot of the places you go it's people come and go and come and go and I was our first rally um for Airstream the Airstream community and I'm sure there's other brands that do these same same things but um it was part of the reason we wanted an Airstream is they're very much about um gathering together and as you say you know we break bread and we have meals together and we you get to know them because you see them more than once you'll see them at this rally and then you'll go to another one or you'll see them in a park somewhere and so you begin to build some closer relationships and then as far as like a maybe an individual experience that we had you you really enjoyed the hot air ballooning we did out in Arizona yeah yeah I'm afraid of heights um but Jim had been up air hot air balloons numerous times through the years and I always thought it's something i' I wanted to do I want to kind of push through that fear and I thought Arizona would be a beautiful place to to see from the sky and uh we did it and it was an amazing experience wow what part of Arizona were you in Sedona that was in Sedona yeah it was almost exactly one year ago so was there was snow and everything oh very cool we um when we were in Sedona we did some we went to watch sunrise and we watched the hot air balloons go up and I remember we sat there and we were like that's what we should have done so that's very cool to hear that you've done that and I take it you you conquered your fear of fights there Mich your fear of heights Michelle doing the hot air balloon oh no no first of all being in a hot air balloon it was not you go with the wind so it's not loud except when the um burner the burner goes on but other than that it's quiet and still and you're with the breeze so it's very surreal it's it's like you're not really even moving but yet you're seeing all of this sight and I didn't do do a whole lot of looking down um I I did a little but mostly I looked out that was okay and Jim was recording down so I saw that when he you know made his video well I think RV life sometimes is about pushing your boundaries every now and then right getting outside of your comfort zone so good for you and fortunately there's plenty of other beautiful things to see in Sedona as well so there's no shortage there hey what do you guys do for internet when you're traveling internet so um I wanted to have a two-prong service and um something inexpensive our cell phones for years we've been with AT&T and we can hotspot off of those and AT&T has got a pretty good Network across the country so that's was our first line of attack and then looking at all the other things and around I'm trying out um T-Mobile's home internet and so it's $50 a month and absolutely Unlimited No data caps and it is a cellular type service and it is designed for home use but they kind of so far have looked the other way with travel um but it's been um blazingly fast in most places we've been um so then I either have that service or if we don't have that AT&T but I've yet to ever have the AT&T service faster I think than the um T-Mobile um we've been to two places that haven't had cell service at all and one was at Park in um was it in it was in North Carolina I think and um anyway there was no there was Zero cell we climb up to top of the mountain we could check test text messages oh yeah yeah yeah and um so there was no sell service or disconnected there and actually where we are right now um in Northern Georgia we're in a little Valley so there's zero cell service but the top of Georgia Airstream park has phenomenal Wi-Fi through the whole park and that's actually what we're communicating on that's R you can actually video stream on a campground Wi-Fi that sounds unbelievable to me you're watching this on YouTube the image is coming in pretty clear too so that's a really strong signal wow yeah it's it's an amazingly strong signal because it's it's sort of kind of a private Campground it's the local Airstream club and they run it but then they open it up to anybody with an Airstream you have to have an Airstream to be here um you know it's not like your normal um Campground that has kind of iffy Wi-Fi they've made sure that this is good and strong um in fact this is the best campground Wi-Fi I've ever had I think it's almost better than the home internet we had back in Port here on until I went to the T-Mobile service then I was getting 300 400 megabyte download it was crazy yeah that does sound yeah we know all about the spotty Campground Wi-Fi yeah is there one thing that you found living in your RV that you can't live without and then also one thing that you found that you need so um for me um I I can't live without my faith in God um I try I was thinking about physical things and I think that's one of the things when you get rid of most everything you have you realize um the things that aren't necessarily tangible are almost more important so um it really helps me to with how often we change and how change happens every day now when you're on the road um you just have you just don't know sometimes you really not in control of most everything and um it just helps me with peace of mind to just be able to trust that you know we we have a God that loves us and is with us all the time so that's me that's her she she went deep and I agree with what she said 100% but um also the U bathroom inside is great because at 3: in the morning if you wake up and you need to use it you don't have to go outside somewhere and truck on down to the the pit toilet or something it's right here it's convenient and uh clean because you clean it all the time yep yeah we agree yeah we're right there with you yeah that's that was one of the I think it's something you definitely I mean everyone has a bathroom but it's going if you living in an RV that didn't have one then you upgraded to having one with a bathroom I think people would say the same thing yeah that was one of our non-negotiables and we were looking around we wanted a bathroom and a shower and yeah yes definitely that we had one cool has there been something that you thought you would need that you realized after traveling for a little while that you actually didn't really need well clothing is one of the things we still have too much clothing we downsize so much but we still say part of it is we're going to wait till we get to warm weather um cuz the idea is we have sort of all seon clothing yet just to make sure and I'm glad we did because it's been cold here really cold here so you kind of have to keep some of everything but um I still think we can probably downsize more that's funny you bring that up that's one thing because we actually rent out our van when we're not using it and that's one way we'd be able to tell like a seasoned RV for someone who's actually renting it out for like their first trip they would bring like bags and bags of clothing for like a weekend trip or a week trip and like you guys are going to regret that yeah there isn't room for that you want to be able to move around and enjoy your space yeah that's it absolutely for someone who's listening to this podcast who wants to set up the similar lifestyle to yours they want to retire hit the road travel full-time what would be one thing they could start doing today to make that happen probably the best thing if if you want to do it you need to Envision the end product or where you're going to be and then kind of reverse engineer back all the steps you need to do what do I need to do to be there so like for us we knew we wanted to live in something about this size and full-time and not have any storage and we had all this stuff so we knew we had so if we need to be this and have things fit in a 200 foot environment then that you just can't work backwards what what steps do I have to do and so we've got you you've got to sell your house you've got to um get rid of all the various things you can't take You' got to decide what's going to happen with all the family heirlooms if this is what you want do if you want to live fulltime you have to make the decision that that's that's what I'm going to do and you have to be ready you have to be ready to to part with your things um if you're not if you're not ready I think a lot of people do put things in storage um but we've talked to quite a few people out on the road that have done that and they're regretting it because they're paying a monthly fee for stuff that they haven't gone back and looked at and um and ultimately they still have to go back and look at it and figure out what to do with it and if you're not ready then hold off you know say well let's give it another six months or whatever I like the point you brought up Michelle about not only you know the tangible you know the assets what what have you the artwork and everything all the memories but it's the people too um when you're stepping away from that life if you're living in a community where you have close friends close family you're just not going to be there for certain things and that's something you have to accept from the beginning too um whether it's birthdays holidays um you know even sometimes not to get morbid but funerals and things like that if it's if you're halfway across the country and you're just not going to be included in certain things I was listening to a podcast the other day where um people were talking about how sometimes like they'll see like their circle of friends just changes you know friends move on um you know you're no longer a part of their life they're going to be doing things without you as well um so there's a huge trade-off right you're traveling you're adventuring you're seeing all sorts of things but there are things you're giving up for that too it's important to know sure that is very important to consider when you were looking to get into traveling were there any YouTube channels that you looked up to and helped motivate you to get on the road and travel uh keep your Daydream is one of our favorites out there um really enjoy them and their content and then uh Phil and Stacy with um uh today is Sunday um they I binged a lot of their content and trying to look at things we needed and different things that would work with our lifestyle and uh there was a couple others there was well love s to they're a couple about our age a little spit younger than us that do the Airstream stuff so that's been really handy with that um a lot of good tips there and places they've been um there's a channel out there called Bound for nowhere the content they produce is it's next level it's movie quality and they they're just amazing they're young and they've been doing it a long time I think they started in their 20s you you just get immersed um they're I mean they're um PBS documentary type of quality in in what they do absolutely Next Level yeah but then also um we just as a reminder we did start off in vlogging with the Vintage um Insight Channel Jim started that and he he kind of got into that during the pandemic because he was off work and he was watching photography YouTube because that's his background and he came to me one day and he said I think I could do this I think I could run a photography YouTube channel and so he started it great well I'll put a link in the show notes for those channels that Jim and Michelle mentioned and while my audience is checking them out where can they find out more about you guys well we're on YouTube as the at a streamer um because we're small probably have to put the at sign in front to find us um and then vintage Insight photography that's a bigger channel so you can just put that in then uh airstreamer dolie that's our website and Instagram and Facebook and we're even on X um a little bit on that or formerly known as Twitter so but yeah I got the life domain for our website so everything is kind of populated out with the dolie so airstreamer dolie then on our website you can also join the Caravan and sign up for our email newsletter which uh Jim usually puts out every week most every week now that we're on the road he's been really consistent with that awesome Jim Michelle thank you thank you it was such a pleasure to meet you both thanks it's been great appreciate it

Andee and Tyler from Act.ion_plan are back to join us for our Travel Tips segment of the podcast, and today's topic is Acadia National Park in Maine! Tune in to hear about a few hiking trails and the campground they stayed at in Acadia, as well as a few other things to do nearby!

Thunder Hole note: All websites still say to go 2 hours before high tide. Like we mentioned, we went there two hours before, as well as a few other times throughout the day, and never got to see it at is fullest. Andee and Tyler mentioned it looked to be ¾ to low tide. Perhaps the best time to see it is the posted sign, 2 hours before high tide, but it just doesn't always thunder?

Links: Schoodic Woods Campground - Acadia National Park (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) Coastal Hikes - Acadia National Park (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) Recreation.gov - Camping, Cabins, RVs, Permits, Passes & More Govee - Making Your Life Smarter Cadillac Mountain - Acadia National Park (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) Hike Bar Island Trail (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) L.L.Bean Flagship Store - Freeport, ME 04032 (llbean.com) Roosevelt Campobello International Park

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

all right so Andy and Tyler welcome back thank you for giving us all the details on your travel and how you got there in episode one so today we're going to be talking about one specific location that you guys have really enjoyed so where are we talking about oh we're gonna talk about a kadia national park and that's in Maine right that is in Maine yep towards the I guess it's towards the middle yeah southern side so what makes a kbso special for you guys well this year when we went was actually our first year going that was our go last year when we for our first year of travels but we had a couple mishaps and so we never got to work our way up there so this year when we made it it was like the huzzah we did it perfect now for someone who likes to do what type of activities you got kind of a mix of activi is up there so it's a national park there's a lot of hiking um it's near the ocean so there's water sports although it's might be a little cold for that um there's the seashore so there's um stuff to do on the seashore um you can cross across into an island at low tide and then it's also a historic town that um has a lot of history from people that would go up there to escape the heat during the summer months so uh there's all sorts of activities it's it's got shopping too for people who want to do that it's kind of a destination Town nice now to get the full ay experience how long do you think somebody should plan to stay there we stayed a week um I would say probably too because there was a lot um to do in the first night day um it rained so there wasn't much that we could do for like the hiking um uh we stayed at one of the campgrounds in the National Park uh it's called scoic n some Campground I think and they actually um certain times they have a shuttle that takes you actually to like the downtown area nice now you guys have a bigger rig so you were probably unhooking and driving your truck everywhere right was it pretty like you needed a car to get everywhere right yeah cuz I remember when we went to aadia there's some of those mountains you feel like you're really climbing up them for a while yeah we did um the Cadillac Mountain and you can drive up there or you can hike up there we drove and then hiked that that was a neat drive up to Cadillac Mountain yeah we went up to Cadillac Mountain for um Sunrise one morning and that was beautiful yeah we'll have to try that do that next time we go up there we missed it that's just a reason to get back there right exactly yeah Cadillac Mountain that's it's the first glimpse of Sunrise when you're on the East Coast that's the first that you're up I forget the altitude but that's like the first place the Sun hits on the East Coast oh yeah I didn't know that think when we were up there we watched the sunrise at Cadillac Mountain we did a bunch of stuff in the park and then we came back and watched the sunset from the same location it was pretty neat yeah oh well yeah what time of year did you guys go we actually went for the 4th of July um I was very very looking at a camp spot I think like I think like a couple days before and then we stay for a few days after the 4th of July so we got to see like the F they do like this huge firework like Extravaganza and everything too um down in Bar Harbor wow very cool now I guess probably in July a lot of those water sports were um still pretty active oh yeah because I think when we went we went in November so it was um very chilly a lot of things were closed um so we kind of had the town to oursel and it wasn't overly crowded which was nice but we did see a lot of areas for like kaying and bike rentals but they were obviously all shut down in the winter um that would have been really fun to experience in the summertime the beauty of visiting Acadia in November I think they closed the last week in October but the beauty of visiting in November is it's empty but at the same time like Bar Harbor shuts down so there was like we went to one restaurant like the entire time when we were in Bar Harbor yeah it was packed when they were there it was all sorts of activity I imagine how was that the four I imagine it's probably the most crowded it gets the summertime the 4th of July weekend how was maneuvering that Campground the summer parking how was that so the campground we stayed at was across from Bar Harbor so it was not super busy it's on the other side there's another Island over there so it was what a 30 minute drive to Bar Harbor 30 40 yeah 30 30 something like that um so our Campground is not super busy yeah um very peaceful over there getting into Bar Harbor though you probably get up early if you want to get there for the crowd uh we went we went hiking on the uh I think it's just called The Beach Walk yeah which is a Scenic walk that uh people used to do back in the day and so um we got up early and walked that in the morning and it was very yeah we got to walk the dogs and they were all excited because they got to go out and do a little hike with us yeah so is it pretty dog friendly in aadia did you find um with some spots yes there was other places that um said said like no dogs allowed and it like on recreation.gov is where I found like a lot of the different things and they said don't bring your dog like almost but but there was some that most to the National Park is dog friendly yeah and then going in the summertime I'm sure I know in that first episode you touched on the app goie you downloaded in the summertime having a dog if you're doing a trail where they're not dog friendly having that temperature sensor where you can get notified on your phone the temperature and the RV I'm sure you used that when you were in aadia yeah we're pretty comfortable with how we manage the dogs we usually have full hups so we leave the AC on and then we check them every couple hours um through the gooby and um through the through the ring uh cameras so um they're fine we we don't usually take the dogs to a lot of our activities we usually um do separate activities just for them so we'll take them to the forest or whatever we'll take them for walks and then we'll go do our thing so they do sit in in the the motor home for most of our travels yeah on their own little Adventure cool so what about um like once the sun goes down and it's later what was there to do at night um there's the whole down down near Bar Harbor area that you can go and and shop and eat and there's a little bit of nightlife I wasn't expecting it for there to be honest because it seems like the town that like everyone just wants to go shopping and then eating and then that's about it but there was a couple places that you can go at night when we went to Bar Harbor and ATI was actually before we got our van so we just we drove we stayed in a hotel and um we stayed the far Harbor Inn which was beautiful and they had an awesome restaurant they had a really good spa for anybody that you know wants a little bit of TLC and relaxation when they're there definitely check that out but the hiking and all the different Trails were pretty awesome as well yeah any of your favorite Trails or anywhere that you went there that you um really enjoyed we like that beachwalk yeah the beachwalk was fun Cadillac Mountain which we already talked about um there's the um Island that you can cross over to at low tide speaking of low tide I think when we went there was um what was that area where when it was really low and the waves came in a Thunder Hole Thunder Hole oh we we did see that that's on the beach I remember Thunder Hole it the sign that it tells you I think it tells you to go at a certain time at high tide or two hours before high tide I think it's wrong now because we drove around that loop I think four or five times trying to hit it at the right time we never saw it when it was like blasting you know way up did do you remember like what time frame like in relation to high tie that was by chance or was it just we got lucky we I think we got lucky we get lucky a lot Andy's extremely luy so oh yeah it was early morning it was like seven to 8 o'clock in the morning because reles high low time there's a another group and they're like oh it's actually going like if I had to guess based on where the tide was I would guess it was close to low tide I probably was not the peak low tide but it was probably 3/4 of the way through low tide that's just a guess though based on what the tide looked like I have no idea what it was looked at like at low tide though so yeah it's one of those things you want to manage your expectations cuz you know you see videos of it looks amazing but if you get there at the wrong time it's like it doesn't really look like too much we were there I think we saw it was blasting pretty high but it wasn't you know what we had seen before on videos but the first time we went there I don't think it was even making a noise yeah it was pretty unimpressive we probably should explain for people who aren't familiar Thunder Hole it's almost like an underwater cave right the way the tide comes in it like it sucks the water and it just blasts it makes like a thunderous sound that's how I remember video of it too yeah yeah you walk down in and there's a little cave and like yeah it's pretty Co it's definitely something you want to check out if you go to um aadia for sure so as far as um I know we've talked about there's a lot of different restaurants and options but anything favorite wise for breakfast lunch or dinner yeah if you're in a kadia you definitely want to do Lobster there's a little lobster shop that we went to kind of Cool vibe if you're able to think of it I'll I'll keep it in this podcast and I'll put a link in the description so people can check it out there we go we can we'll send it to you afterwards they'll find it yeah definitely not a shortage of good food and I think too like if you're driving through New England towards Acadia put um I don't know if you guys did this but we stopped in um Portland Maine first and that actually we did too you did too and then while you're making that drive up north we passed or we actually stopped at the LL Bean I don't know if it was the headquarters but they have a huge outlet and if you're looking to get hiking gear or anything LL Bean they have everything you possibly need you can make a stop there on your way to a to Acadia look out for the L Bean shop and then enjoy aadia Bar Harbor nice yeah and if you want to drive farther north you can hit that Canadian border which is a really neat area up there yeah very true that's not far you keep going the Eastern Eastern most point um they got a lot of cool towns you can cross over into Canada it's very neat area you can go to the Roosevelt uh park that's up there and see all the history of all the New Yorkers that used to go up there to vacation and they have a whole museum on the the Canadian US relations and all that kind of stuff it's a lot of fun yeah that and there's a bunch of ligh houses up there too yep lot of ligh houses oh perfect so bring your passports if you want to extend your uh extend your T your travels and just go into the or even just to do a day trip it the day trips were totally worth going too and don't let the Border agents actually they'll ask you all sorts of random questions but they just they just talk tough that's a good tip don't get intimidated yeah pretty much here for the ligh houses right cool so we're going to segment into the 3 two one countdown of final three questions of the podcast so what are three things to do in or around aadia that you would recommend doing definitely the cic mountain yep Cadillac would be number one hiking and driving would you have a I mean obviously hiking takes a bit longer but yeah I mean if you like hiking then go for it um the driving and then doing the hike afterwards was yeah you get to the top and there's some little little hiking you can do up there it is we hiked around the top too and it's neat it's it's just a huge Boulder is what it seems like you're walking I I forget how far we walked but it was a really neat and we'll overlay some photos we took when we were doing that if you're watching this on YouTube but it is a neat hike yeah around the top and beautiful view of the harbor yeah yeah Bar Harbor yep the porcupine Islands you can look out and see beachwalk I would do um there's a little there's a little Beach area next to the beachwalk at the beginning of it um that's kind of cool you could check out in a little Cove uh you cross over to the island that would be something fun to do and if anybody had two complaints or things that they wish they had prepared for what would they be about aadia or the Bar Harbor area it's okay if it rains you can still do things yeah might might be really rainy I like how you flip that into a positive but it's still fun just to do something like just get a rain jacket get an umbrella like you could still walk around yeah be prepared with the rain Jack when we were main the entire time we were Maine it was raining so um be prepared to have rain yeah the the other complaints would be that it's a tourist town there's going to be lots of people there you know it's it caters to the healthy so be prepared to spend some money and lobster will be expensive too so unless you want to just hike you know if you want to enjoy the the night life just be prepared that it is a tourist town all right one last question what is one thing you simply cannot leave a Cadia National Park without doing getting Lobster how yeah probably Lobster I think it was worth it then it was worth the you have to do main lobster that's yeah what are the the lobster with the B what was that the roll can't leave without getting lobster roll at least once gotta are you guys hot lobster roll or cold lobster roll people I like both I don't know I think I only had cold but I feel like cot would be better yeah I like hot yeah on the like y Lobster soup's pretty good too Lobster Lobster bis yeah so we'll link that restaurant you guys went to like I mentioned before and yeah Andy and Tyler thank you guys for coming on the show again look at the first episode we watched and where can my audience find out more about you guys um just Instagram follow us on Instagram hit up Andy she'll talk to you perfect and that's Instagram action plan act. iore plan Andy and Tyler thank you guys for coming on thank you thank you guys

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IG: Andee/Tyler (@act.ion_plan) • Instagram photos and videos

Today, we sat down with Andee and Tyler of Act.ion_plan on Instagram. They have spent two years on the road, and have gone through multiple RVs in the process. They started out after they sold their Montana ranch and hit the road in their horse trailer with living corridors. From there, they went through a few RVs until they finally found the right one. This episode is so full of valuable information that it's going to be tough to break it down to just three points here goes:

🕰️The importance of taking your time while traveling

🔨The proper tools every RV owner should have with them

☮️How to give yourself piece of mind while traveling

And much more!

Thanks for listening, be sure to leave a review and share if you found any value!

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

🔗LINKS:

Mudflap - Best Fuel Discounts for Truckers (mudflapinc.com)

Open Roads - Home (myopenroads.com)

RV Resorts in the US | RV Parks & RV Campgrounds | Thousand Trails RV Resorts

Camping Loyalty Program | KOA Rewards & Camping Discounts

Peplink - Unbreakable Connectivity - Peplink

TravlFi

Home | Passport America, The ORIGINAL 50% Discount Camping Club. Passport America offers discounts at over 1200+ quality campgrounds in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Starlink

🐶Pets

Govee - Making Your Life Smarter

Whistle GPS Pet Tracker and Activity Monitor for Pets | Whistle Store

🔨Tools

DeWalt Socket Set: https://amzn.to/3GS6lbv

Oscillating Tool: https://amzn.to/3RoFhWw

We may receive commission on products purchased through this page but it will not affect your purchase price.

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

all right Andee and Tyler thank you guys for coming on the show and joining hope and I today in this episode of the travel path podcast so we know you guys actually personally we met over the summer when you were passing through our home state of Mystic Connecticut you've been in your RV for almost two years now you've gone through a couple different RVs which we'll get into you're on Instagram as action plan act.ion_plan why don't we start by having you share a little bit about yourselves and then letting our audience know what your travel lifestyle looks like well we uh we move about once a week uh sometimes we stay at the Harvest House on the weekend uh I work full-time coastal regions typically um but we uh mostly go around and see the historic regions uh visit all the places there are to see we have two dogs chewy and mave when did you guys start actually uh our two-year Mark is January of next year well technically we started a little bit before that we had a a horse um trailer with living quarters that's what kind of promted all this so so the horse trailer is cool it was unique it was custom built by an aerospace engineer there's 40 of them it looked like an Airstream um I would say the horse trailer was easier to get into spots yeah um The Grand Design was definitely huge um the only problem with the horse trailer is it had very low clearance but then you had the whole back area for storage and it smelled like horses so there were those downsides to it the other problem with the horse trailer is the goose neck was very square at the front it had rounded corners but it was pretty Square um and so when you turned you didn't have much clearance and so we've we did the classic rookie mistake of shattering our back window that I think be uh every uh person fifth wheel person has to Endor at some point um and so after that we I got an extender for it that helped a little bit but we're like yeah we're going to move past this that's the thing with trailers is and RVs is is bigger is not necessarily better so Grand Design was newer but they have ups and downs I wouldn't say it was better than the horse Turing necessarily cu the bathroom was very small you pretty much got it do a 360 and that was your bathroom sounds like ours in our van yeah yeah probably maybe the size of van and then from that grand design it would it was to the tiffen the one you're currently in now no we had the Safari TR the one with the L on the back had extreme learning experience we weren't sure if we the class A and so we got I was like well instead of spending 100 200,000 on a new class A or whatever it was um we'll we'll get us something to see if we like it and then we'll get rid of it right away so we got a a real cheap a safari track this little tiny class we want it to be under 30 feet because that's what a lot of the spots it's easier to get into campgrounds at least in Florida under 30 ft um but yeah we spent three months on it doubled the money that we put into it and then we went on the road for a month and we're like yeah we we can't live in this Tyler had to drive the the motor home and I had to drive the truck and it was a big pain it ended up having things break every every couple every week almost and they were you know here's here's $1,000 there's $1,000 so we I was like Andee we we could get afford the payments on a brand new RV for what we're doing with this so it sounds like you guys definitely did your homework both before and then also in the process of while while you were trying to find the perfect RV for you guys um so it was a horse trailer you guys started out with which you probably learned if you could travel and enjoy your life in a horse trailer ultimately you would just enjoy it and want to do it and continue doing it so here you are now in your class hey motor home yeah so The Grand Design then you had the you called it Harvey Safari and then now you're in the uh the tiffen which is newer and that's working out for you guys right yes great awesome great I know last we spoke uh Tyler you had mentioning I know you're were working a ton um I think you were mentioning like 50 60 hour weeks back in the summertime is that something that fluctuates seasonally um or what does your work schedule look like and how do you balance travel and work yeah good question so I was a contractor um and I was working between 40 and 80 hours a week and so recently I switched over to employee and now I work 40 hours roughly how do I balance it I mean it takes a lot of self-control and restraint to be sitting in a cool place and have to work on your computer inside or outside usually I sit outside on the porch I actually got withdrawals problems when I switch from being a contractor to full-time I was like what do I do with my life I'm not working 60 or 80 hours this feels weird um so I went back I was like can you give me some contract work on the side I need to fill my addiction yeah it's fine what what we mostly do is I work during the week uh work you know that could be 8 to 12 hour day and then on the weekends is when we do the activities um when we're down south in Florida what I like to do is go out swimming over lunch nice so Andee while he's working what's uh what's like your day-to-day life in the RV like taking care of the dogs uh walking them sometimes taking them to the dog park doing the errands making calls for campgrounds planning the trips things like that as he does all that yeah so you do the Aon Runner almost definitely the trip planning that's big that's important that's one thing we learned in our road trip was you have to plan nowadays there's all sorts of reservations permits and there's not a lot of things you can do kind of on the Fly you do have to make reservations and plan especially during the touristy seasons in terms of actually when you were downsizing any tips you have for somebody who does have a lot of things they want to get rid of how did you end up deciding what to leave behind and what to take with you that is definitely one of the problems though as you start arving is is downsizing everything that you have you don't realize how much stuff you've accumulated you know something we con we have a rule right if we get something new in the RB we have to get rid of something now because we're at equilibrium that's a great point is that equilibrium um kind of mindset where once you have everything can pretty much fit and if you buy something else you have to get rid of something yeah yeah one of the best tips that I've heard to do and this takes a little bit more time it's not a quick thing to do but you put everything you don't think you need in a box or a tote and then you leave it for a month or two and if you don't need it in a month or two then you probably don't need it at all yeah we'll do that with clothing every season when we go to put away our winter clothes and get our summer clothes and vice versa if it's something I haven't worn in a year that whole season just there's no need for it despite how much she tries to make me hold on to it I we try and get rid of one thing that can help too is uh you know you often feel bad about getting rid of stuff so if you we do this thing where we say thank you for your service and then we throw it in the trash yes yep exactly was that from there was a TV was a um did you get that from a TV show I feel like we watched a TV show there was that girl oh no we just made it up I've heard that before like someone when they're getting rid they'll say thank you and then they'll get rid of it and makes them feel that's funny yeah there there is stuff where you say thank you I think thank you for your service is something we might have made up but yeah uh but there's the idea of thanking stuff for for the use that they provided you makes it Rel easier yeah so you guys have been on the road for quite some time now so what are some of the biggest frustrations your you know continuously or still experiencing why you're traveling stuff we're currently dealing with is medical it's very hard to find doctors it's hard to get into appointments especially for me when you're traveling full-time uh you know a lot of doctors want that established relationship which I mean over years you can do that but when you're in a spot for one year and uh you know if it's a new place for you it's hard to establish that relationship then often times they want to book you three or four months out like I'm only here for a week dude I need to get in right now well I have trouble because I have Montana Medicaid and it's only good in Montana I can't use it anywhere else I mean a lot of the problem is dealing with um State obligations TMV jury duty stuff like that the system's not really set up for traveling it's set up entirely for you to stay in one spot that's a good point I feel like that's a point that probably a lot of Travelers don't think about when they want to hit the road they probably the last thing on the list is how they're going to handle doctor's appointments and schedule visits and everything else um which it's tough to do a when you don't know how long you're going to be summer for and B when you don't know where you're going to be in three to four months do you have any tips on how you've been able to handle that make it a little bit easier we usually we'll fix a spot that we're going to be in so we'll say two months out we're we're going to be in Montana and then we go and we get all the appointments that we can done in that time then we also usually go from Montana Colorado because that's where my family lives and so sometimes we'll go then to the doctors in Colorado awesome guess we'll switch gears a little bit to some Financial part of traveling and I know we've gotten answers in the past it's tough to pinpoint you know roughly a monthly budget when you're traveling but you guys have been traveling when this comes out roughly two years now um do you have kind of a ballpark of how much you're spending monthly is there a high low average what does that look like yes so our budget is probably a little higher than the most we like to get out and enjoy the traveling our our idea is that we traveling we're going to make the most of it uh we're going to do things while we're traveling so our our budget is usually 6,000 that includes all of our payments that we have to make um for the truck and the RV and the and campgrounds and then going out um usually we're over that but that's what we try to stick to fuel and groceries food that's pretty consistent usually I mean you can not eat out as much we we tend to eat out a lot that's surprising I know a lot of we've heard at least in the past is the fuel is the one thing that tends to fluctuate a lot cuz people you know depending what ST there in it can be it can go almost double what it was in the prev state yeah so that's something we always do when we travel I always say Andee well we have a pretty long range we have a 100 gallon tank so we can go a thousand miles on both the the truck and the RV the RV's got or the truck's got a 33 Gall tank um and it gets good gas mileage so um we can usually go a th000 miles on both of those give or take maybe 800 um so usually what I we'll plan out where we're going to get fuel um and we try to keep it under $4 uh usually shoot for 370 right now at least um and Andee has this app called mud flap that will save you quite a bit of money for diesels it's only for diesel so you have to have a diesel and it'll find you truck stops which is nice CU we exclusively go to truck stops when we fill up you know it'll save you up to sometimes 50 cents per gallon or more sometimes a dollar so it's usually $100 or so that we save per fill up we I looked at that um I think it's called open roads um one but that one they want you to do like a whole like application and you name it off of it I'm like no that's too much work I'm like I'll stick with mud flp thanks that's got to be nice when you have 100 gallon tank I mean it's nice being able to drive so far before you have to fill up but once you get to the pump and you're filling up 100 gallons that's got to hurt right oh just a little bit expensive yeah what are you getting gas mileage wise when you're driving you have your class day motor home and you're towing a truck as well so the class A actually gets the same or better mileage when it pulls the truck it's weird it usually goes up when we're pulling the truck uh it gets um between eight and nine miles to the gallon um and then the truck gets depending on who driving I get 25 and Andee gets 27 to 29 on the truck uh we have an Eco diesel so it does pretty good it's nice because the truck and the motor home are both um diesel so we can fill up both so like we'll do it all on like one receipt typically sometimes so like we'll fill up the or the RV and then I'll hold the pump and he'll move up and then we'll fill up the truck yeah mud flap will only let you do one transaction so Andee sits there and holds it while I pull up and she fills up the track staying on the subject of Finance have there been any money-saving travel hacks you've learned while traveling um if you really want to save a lot of money the best way to do that is to stay at campgrounds monthly um usually monthly rates will be about half of what weekly or daily rates will be outrageous but um if you want to save a lot of money you probably need to stay monthly at places and then to maintain your own Vehicles instead of bringing them into shops oh yeah that that's another one is keeping up to on your maintenance uh might seem more expensive at the time but um when you broken down on the side of the road and you have to call a tow truck and then you got to get towed to some shop in the middle of nowhere that charges you double um stuff like that that really adds up quick that's usually when we get over our budget is when we have unexpected expenses like that um and then taking your time and when you have problems and thinking it through methodically uh fixing it instead of making decisions in haste and having mistakes be made um that's usually you can get in a lot of trouble we we ended up busting our Jack because I knew I needed to put a board down because it was in the mud but was just too tired and exhausted and I just put it down anyway so that was $1,000 right there to fix the Jack so stuff like that being being cautious planning things out um and not not just quickly doing stuff stuff like the truck right when we broke the back window when we travel now we're very slow you know traveling takes time and so that's what I always remind myself we're here to to go slow we always say a prayer before our travels and when you run into an issue on the road um just go slow traffic turning around whatever it is don't don't just oh I don't want to unhook the truck because I have a tight turn unhook the truck because you know paying for a new toe bar is going to be a th bucks or whatever it is right and it's just it's not worth it that's how you can quickly blow your budget sure yeah that's really good so can you just the um you have a KOA membership right and what does that actually get you they've changed their um Logistics now but um you become a VIP member you can pretty much cancel up until the day before or I think until like check-in time when that's like 2:00 or something um and then you get points for the stays and you get 10% off so you can you get 10% off like the daily rate or whatever put one's night's deposit down with them which is super nice and then you get 10% % off either the daily rate or the total so you're essentially saving money on that and then um you can accumulate points so like we have about 50,000 points which is good for $250 certificates so we essentially have two free nights with them and that's any KOA probably the biggest savings though is when you have to cancel or reschedule because they don't charge you a fee yeah we we constantly change our plans on a regular basis and so um we always check the the rules for what the refund is because some campgrounds will charge you and one night sometimes it's the full stay having a campground that doesn't charge you or has a very low cancellation Fe is is important to us yeah these three different types of koas there's Journey there's Resort and holiday and they all are known for something different so like the resort style so we're actually at Resort style now they have a lot more like activities and amenities and then I think it's holiday is more for like the one or two nighters and then the journeys are like for like longterm or I can't remember it's vice versa but um they're super nice and last night we actually signed up for Passport America um which is 50% off stays um for like 1,200 campgrounds oh wow so that's a good tip and they're pretty wide KO I mean I feel like I remember seeing them periodically have you come run into problems where you haven't been able to find them do you plan around where they are at the KOA that we're at has a whole map of where they are in the United States it's there's more koas than I expected there's a lot of koas near destinations so if you're going into a major area usually it'll be one there all right Switching gears a little bit I know we talked about this a little bit Tyler when we grabbed lunch and Mystic a while back but internet service I know know you've gone through the ringer a few times there's some frustrations you've gone back and forth between a couple different providers um or some of those frustrations and what do you use for internet now I've had all sorts of hotspots and modems for me internet is crucial I do a lot of um video calls not just internet but low latency internet because of my video calls so it's not just downloading things it's having reliability um for the calls and so I've done I've had a lot of different solutions for that right now we have um a hot spot for each carrier so T-Mobile AT&T and Verizon um that's typically what we use I have a 5G modem that we uh use and then they have a pep link that um does the AT&T which is a 4G um link and then uh I have several redundant systems too um we have travel f 2 which is great because you can add data as needed and'll choose what provider you need it it really depends on the area we tried Starling for a little bit didn't it didn't match my needs it cut out a little bit and it was also hard to set up so it wasn't hard but it took too much time we're all about reducing the amount of time it takes us uh when we set up and leave um we want it under 15 minutes so right now we're down to about 10 yeah usually typically we we search for the cell service in the area um if there's good cell service it's just up and running all my routers are up in this cabinet up here um if not then I'll go and and look at where the cell towers are and then position it to look at the closest cell tower and usually that does the trick so sounds like you have a couple different Hotpot plans whichever has kind of the strongest signal you'll you'll plug in there and then you'll point the antenna wherever the cell tower is and traveli I have that written down as well as and I'll just mention the other apps mud flap 1 th000 Trails I'll link all the resources in the show notes so people can go check that out but okay so it is possible to stream you're doing video conference calls pretty much it's part of your job and you're able to get data to do that so that's good to know we just bought a bunch of movies from Goodwill for cheap so that we don't have to stream on Netflix anymore so we have about 150 movies from Goodwill uh and if you do that they're about a buck or two if you get them on sale like your your equilibrium rule right every time you buy one you got to get rid of one right after you watch it that's right I know we touched on you guys travel with not one dog but two dogs what would you say to somebody who says they cannot travel and set up a lifestyle like you have because they have pets we said that pets aren't that hard um they walk them you feed them yeah you just them a couple days you got to feed them for their safety I mean that's pretty critical yeah um we have gooy monit temperature monitors and since we always have internet um so you purchase those and they go over the Wi-Fi and then we we uh will check the temperature in the RV um we um we have cameras that we check on them with um and then um we we never we us we always make sure the AC's on and we usually don't leave the heat on when we're gone what brand temperature monitor because we got one a while back and I couldn't get it to work properly but do you have a recommendation for one yeah they're they're gooy or gobby you pronounce it I pronounce It gooy Go o v uh I love those things we have all sorts of their products um they have uh lights that we have in the bedroom we have a uh heaters couple heaters that we use from time to time when uh when it's cold out we have a a smart Kettle um so we we really like the gooby brand um getting an air purifier from them they had really good Black Friday deals there're usually half off so right now you can get the sensors to two pack for 30 bucks usually they're 60 or 70 but yeah we use those to monitor it's it's a one-time fee and some of these other monitors you got to pay a monthly fee which uh we started out with waggle and they want 20 bucks a month and that's a little bit too much for us all all the kway campgrounds I imagine have been pet friendly they actually a lot of the koas they have it's they call it Camp K9 and it's just their little dog park the little dog runs they're not big but it kind of like does what for like the dogs just to run around and get their Zoomies out for the night or something we take the dogs to the dog parks right now there's the K9 Co going around so we haven't been taking them out when we're near National Forest we'll usually take them in the national forest and let them run around and then chewy has a whistle on we need to get one for mave uh but it does activity monitoring which is cool it's not the biggest feature but it has GPS and it connects to Cellular um and it has a reasonable battery uh when it's connected to Wi-Fi so um it'll alert us if he ever leaves for whatever reason we had some problems when we were boondocking up in Montana where you made a friend um and ran off and so um now we we have that as a precaution that's six bucks a month or something like that the other nice thing about that is um they have a a Telly vet um where you can message the vet for any issues you have and it's completely free and we've used that several times well worth the six bucks a month or whatever it is just for that service too yeah it's kind of like a Fitbit Apple watch but for dogs it tricks eating sleeping drinking water scratching licking and then it actually so like when he ran off after we got the whistle for him um it shows every stop he went to it's good peace of mind because when we before that we were searching all over the place and we're like oh he's that way let's go over there and then you can see him getting closer to you as he's calling him one thing we've learned traveling is peace of mind you can't buy you can't buy Peace of Mind anything you can do to improve your peace of mind is worth it and so having precautions like this while you're traveling is is worth it whether it's for your dogs for your trailer for your car um having peace of mind is certainly helpful what is the most memorable experience you guys have had while traveling uh meeting the followers like randomly like meeting you guys was like totally random like unbeknown like Mystic was your home base and like there's times that like we've crossed paths with people and not knowing like that they were going to be there too like we went we at a Thousand Trails and there's a few other people that we follow there as well and we're like oh you're here too what so I've really gotten into the history of the United States and colonies and all that so I really enjoy going and looking at the at the various uh Colonial towns and and seeing the the progression of our of our country because as you start on the East Coast you get much older towns and adding on to that is various cultural regions so it's kind of fun as you travel right Texas is completely different from Louisiana is different from Florida is different from Virginia which is different from Maine so as you travel all these various regions you can see the the influence of various cultures um that have formed our our nation and that's been uh very fun to see as we travel it is neat yeah and like you said it's just that community of Travelers you meet get introduced to and you share stories and I remember Tyler talking to you when you were in our town and you had brought up like the whole the stone walls we have in New England and it's something you know growing up we' see stone walls everywhere when you're living there you don't really appreciate it because you see it all the time but from an outsider looking in you brought the point up like who did all these stone walls and looking back and it was all farmland and things like that but it's something you don't see you know when you're out west or down south and um yeah at some point somebody laid all that stone wall a long time ago the New England ston walls yeah that was an interesting one yeah all all all of your country is Glacier right so you have all these Stones uh that have settled there and the farmers they would uh they would pick these Stones up yearly and uh every year they'd come back after the snow and the rain and so they they build these stone walls from them if you got a bunch of stones when life gives you Stones build stone walls um and so that's why you guys have a bunch of stone walls there and and looking into that was fascinating you guys have been in your RV for almost 2 years what's something you've learned you can or can't live without I don't know it's just it's tough what is there to that's hard to live without I mean once you've done it and you've you've broken all these ties I mean it it's difficult to say that we absolutely need something that's say You' just discovered that you can be minist and you don't need everything that you need in a traditional home you you're happy the small square footage that you have yeah you don't need very many things to survive um I think one thing we take a lot for granted or that we really appreciate are grateful for is the reliability of our rigs um having having the RV that's very reliable and the truck that's very reliable um and then just the Necessities I mean water food we like our dogs I mean there's really there's not much that you need you know what I've what I've learned is you don't need very many things except for tools um having tools whether that's work tools electric tools tools for your daily life that could be your computer your internet I mean those are really the things that you want to keep around have there been speaking of tools have there been tools I imagine like a socket set drills um certain tools that you definitely would recommend any RV have on them yeah definitely the socket set when we had the Grand Design instantly yeah um we have this little DeWalt socket set that's about that big um it's got you know six or four through 12 mm sockets English metric uh and then it has a screwdriver that has a multi- tip that you can change out and then um a little ratchet and we use that constantly we keep it inside so we have our little tools inside that's like a little screwdriver most of the stuff inside is screwdrivers um inside and then outside we have the whole tool Bay which has um the bake socket set um it's got a lot of electrical tape crimping tools for electronics wires those we use those a lot we have drills and stuff lights lights can be useful a lot of the time um gloves I don't think you can have too many tools I mean power tools that you might not need as many of those we we keep a sawsa and well or is it one of those multi oscillating tools we have a big light we have a the drills we use pretty regularly I mean a lot of the stuff in your RV is electrical um being able to fix the electrical um we have cocking cocking gets used a lot uh we keep a hammer that we occasionally use oh um CR and wrenches those are pretty important you got to be hAndee if you have an armv or you're gonna you're G you're gonna spend a lot of time at the repair shops yeah or go on YouTube yeah definitely how to research it couple more questions before we wrap up here guys if you could have listened to this podcast before you started out what is one question you would have asked and how would you answer that now biggest thing is um that we struggled with for a long time is how do you choose the right RV for your lifestyle and that really depends on what you're doing whether you're a weekend warrior you're going on weekl long trips or you're consistent traveler um are you going to be doing full hookups or boondocking are you going to be going off-road Go state parks or Resorts and so the best advice that I've seen there is um motor homes are for traveling travel trail travel trailers are for the Destin ation so you take travel trailers you park them somewhere and you leave them whether that's for a month or for 6 months and motor homes are more for traveling full-time you're driving a lot um and then from there you know what size do you need do you need it to be able to go off road are you going to be going off on small roads with little Bridges how tall is it or do you want a bumper pull if you're going to be staying in places for a long time do you need to be able to access everything when the slides are in that was something we learned the hard way is that yes we want to be able to access everything in RV when the slides are in at least all the critical parts that's something that took us a long time several iterations of of RVs and lots of looking to find the right one for us especially like T we said like with the slides being in like we can get to the fridge we can use the restroom we can get to the bedroom I can get to most of the covered spaces when the slides are in which is super nice motor homes are for traveling travel trailers are for Destination that's a good rule to live I have not heard that before but that's that's a nice way to put it anyone listening right now who wants to start making the way towards a travel lifestyle what would be one thing they could start doing today yeah so what I would do is start planning out where do you want to go what do you want to do when you get there um I mean that'll that'll do a couple things for you it give you a dream and motivation um to get towards that dream and help you plan out the equipment that you need um right because you got to you got to have your plan first uh what you want to do and then you you find the tools that you need to get there so motor home's a tool and so if you if you have your end goal in mind that'll that'll give you something to do uh start a dream what's that called the vision board nice yeah you're AC right yep do one thing at a time too don't do it all at once right how to you eat an elevant you eat it one bite at a time that's it yeah were there any YouTube channels or other influencers that you were watching when you were in that kind of that vision board goal setting phase of your life that motivated you oh I follow a lot of follow uh face group Facebook groups I'm the Tiffin Facebook groups um I follow a few I found that the the intro RV groups aren't that great but if you can find like one that's specific to your travel trailer that can be very helpful um a lot of the problems that we deal with I I find on Facebook and then I add them to my folder and then we've like the squirrel cage went out so I knew exactly how to fix that it was this horrendous noise that was going on if I hadn't seen that on Facebook I have no idea what that was um so i i pen all that stuff um and then you know that they teach you destinations or if you have issues you can post on it um that's that's a really good one for your specific um and while my audience is checking out those pages where can I find out more about you so glad you asked you can follow us on on Instagram and uh action plan that's a

_ plan act. andore plan all right action plan andian Tyler thank you guys for coming on the show you learned a lot about just um you know have coming up with the plans living on the road I have all sorts of notes here so make sure to link those um thank you guys for coming on thank you

www.atravelpath.com

🌲The Perfect New England Retreat Looking for a storybook New England getaway? After tuning into this podcast, you'll find one. In today's show, I sat down with Jeff Czaja who has been venturing to the Franconia Inn his entire life. During the show he provides his insight on:

📃 things to do in the area

🍽️places to eat

🥾his favorite hiking trails

🫎and moose tours

After the interview, you'll see why he keeps wanting to go back!

Franconia Inn: Franconia Inn - Home

All trails flume trail: Mt. Liberty and Mt. Flume via Liberty Springs, and Franconia Ridge Trail, New Hampshire - 413 Reviews, Map | AllTrails

Echo Lake NH State Parks - Franconia Notch State Park - Echo Lake Beach

Restaurants

Common Man Lincoln | The Common Man Family in New Hampshire (thecman.com)

Gordi's Fish and Steak (gordisfishandsteak.com)

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

all right everyone welcome back to the travel path podcast I'm Tyler Hespeler I have Jeff Czaja with me if you missed his first episode part one he talked about his incredible story where he quit his job he didn't like because he just wanted to get out and travel he works full-time as a trucker um anybody who's who wants to travel is not sure exactly how to do it doesn't want to work remotely or not sure how to save up for a long vacation definitely tune in it's something I didn't really think too much of but I learned a ton listening to it so definitely take a listen um part two is called travel tips this is a segment where we have the guests come back and talk about one destination they know best so Jeff what's the destination today Franconia New Hampshire Fran it's a beautiful area it's a good getaway it's for everybody involved like your you know you could take anyone they have Cottages I we go to the Franconia Inn and uh it's a beautiful place sell service is a little lacking up in that area but we like that we put our phones away and just enjoy life great things to see and do up there canot say I've been there yet how much time have you spent there uh actually we go just about every year my family actually we have uh even my parents back in the day started going there and they're the ones that actually opened our eyes to it but now as adults even my sister and I we take our families we've been going for a long time uh probably every year somebody from my family has been there for at least 20 years or so I would say now it's just one of those locations that you just find a lot of Peace relaxation and and rest which we all need sure and having the no service definitely helps out with that sometimes you need to your phone it does there are some areas CU they have Lincoln nearby uh that's a t bigger town in that near Woodstock the Woodstock area or where geographically whereabouts is further north and it's up near Lincoln is the biggest town I think that they have up there I imagine it's a big ski town in the winter time oh they have skiing but it's also big in the summer for hiking you cuz they do have big mountains you know like the White Mountains but yeah skiing gondolas they have all kinds of stuff you can do kayaking they even have gliders that you can rent is that when you just jump off the mountain with a like hang no no no it's actually a plane but it just floats I I don't know it has no motor like you throw it like no no you get in it and you I think they call them gliders I'm pretty sure they call them GL probably yeah yeah and uh you just like float until you land I do believe they take somebody you got to go with somebody I'm not saying you go by yourself but uh yeah they have those right outside of the Franconia Inn right out in the front in the field there sounds like you sign a waiver for that I mean yeah you know a lot of areas though even when you do the hiking they have the Lost River up there and the uh The Flume if you're a nature lover you'll see a lot of animals they even have moose uh you know bus trips that go to look for moose that's the one thing we didn't see in our road trip we saw Al plenty of elk black bear we never saw a moose what else for wildlife have you seen black bear up there and bald eagle and black yeah tons of birds they have all kind Lon bald eagles they have a nice Lake the Echo Lake so you know you can do fishing I think there you can definitely take out kayaks take out P paddle boats and that's a nice um for scenery again if you're a nature lover it's you know or you're one of those people that just needs to get away from it all I'm telling you this is the place for you because I I I hate to sound like a commercial right now do they have a good mix of like day hikes shorter hikes as well as backpacking and overnight hikes yeah yeah I know New Hampshire's pretty famous for the backpacking scene oh yeah I know yeah they got they got they got them all like they even have Caverns that you can walk through at at the Lost River I mean even crawl they it's a great place to bring kids they say you know because the kids like to go in and you know hunt around and stuff because a lot of the parents they get their back start breaking and stuff when they try to get into some of these places that they call a cavern they have good food up there what are some of your favorite Trails hiking trails I like The Flume it's called the the great Flume I think it's called but that one always gets me because it's a nice it's a big loop I think it's a five mile Loop and uh you can cut it short if you wish to they even have I think a some sort of transportation that can catch you if you're you know halfway up and you don't think you can make it back if you need to cut it short and walk back down cut it short walk you know I think it's interesting that you know we're there's like all these hikers on these trails and and you always there's like this one roadway and you always see these people get brought down and I'm like come on you know like you got you're out here for a reason aren't you like some people underestimate it yeah no they did they don't they don't understand their own ability I guess that's my favorite place to go when I'm up there is I do like that Flume and the Echo Lake is nice too cuz you get out on those p boats or even the uh kayaks it's just nice to be with your lady or family even in the summertime hiking Wildlife fall time obviously foliage hiking as well in the springtime and then the winter time you've got big ski town what time of year do you typically go we like I like to go on the summer with my girl yeah cuz we're hikers we we like to hike we we just like getting out and and just walking and uh you know breathing the fresh air in the winter we we've gone they got sleigh rides and stuff if there's snow I don't know if we're ever going to get snow again though that was fun fun you know they they do dress it up and make it nice for winter and there are things you can do decorations kids yeah downhill yeah they got decorations they got the downhill skiing cross country skiing that you can do but again snow has been it's been a little rough lately yeah we went every Year's Hit or Miss we went to New Hampshire a while ago to Mount Washington I think that's New Hampshire and we uh we went to go rent snowmobiles and there wasn't any snow yet there was a Christmas Christmas Day we went a couple years after that and there was a ton of snow so it it's always it's always back and forth I just remember every Christmas was a white Christmas though you know like I said I've lived in Connecticut my whole life and I just think it's funny that sometimes you yeah you don't even have to snow by Christmas yeah if somebody wants to come visit Franconia how much time would you recommend they spend there to get the full experience we'll go for 3 Days sometimes sometimes we'll stay for like a week or two it all depends you know how much hiking you want to do how much you want to see even going on Echo Lake and such I do like that it's not a it doesn't have to be a week thing it could be a long weekend or even sometimes we like to go between like Monday and Wednesday in terms of of where you actually stay are you in a camper Hotel Airbnb oh no it's a it's an inn it's an in so they have separate rooms they even have a restaurant that if you want to have your breakfast and dinners there you can put that into your whole total as far as the stay at franconian we usually actually like to go visit some of the restaurants around town usually we'll get like the breakfast plan because we we eat breakfast there but then we hit the road and we'll do dinner somewhere else wherever we head any favorite breakfast lunch dinner dessert spots you want to give away well we love Gordies for romance and then uh the Common Man the common man is the one where if you it's if you're bringing a family that's where you want to go because it is loud in the Common Man the common man is a very loud Place lots of activity and action going on good food though for a relatively cheap price Gordies is more of your uh if you want to have a romantic evening with your lady and you want to spend a little more awesome breakfast Hotel lunch Common Man dinner Gordies any dessert spots well desserts actually they they actually have a lot of places like bakeries up there so they actually do have some nice little like Mom and Pop joints uh I can't name one in particular because we actually like stopping at a lot of them they have like fudges and you know they they give out some stuff that are it's all homemade but yeah they got some good desserts I mean we usually take an apple pie home or something you know nice so no shortage of good food cool I know you mentioned it's kid-friendly they have you know like The Flume you had mentioned and then there's Christmas time decorations they have things to do slay rides and Y do you see a lot of pets as a dog friendly area that I I honestly can't say I've ever seen a pet yeah yeah I don't think they they allow pets they do have new ownership though that just happened in the last year or so so I'm not sure if they changed that but it's weird though because they have a horse stable right outside the end so you can go hor so I I don't know why you wouldn't be able to bring a pet they also have um so you can stay in the Inn which has rooms and then a restaurant they got a fireplace you can sit and read there's a game room for the kids which is nice and it's a small smaller place there's not like hundreds of visitors at the same time it's more like I think they have maybe 20 to 30 rooms I want to say it's a big yeah yeah and they're um you know each room is actually a different price basically based on what you want out of the room you know they have one with a jacuzzi each room is a little different which I we like that too we try every room every time we go and stuff tennis courts are over there though if you want to do some tennis they have a nice little sitting room for people who like to read books in front of the fireplace type stuff uh they do have a nice porch where you can sit and it is small if you do try to make reservations you're going to want to call ahead though because in the summer especially uh from July to August it it gets packed like you got to call ahead to even try to get in that place at least in the old days now they do have new ownership we're still kind of feeling our way around this new or they actually try to get people up there in the winter which is why they've tried things like the sleigh rides and such is it like a log cabin feel is it it used to be like a big farm or was it always an inn I don't know what it used to be in the old days but it's not a log cabin I mean it's a nice it's an older looking place it looks like a big house that was on a lot of land so it could have been a Farmland I'm guessing they have walkways right outside on the property they have a INR pool and such you know you can go hiking right on the property and such um and that's where their horse trails are too are those trails that you mentioned previously is that all on the francone in property The Flume and the lake no no no see that's that's that's why we love it though again we're hikers my my lady and I we we love hiking yeah if you want to stay right there have your breakfast and just relax by a pool during the day and go for a hike you can they don't necessarily name those Trails they do their horse back riding right there too like I said my parents still going they're in their 70s I think it's a good place for all ages really sure are there campgrounds nearby I'd imagine there are there must be I mean I can't say I look for them but I'm sure there are because there's a lot of Wide Open Spaces up there you know and and like you know going back to your question yeah The Flume they have named trails nearby that aren't on their property per se so The Flume the Lost River great place to go Echo Lake you got to make a little drive but it's not like you're not driving forever you might have answered this question already but three things to do in or around the Franconia Inn well The Flume is is a the number one I think for everybody I think everybody should do the F they should try to make the entire hike too they have ventes all the way throughout the whole thing cuz people do have to sit down cuz it's it's a lot of uphill you know it's a lot of uphill but it is nice they have a where wolves used to den SE any wolves up there not yet than God I don't I don't ever want to run into a wolf myself but uh yeah I'm good with that moose moose is enough for me we we ran into one of those on the street driving one night and uh yeah how far away I guess thought we were going to get lifted up by the guy's horns and tossed on the side of the road when they get in the Rut season that that's uh they don't mess around yeah that's fall I think yeah I've not seen one I've seen elk and I know they're bigger than elk big they are 9 ft tall some of them it's like holy moly yeah if you don't want to CH seeing them by yourselves trying to find them yourself which you can do they do have the tours that will put out the meat we think three or 4 hours ahead of time and then you know you will see but yeah we've done those too we did we did we have actually paid and and take take the easy route cuz you see cuz every time they stop amazingly enough that there's one sitting there you know which is why we know it's a little bit of a setup but at least you get to same moose you know CU they are rare sighting right it's not like you're guaranteed to see one if you spend a weekend or anything right like my family has been up there for you know like I said every year for a long time now I would say we've seen on our own maybe six it's not like we run into them every year but they are up there you know so two things that they're not necessarily complaints about Franconia in but they're two things that somebody might not consider that you might want to prepare them for oh definitely the phone reception yep you're you're you're not going to unless they put in a new tower some up there you're not gonna get good phone reception up there I mean you can make phone calls I don't don't feel like you're going to be out in the middle of nowhere but you will have to like find like their Town services and stuff do they have Wi-Fi in the whole in or local coffee shops that have Wi-Fi yeah they do have Wi-Fi in the areas that you can uh connect to um I don't know if they have any in though I don't know if that I've been to ins before in the north and they say they have Wi-Fi and sometimes it's not the best Wi-Fi yeah make sure you have all your conversations that our business you know taken care of before you go on your vacation that's all I'm going to say on this trip you know you want to have plenty of changes of clothes the walks you sweat then you got the uh you never know what you're going to run into as far as you know sap or I mean there's all even when you get on the horses you know like you want to have plenty plenty of clothing uh on the trip uh Echo Lake too you know you want to be prepared take you learned that the hard way didn't have enough clothes the first time and well yeah cuz like everything you do is like you know you want to change God I'm one of those people you know are there laundry facilities there no no I don't really have laundry I think they have a laundr mat but it's in town like you got to drive down the road but you know that's about that I think that's about it though awesome man other than that the reception is the worst thing I would say yeah I can't say too many negatives about the place you know other than the reception sure that's what you want to prepare for but at the same time you're not going there to work so it's it's it's a curse and a blessing that's why we love it yeah you really are trying to get away from it and just be at peace and with nature type thing you know I know some people aren't into that but that that's what we like last question what is the one thing you cannot leave the frankone in without doing there's so much to do and I really feel like that's part of the whole experience why we keep getting drag like we keep wanting to go so there isn't really one thing that brings us back to that place it's like everything and we like doing it over and over and over again it's hard it's hard to really pinpoint one thing well that is a good enough answer for me that sounds like an awesome place of Franconia in in New Hampshire not been to it haven't heard of it hope you guys learned a ton listen to this episode I'm looking forward to making it part of our agenda hopefully next year we'll get up there and check it out and um yeah anything else you want to add to it uh no Tyler I I do thank you for this experience though I always like trying new things this is my first podcast I'm sure everybody watching realizes that it was a good talk awesome man hey did a great job thanks for sharing the Franconia in and you guys if you haven't tuned into the first episode where he started his journey he left his job he didn't like started Trucking so we could travel and explore definitely check it out Jeff thanks again for coming on thanks for Tyler it was good being here

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🚛 What An Awesome Episode We Have In Store Today!

In this podcast, we talk to people from all walks of life on how they have been able to set their lives up for travel. Although we see them all the time on the road, did you consider that being a full time trucker offered the flexibility and freedom that could satisfy your travel dreams? I certainly didn't and in today's conversation with Jeff Czaja, I learned all about it.

In Today's Show You'll Learn All About:

🪪 How to get your trucker license.

📉 Just how real is the trucking shortage?

💡How to handle some of the self-doubt when you make such a drastic career change

📝And much, much more on this episode of The Travel Path Podcast. Buckle up and enjoy the show!

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

Show Resources:

New England Tractor Trailer Training School Somers, CT

https://nettts.com/

Werner

https://www.werner.com/

J.B. Hunt

https://www.jbhunt.com/

Trucker Path App

https://truckerpath.com/trucker-path-app/

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts, and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript:

Jeff Czaja how are you doing today thanks for coming on the show I'm doing great thanks for having me so I know you as your past client of mine we were on the topic of travel we were talking one time and you had a pretty unique story on how you travel it's something I hadn't really thought about too much of and that's why I wanted to have you on the show was a very intriguing kind of a lifestyle so yeah it's different definitely it is different yeah why don't we start by having you share a little bit about yourself and then telling the audience what your travel lifestyle looks like I grew up in Connecticut uh I've lived here my whole life uh I do have have relatives in the New York area I spent a lot of time in the city I grew up a Catholic so my road was always set you know like I always had a direction my whole family always kept me on that that path I just kept going with it but I I found it to be a little boring and constrictive there's a lot of things that happened in my life that put me toward the path of trucking to try to get away from it all my grandfather passed away he was a big role model in my life when he passed away that was uh the start of a snowball where you know I had a lot of issues actually and uh you could say I kind of hit rock bottom uh I had a high school sweetheart that I had been with for a very long time and uh that that ended at around the same time my grandfather passed away then my cousin who was only 16 at the time she uh committed suicide so there's a lot of things that actually started to happen in my life right around mid 20s and uh I started saying to myself you know what am I doing you know I want to get out more I want to see more I want to be more and so uh that's when I decided you know I'm throwing away my four- wall office I I used to be an accountant I I was like I just want to break out of this whole little cocoon I felt like I was in that's when I said I'm going to go get this CDL and see what see what it brings me I mean I knew it would give me a lot of ability to network you know cuz once you start going around the country like you you meet people and people are not bad I mean you know I I really feel like you know it helped me open up which is what I wanted to do spread my wings so to speak so but it was a big big deal for me to just I just wanted to not quite be the same as everyone else in my family like you know go to college you know get your degree get the job that you want to have and I did go to college I went to Marshall University so I'm not one of those truckers that you know just uh you know their family history is a bunch of truckers that that is actually the way it is uh to for a lot of truckers they come from a long line of truckers and they start when they're 10 their dad's put them in the truck and get them I am completely different than that I I I went the college route I got my accounting job I did it for a few you know a good eight years and I I I was like this just isn't for me and uh that's when I was like I got to just see the world a little more it was ended up being the country the entire country I saw all 48 states to me you're not learning and experiencing life if you're just in I'm sorry to say I'm not a big person on just staying home yeah I I feel like if you want to really experience life and you only have one life to live you got to go you got to go take it by the rains and like you got to see things you got to meet people too that's another reason why I actually jumped into Trucking myself I thought that was a good way to actually meet people who live in these areas and can tell me about the areas that I'm going to and visiting and now I have friends in California Oklahoma I mean I could go all over the country and stay for free it was what I needed to do my cousin dying you know that that she was the one cuz she was only 16 and I was young at the time when she did you know commit suicide but she was the that really like made me think to myself what am I doing you know like I want to I don't want I want to be more than this like I want to be more than Conneticut I want to you know I want to be somewhere I want to go somewhere I want to you know know more people than just my my small little crew that I had at the time you know family and friends I can relate to that quite a bit where you're you have you're in one job location you you have vacation time but you're not able to take enough vacation to really see everything I remember I we had a big Cal we wanted to go cross country and I wanted to take off for 2 months and my work told me you know they kind of laughed and said the longest anyone's ever left for is one month and they were really lucky you'd be lucky if you got you know two weeks yeah I I agree wholeheartedly on that too I I feel like in our country we are a little too strict especially when you have these office jobs with you know being like stuck to a certain amount of time which isn't enough time like you're kind of pointing out it's just not enough when you're trying to go away for a week you don't want to actually spend all seven days away you you'd like to rest get prepared to go it just to me it's too rushed when you take a week off and you got to go do it and then get back you know it can be rushed yeah yeah I feel like it is a little bit rushed I do wish we had a little more time as a whole as a whole I just feel like we don't have enough time off to experience more things than just what we do it's not just in your family where that routine and that tradition of you know going to college getting a job that's just the way Society is it's go to school get to college get a good job and then work till your 60 retire and then go and explore then that's the reason we started this podcast because we met people when we were on our trip taking long hikes we're pulling up in this you know a brand new van and older couples especially would ask us how are you able to do this you know we wish we could have traveled in our younger years while we still had our knees and could take these long hikes versus you know waiting till you're 60 years 70 retired and you can just go to the overlooks and you really can't do the the real Scenic things so what was your family's response when you said um I have this great accounting job benefits I would imagine and all of a sudden hey guys quitting and I'm going to get my Trucking license well they they were actually shocked I mean obviously cuz none of them trucked none none of them I mean my grand parents they came from Europe to to live here so they understood travel a little as far as just dropping everything and getting going but for me like when I told my parents they were a little bit uh a little bit like taken aback like you know they're like well what are you going to do with your diploma what are you going to do like you know why why do we send you to college me personally I just believe that in any profession if you you want to make money you can make money to me that's another thing that I feel our country puts on people is uh you know you got to do it this way and that's the only way you know artists can make money if they work at it you know what I mean like I I I just don't think that you have to go to college and you have to make the money that way I I do feel like you can make money in any field you want to and I I you know once I have kids I'm going to definitely tell them that I I feel like you know that's got to get out there more like you don't have to do things by the book per se I hear that more and more I don't know if it's just the podcast I'm listening to but there's more and more of that you don't really need to go to school unless you know exactly what you want to do or otherwise it's four or five years of your life and a lot of money a lot of money that you I have friends that are still paying off loans yeah that you're potentially going to be walking away doing something you don't enjoy doing that you're doing for the rest of your life and there's a lot more to consider you know if you don't know what to do like my what I my response to that is just get into sales if you can sales is a very easy thing to get into it's it's cheap you don't really need money to get your real EST license or if you want to sell cars whatever it is it's going to get you skills where you can talk to people communicate and the cost burden for you know getting a real estate license is $300 you can start selling houses in you know six months and start making money versus you know doing the four years and not really knowing what you're doing it's it's a good path to take if you're not sure what you want to do so speaking on that it's we we'll kind of switch gears into the requirements to get your it's a Class A Class so class 18er I would imagine you made the decision first you wanted to kind of exit your accounting job did you have any other ideas you wanted to do or is it immediately Trucking well you do want to always save up money when you're making a big business move as far as your life is concerned you know so I had a little foundation and I did check out I I went to New England tractor trailer training school right here in Summers Connecticut that's where I decided to go so I looked up how much it would cost and you go there and you have to go through they do have uh you know regular classes that that's all written exams and and you know you got to learn some history about Trucking some of the rules obviously and then they also have a drive driving portion so there's a two it's like a two-part thing that you go through with them and then of course you got to have the do will come and that's the big day is when you got the dot there and they'll give you the same you just like a regular license you go for your little written exam and then you have a uh the driving portion and now on the driving portion with a CDL though you will have to do a pre-trip because you got to make sure these big rigs are good so you're not going to hurt anybody out there so that's very important to know and you know I feel like that's some of the things when you talk about the bad drivers out there the bad Trucking drive truck drivers you know they uh they they don't pay attention to the pre-trip which is very important you got to make sure your wheels are good and and all that but yeah that's another portion of the test for a CDL which I don't think they do for cars I don't think they have a pre-trip exam for the I don't believe this a pre-trip I know actually I didn't tell you this but I got my Class B A while back and I remember doing the pre-trip inspection I used to when I plowed snow but I remember doing the pre-trip it's obviously way different than me having to backup tractor trailers but I take it the barrier to entry in terms of finan it's not how much roughly does it cost to get into your class A license honestly I'm not sure cuz I did mine about 17 years ago and I did hear now that it actually went up uh mine cost it about $5,000 back in the day yeah now I I think it's actually more um but I I'm not I could find some numbers on that for you maybe down the road so you can maybe say something and if I find any information on that I'll link it below in the show notes so you can check that out roughly 5,000 maybe give or take the startup cost and then the time frame how long roughly since the day you start your school till the day you take the test each person is different cuz again as a trucker like there's there's many people that won't make it in trucking and then there's people that will the length of the course it actually is dependent on you I mean if you work hard and you you know you you study and then you go out and you do what they ask in the driving uh they have little obstacles set up and they try to have you pass each one and you move along and then once you do take care of all of that that's when they'll send you to to have your test taken so you know for me it was about 3 months I think sure yeah and uh so it could take a little less there's a few usually it's two months is the best people you know like those are the guys that actually do come from the families I they can get in and out of there pretty fast to get their license because they've done it before you know me being a guy that had never been in a truck before until that moment actually that was a good 3 months I would say to have the ability to take the test sure so not too long I means heck of a lot quicker than a four-year degree and you're looking at like a $5,000 startup cost and then after that you're pretty much making money right you're even when you go out um most of the big companies they'll have you train with their drivers for a a good month at least some more they make sure you're actually driving their trucks good because it's funny I do find it interesting in the profession that when you go to these big companies they're really good about not paying much but they will give you the nicest trucks you've ever seen like I started with wner myself and I'm not trying to knock wner at all but they give you this big beautiful truck with all the amenities in the truck and then uh you you you don't get paid quite as much as you would with a smaller company but they take care of you as far as comfort you know when you first start out so I did like that actually you know being a guy that never trucked before I I needed all those amenities you know like having the refrigerator and the TV and the truck and yeah all that stuff so yeah that helped me you know be comfortable out there you know all right so about roughly three months $5,000 in you you've got a job with Warner yeah and you train and they did do give you training pay and it's not as much as uh you you make when you get out there on your own because you're you're with a guy um or a woman and they do pay you though through the whole period Mo most of the good companies will feed you too in that process like they'll pay for all the food like they even tell their trainer to buy you you know like I had one he actually took me to some of the nicest restaurants we would walk in with jeans you know into these fancy restaurants cuz you know that's just what we're wearing on the road and we sit down and they they wouldn't like throw us out that you know he explained that you know we're just over the Road Truckers and just looking good food so yeah and and you know we'd sit there in our jeans and have a nice meal you know um I will say a lot of meals are fast food sadly but you know overall like you can stop you know you find ways to stop again it's all about being smart out there if you just sit in your truck all day it's kind of like being in the office so me I I always found ways to get out and about and see things you know as I was out there and I had heard during we talked about this during covid they were talking about the whole the trucker shortage and when we were talking you had said that there's no shortage whatsoever there's a ton of truck drivers out there is that still the case or I don't really believe that there's a a truck shortage I mean there's I know again I have a lot of friends that truck now and and they always say like they're looking for work they just want more money yeah so like the the people that say there's a shortage there's not really a shortage it's just like the drivers want to take the loads that are worth some money so the people that are like claiming that there's a shortage are the ones that are trying to pay people nothing for the load you know to travel 7,000 000 miles or 2,500 miles across the country you know that's something that really does get me CU there's no shortage there's guys that want to work but they can't work for pennies on the dime you know we you know we are trying to make a life out there and and stuff like that so I I don't believe in the shortage thing I now when you first get your class A and you're you're going to all these different companies trying to get a job so you were in a position where you wanted just to get out travel as much as you could someone who has a family back home say they want to stay a little bit more local how easy is it to try to negotiate how long you're away from home versus how much you're actually traveling all over the country if you want to really do this and you first get into Trucking my suggestion is to just work a year and be solid be take your time out there all you want to do is is you want to go in in my opinion you should work for a mega carrier the column because they will give you the nice truck you'll be as comfortable as you're going to be as a trucker again not everybody's cut out to be a trucker you want to take about a year out there you tell your family you know hey I'm going to have to get away for a year do a year once you do a year even six months they say but I I believe a year gives you a solid foundation you can then work wherever you wish to work like uh if you want to work local very easy with a year six months you're you're taking a chance but even then like that's why I'm saying if you believe this is a field for you like you want to do like uh the six months can get you your foot in the door the year will get you in the door wherever you want to go is what I'm trying to say so if you want to work local and and be home every sing SLE night then after a year you'll be good I got to stop hitting that table kind of like any like the medical field or whatever field you're in you um once you have that first year of experience you have references and then you can kind of shop around and now that you have that experience you can apply for other places more local yes yes and you can really start to hone exactly what you want to get out of your your career too and for me I you know I I wanted to see all 50 states so I was traveling off you know 48 states you know got into Alaska and Hawaii I feel like that's that's how you want to do it you just want to get out and tell them what you want to do you know one thing I will say that's fun about it is you can meet your girlfriend your wife your family like I actually one time impromptu didn't even mean to my parents actually took a trip to Kentucky at one point and I ended up being in Kentucky so we got to hang out and I told my my boss I'm like hey I'm I didn't realize this but my parents are out here in Kentucky which was very random and uh I got to hang out with them for like a couple days and show them around I actually knew the area more than they did so Random stuff happens like that but you can also plan trips I was going to say so how much that once you have that experience and how much of that is your boss your employer telling you where to go versus you telling your employee hey I want to go here and then they they're coming up with the path it takes to get there when you get into a field like this and you want to use it to your advantage you want to learn to use it to your advantage when you work hard and you give your boss what he wants it's basically any profession if you give them what they want they're going to be nice to you too so I I found like you know after with with some time put in I'm big on putting some time in then they'll start to give you whatever you really want like I was starting to tell them hey I'm going to take a weekend here in Daytona Beach uh hey I'd like to stop in Vegas for a week I I actually met my girlfriend out there one time and we hung out for a week you know she flew out so there's pros and cons I mean that's a sacrifice yes you're living in a truck but everything you were able to see and obviously going back to that your original decision obviously made the right choice the four wall cubicle versus where you are now for worked and like I said you know everybody has their own opinions on life and what they want out of it and for me it worked and you know not everybody will be able to be a trucker I I I will say that because it's a huge vehicle that you got to get around some tight streets and and you know areas with that without hitting things because then you won't be in that career too long but if you can do it and you start to use it to your advantage which I I'm at that stage now where I basically tell people what I want to do and they let me do it I mean I'm and I make the money I want to make the first year to me is the toughest year because that's the one you got to sacrifice a lot I feel like you know that's the one where you have to realize you're going to be in a little confined area in your truck and that's basically your home you you don't necessarily stay out for the whole year though they will send you home every once in a while but once that year is done I promise you you can make some things happen with the with the career think you said like not everybody can do it but you're someone coming from you know no Trucking experience no family history of trucking and probably had never backed up an 18 wheer before and you were able to license I can attest if anyone if anybody saw me back up our camper this past summer you can you'll see how difficult it is to do something like that so it takes time it's everything's completely reversed but it is possible so speaking of that I know you touched on you said you know you are living in a truck what are some of those amenities you mentioned there's a fridge um you got a TV a fridge bed obviously you know and there is um you know another thing that's really nice about where I was working anyway I'm not sure if every place is like this but again that's why I say go with mega carries if you start out the you know they understand you want to live like a regular person so you tell them you want to stay up in a hotel and they usually will pay they'll they'll pay for a hotel stay for like a weekend you know if you want and once you start making your own money though that's when you start taking your weeks here and there you will be able to get showers too they have truck stops so every night like if you plan right and again that's a whole big part of this planning you got to know how to plan if you want to be a good trucker that's experienced the way I've experienced the the country but in the truck it's basically the TV the microwave uh they they have a refrigerator you know and a bed obviously night comfortable beds usually I mean are there like apps you can use and find like certain places to sleep oh I know you have the CB radio too there's trucker path there's CB radios uh the trucker path as an app that you can check out places that along that trucks can get to you know if you're not familiar you can you can radio put a call out on the radio and someone might pick up yep yep and then your company sometimes will even tell you like where a nice place is that you can stay while you're visiting so and so area once you made up your mind you wanted to transition to trucking to actually getting on the road what was the biggest challenge you faced to getting there and how are you able to overcome that when I made that leap from being in an office working on math which is my forth day and I knew I was smart and that and I could handle it when I decided that hey you know I think I want to see a bigger world than what I know you know I I was thinking to myself this isn't going to work is it once I made the leap and actually started going through the process I really was like I don't know if I could do this cuz I don't I didn't come from a long line and and it is one of those things like some people just aren't cut out to be truckers but luckily I I made it through but I I certainly was nervous especially when they first gave me my my own truck like you know when you're driving with other people I mean I looked out I actually got a guy who was a million mile he'd been driving for like 40 years uh he was my trainer and so it was really easy to learn understand things but I heard horror stories with guys who ended up with some trainers that were not so great he he really taught me a lot and he always said like you know just take it easy then that's what you got to do and when you take it easy out there it turns into a job that's nice and calm and I just feel like it's great because it enables you to do so much like I've already pointed out so it sounds like the the challenge was it wasn't so much getting your license and and the cost it was more that mindset just your self-doubting and can you do it and then yeah there is a lot especially early on a lot of self-doubt like am I going to be able get into this spot you know I mean I there are times I was in the Bronx like you know trying to cross a street in with that's in a building and I I would just be like I don't know if I'm going to be able to travel like this cuz I'm not sure I'm going to do this without crushing seven cars you know knocking over 10 JW Walkers uh you know and and breaking the building on top of it that I'm trying to get into it's all about taking your time just keep that end goal in mind try if you can get good help a good Mentor to help you I can relate to that you know coming from a place where I didn't really enjoy my job and as much as I disliked it and I wanted to quit after I quit I still had those self-doubts am I doing the right thing can I even do do this what are some of the big frustrations that you still face on the road oh wow jeez there's there's a lot of those a lot of people think trucks can stop on a dime you got to be careful of that we can't stop on a dime you know that's one thing that needs to be understood there's like 880,000 lbs on these trucks so that that's one big thing direction is Big you really have to understand where you're going with a truck cuz you can't go on every road like a car you got to learn many more new routes to places you used to just drive to in your car like even your house you got to be careful where you you choose your house you want to be near a route usually so that way you can park your truck if you have to like me I'm lucky my position now we have a parking lot a lot of companies the mega carriers like you know Werner the one that I work for they're based out of Omaha Nebraska so you know they're they don't have a lot of parking spaces over here in Connecticut they do though they had a few but you know again that's why I'm saying if you do start out you do want to start with the Mega Car even though they'll pay a little less I feel like there's a little more Comfort cuz you know some of these places that will take you on as a newer driver they'll take you on and let you run for as much as you want but then when you want to go home to a place you know like Delaware or Connecticut the smaller States they don't have places for you to park so it's going to be up to you to figure out where those places are great so you're on the road I know you mentioned you got out to e sometimes your work pays for things sometimes once you're on your own you tend to pay for a few more things what does a typical monthly budget look like each month like you probably I always tried to keep it like $200 cash a week and then like if you need need to use a credit card for something important that's when you break that out but you know you want to set boundaries for yourself see Trucking is a little tough to like just put a set number on because it's really up to you like how you want to spend your money the other side of that though to me is I feel like in trucking you can make anything you want to make honestly I mean you're not going to be a millionaire I don't think ever Trucking but if you play it smart your car is right on the side and your side hustles are good and such you can make some money but even as a a regular trucker I do believe you can make over 100,000 I mean there's no no issues you know doing that once you get some experience under your belt and you start doing what you want to do your large expenses your fuels pretty much paid for all fuel is paid for and if you're traveling a year at a time you can rent your house out and have your you know your mortgage paid for and you could do that yeah you could do that I've never done that I know some guys that did though that's where that's where mind mine goes no that that's smart stuff though if you want to stay in hotels every weekend if you want to like you know eat the finest Foods you're going to pay a lot more money and some guys do that you know they they like to eat well you know every night and but you know if you do some fast food here which is that's how I do it I like to go cheap you know during the week while I'm working basically and then I'll I'll treat myself on the weekends you know and that's that's how I would run how many hours a week are you typically working that is a yeah that's again it's probably something where you can work as much as you want right yeah it is it is but um I would say a good trucker that's making good money will be working approximately 50 hours there's law that says that you can't work any more than 70 as a trucker in in a week so that's the most you'll ever be able which is a lot that's 10 hours a day so it is a lot but I would say as a if you're a good trucker and you want to make good money and you want to have your fun you you'll work about 50 hours a week 40 to 50 hours a week and then how does vacation work for something like that that's where Trucking I love Trucking because I feel like anytime you want to take a vacation they're pretty much going to bend over backwards for you because they understand it's a very tough tough thing to do it's a lot of stress especially again like that's why I I suggest being clean that the early on 6 months to a year just take it slow be clean I mean I would tell them I'm stopping here and I want to just spend four days you know and and then like they'll be like all right now if you want to like you know visit family for Thanksgiving they do like you to tell them that hey you know give me a couple weeks notice cuz they can't have their whole Fleet off at the same time so they will like holidays are a little interesting because they'll try to have their guys Jagged they will try to make it around the holidays is where it's a little tough but vacations during the year I mean anytime you want really as long as you're working putting the time in that they'll let you stop where you want or you can say hey uh I'm going home and then I'm taking a trip to France you know for two weeks they they're actually they're very good about letting you get your time off that's one thing I didn't really I didn't consider that it's one of the reasons why I had you on too is because of a lot of people like myself we wanted to take a longer trip and I think you had said you took a multiple month just you took off one time yeah yeah they they really are good about time off that that's one thing I will say again you got to put the time in but once you put the time in they're they're very good about like you know hey you know you've been working hard out here you know for a mental breather and regular uh I don't I don't know how to word this because it's like we we live a regular life but it's a little different they don't want you to feel like you're just stuck in a truck all the time so they'll say you know if you need a month off go ahead if you need two months off take it is that Universal through all trucking or is that with your company Warner they're more loose with that yeah I'd say the mega carriers again or the ones that are company owned the smaller companies might not be able to be so lenient because their trucks do have to make money so they might not be so keen on the long vacations months at a time the mega carriers are a little easier with that Mega carriers just got a certain number of employees or what's it what defines that I would say like the top 100 trucking companies like your JB hunts the ones you see on the road the schneiders the orange the Big Orange drugs they're they're called the mega carries CU they just have a lot of yeah it's like tons of drivers and trucks you see them around basically we'll switch back to kind of budgeting have there been any travel tip money-saving hacks you've learned on the road while Trucking do that's where I I'm big on a debit card as opposed to a credit card out there because I feel like the guys I have some friends and they would just credit card everything and they then they'd be crying to me at the end of the month like oh my God Jeff I spent like $88,000 this month and I didn't even realize it to me it's very important for for yourself even if you don't want to get a debit card just make sure you're taking the cash you want on the road each time you plan on going out like you most companies want you to go out for at least two weeks and that's not the local local you can get home every night but most of the ones that want you to run around the country are they want you out there for two weeks so they can get a few loads on you before you head home and you'll have an idea of when you want to get back home so you'll start to learn yourself how much cash you want to use each time you head out for the time frame that you want to be out do you have trouble at all with internet and s service or not because you're really on the the highway that is funny I thought I would that was actually going in I thought that was going to be a future frustration for me when I first started Trucking I'm like I'm not going to be able to use my computer I'm going to be in No Man's Land Texas you know because there are some areas of Texas you're like where am I it's like one of the biggest states in the world and amazing enough though I I actually had great service I was with Verizon uh you know and I have been you know my whole career I feel like they've covered me well I I use my phone as a hot spot for my computer sometimes and I've never actually had an issue where ever I can't say I've ever been like oh my gosh I can't do anything you know I have no I've never had that issue I certainly can't say the same but I was sleeping in the middle of the woods so oh gee one question we actually just added to the podcast which has been interesting but has there been one thing that you thought you needed that you didn't need and one thing the contrary to that that you thought you wouldn't need that you absolutely need while you're Trucking um I would say just the knowledge of where you're going is needed planning is huge you have to have it so you got to get your atlases you want to get like you want to even look up like Trip Advisor stuff like where you might want to stay visit you might even want to have a travel agent to call like honestly while while you're on the road like you know hey I'm down here in uh you know Missouri is there something I can visit you know like the Ozarks what has been the coolest experience you've had while traveling that your jobs allowed you to do I just love meeting people I mean I actually met randomly down in New Mexico I I met a couple from from La Vietnam I got to talking with them and I I just thought it so interesting because they moved to the US for no other reason but they were worried about their children um still walking over mines you know from the war in Vietnam because there's still live mins that weren't found you know in and and like stuff like that is what I love about Trucking like stories like that just stick with you I couldn't believe when they told me that and I I was like I felt horrible almost you know even though I nothing to do with that war how could you live with like go you have your kids out on the farmland and you know there's a possibility they could step on a mind that's stuck with me as far as like seeing things though um I love Georgia Georgia is just to me a great state it's like for me the New York City of the South they have the big metropolitan area they have Savannah so I always love traveling through Georgia I always would try to stop and stay and visit a new new place like Athens or even mon Georgia if I was to move South I actually even think about moving to Georgia no kidding yeah Savannah in particular or just Savannah's really nice yeah Savannah is really nice another state I really loved that I always loved you know stopping and it was Virginia because you got the mountains on the west and then the coastline on the East and I was able to meet my girl there a few times and we hied the you know the alagan and stuff and if you could have listen to this podcast before you started Trucking is there a question you wish I would have asked today that I didn't and how would you have answered that I would I would say like you know what the hell are you going to do out there you know like what what why would you jump in the trucking you know like what would make you take that leap and I asked myself that to this day what interest you and like as a guy that's never known anyone in trucking you know I I don't really understand and that's where the travel comes in from you that was one of my focuses when I went out there you know was to see things and mission accomplished yeah exactly 48 states later awesome man when you were starting out were there any YouTube channels that motivated you or helped inspire you to get on the the road at all well one thing I I would say like if I looked back at my life like as a young child I I was one of those Matchbox car guys I would take over my grandparents house my my parents house and just have cars traveling everywhere looking back I I would say to myself like you knew all along you wanted to be a guy that was out on the road and and seeing things you know Trucking was just the thing to do for me I mean you know as a child was when I I probably should have known I wanted to be a guy that got into this career so yeah was it necessarily this career or was it just something that would enable you to travel the career is nice but yeah I don't know it's that's a tough question because I don't know if career is more important than what I've been able to uh like LifeWise experience life experience as opposed to Career the career side of it it has enabled me to pay for things that to do the things that I've done and then on the other side of it like I would never I would never want to go back on what i' I've made as a decision because again I I I have friends in a lot of places now and I I really appreciate that you know I I saw this meme somewhere if you're eating in peace thank a soldier if you're eating fresh food thank a farmer if you're eating food that was delivered which every pretty much all food is thank a trucker so there you go I mean if without truckers the one thing that you know you have to understand is you'd be traveling a thousand miles to go get your you know whatever you wanted you know whether it's a lawn mower or you know the P PPE for the co you know situation that we just had or truckers are important to the world and you know I would like to make that known I do wish we got a little bit more respect from some folks because uh we're not all dumb when we're not all dirty I promise you know we we've done stuff just like you have hey Jeff this has been great You Dropped a ton of knowledge at I I know I learned a ton everybody listening at home definitely learned a lot from this it's I never knew there was such an opportunity obviously you see truckers all the time on the road I did not know that there was an opportunity to actually have you know such flexibility and freedom and everything else with it so there is a lot of flexibility to it yeah so like I said thanks for coming on again um where can my listeners find out more about you I just kind of keep to myself I'm not really a big guy on the internet social media front but uh if you have any questions just I don't know even maybe message Tyler and he could get to me but you know sure and your company's Warner Warner Tru I'm actually with JB Hunt now JB hun H I work now with uh Bob's Furniture right here in Connecticut uh that's what I focus on their loads more than anything but we do help Costco and um we also helped CNS which is a grosser in this area but yeah I'm I'm more now in the Northeast than I was uh I don't do the over the road so much anymore I might get back into it when I get older but I am now trying to work on my relationship side of life which is one thing that is a little stressful with Trucking it's hard to keep your ladies happy you know because you are away sometimes so I I am closer to home now oh there you go good stuff Jeff thanks again man I appreciate you coming on thank you Tyler I appreciate it

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Looking to visit Yosemite National Park but aren't sure where to stay? You'll definitely want to stay tuned for this episode of Trave Tips!

Garrett and Staci from Bronderlust return to the show to share one of their favorite FREE (at the time of this writing 😉) campsites just a short drive away from Yosemite

👂🏻In this episode you'll hear all about:

🧭How they discovered this place

🗻The different scenery, from snow to beaches

🥘Some of their favorite meals they chef'd up while there

And More!

Free Spot Near Mammoth Lakes California (Grant Lake):

https://ioverlander.com/places/233452-best-lake-spot

Yosemite Falls: https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/waterfalls.htm

Food:

Del Taco Sauce: https://deltacowebstore.com/

Bitchin Sauce: https://bitchinsauce.com/

Related Blogs: 7 Things to do at Yosemite: https://atravelpath.com/yosemite-national-park/

Transcript from YouTube:

all right Garrett and Stacy welcome back to we right now we're going to be doing the travel tip segment of the podcast and those of you who missed part one uh we have Stacy and Garrett on who talked about their van life Journey how they spent almost a year building out their van and they currently live there on the road Garett and Stacy what destination are we talking about today so we are talking about a free spot near Mammoth Lakes California it's actually called Grant Lake it's right north of the Mammoth Lake area and it is really close to Yosemite oh awesome how many times have you guys went and spend the night there so we've gone now we went one the first time we went we really liked it and that was about a week and then um on our before we passed it like a couple months later we came back so we've been maybe two total weeks there so twice you've been there so what made you decide to go back there for the second time like why was this so special to you this spot A it was free and B it was beautiful and it was secluded like very quiet it was right next to a lake and it had beautiful mountains there's not like a ton of space where you can enter where we did but there's like a couple spots that you can kind of space out so you have a lot of privacy I had no idea like in the middle of it was like a pull off road P off it almost looked like we were going to get murdered when we pulled in but then it turns into an oasis no it's pretty but it was funny because we were G to stay somewhere else there was another spot we had picked out on a Overlander and then I always like triple check because whenever he's driving and I'm like oh I'm going to look around the area and just see if there's anything else and so I did and I found that spot and I was like oh we're going here because someone had posted like a picture and I was like we're going here instead like unplanned it was something you just kind of stumbled across by accident literally on the way we made our changed our minds yeah happy accident it was meant to happen yeah exactly oh that's perfect I just loved how quiet and like the water you can just like hear it doing its thing it's really just kind of a good blend of everything like you it's maybe it's Baskin Robbins you know you get every little flavor so you got mountains you've got snow if you if you look at the top of the mountain there's a lake there's almost like Beach area there's like a little bit of walking trail um so it's just kind of a lot of cool stuff so and what's really nice that we enjoyed was in that particular spot since there's nothing there there's no light pollution and actually the second time we went we happened to go while it was coinciding with like a meteor shower so we went out at night and basically just rolled up and we're looking at the sky and yeah shooting stars it was really cool yeah it was so cool oh wow so it sounds like it's definitely someone who just wants to someone to go there if they just want to do some stargazing and just be like completely immersed in nature yes quiet and beautiful views a nice place to detox if you're tired of being in big cities oh that's awesome now do you guys have um like 4x4 on your van is this like super accessible to just about anybody so our van doesn't have 4x4 um but we just took it very slow it is a little bit of an aggressive like road but it's not too bad I think you could make it even just in a regular car you would just want to take your time depends on how far in you go too we went a little further down because there was some people parked so we went a little further and it got a little bit more like some big rocks and stuff that we had to like go over so it just depends on how far you go but just go slow oh nice so I know you guys have spent like a week there and so but if someone were just like go to this spot for a night stopping would they still to experience and like enjoy all that this area has to offer yeah because it's really not that big it's small big like it's a big space but in a small area so you could get in and you could still have your private area um and I don't think either time we've been there hasn't been so many people to where it felt crowded I think the most we saw was like maybe three people and it was spaced out enough to where like we had no idea they were there majority of the time um so I absolutely think they could enjoy it especially if you're just trying to enjoy the site and just have some tranquil quiet it's I think it's perfect for that when were you guys there what kind of months were you there the first time we went was this uh like early September we went for like a full week right when we pulled up there I was like I could stay at this place for months like it was so nice but we stayed for a week because we had to get to an airport nearby after that we went back towards mid so about month later I think a little over a month later we went back for another couple days I think I don't think we did a full week that time but it was like maybe three or four days that last time but we basically planned our route out of where we were so we could go back to that spot and we were also going to see which was right there one of the entrances is and so we stayed there before we went into it was definitely a lot cooler when we went the second time so yeah so October a lot cooler September was beautiful yeah September remember I think I had a tank top and shorts on every day and it was nice but then I went to a hoodie and shorts so good mix like at night it got cold but during the day it was pretty nice oh perfect now I know you guys don't have dogs or kids right now but is it do you know if it's pet friendly in that area can you bring a dog over there we didn't see a lot of kids but you could definitely stay there with your kids I think it would be a cool spot for them to just kind of bet I think one family had a bunch of kids and they were playing like football in the water but we've seen both kids and dog do yeah um and they just kind of run out and play in the water so absolutely friendly forum dogs for sure kids probably too but you got to potty them the same so yeah true now obviously we're a little bit secluded here you said it's right near Yos but what is there to do at like night once the start other than stargazing obviously that's like super high on the list but other than that what do you guys do at night when you're there um we have a mini fire kit thing that we have it was like a really small portable fire thing so we made a little fire and we made s'mores um s'mores we cooked and good that was nice watched some shows in our van and just enjoyed nature outside else weed a little bit yeah we went for like a little kind of hiked a little bit yeah really like a hike yeah but we explored but I will say um there was no service while we were there so having the starlink was nice um we would kind of retire to the van in the evening and watch like a movie or something and I had some that we had downloaded so we still had access to it that's a good tip one thing we cuz we didn't have the star link when we did our cross country trip but we ended up we kind of learned that there would be places where we didn't have service and if we were going to some place where there wouldn't be anything to do besides like watch a movie we would just download in our phone in advance well we had service to Amazon Prime so it would be there we could just stream it once we had no service right yes exactly and it was funny because I did have to work the first week we were there and I was like oh thank goodness we have starlink because if not not I could not have done anything while we were there because there was literally no service with anything else so it was definitely nice to have in that moment yeah that's awesome I think when we were in Yosemite it was just like complete blackout like no service we weren't getting in or out to anybody U which sometimes is nice you know I remember that we didn't have because that was one of those places I wanted to watch the movie free solo at yed cuz that would have been like really cool to do but that was one of those nights where we actually didn't download in advance so we just got stuck not being able to watch it but yeah quick tip now because this spot is so close to Yosemite have you guys adventured into Yus frequently when you were there so we stayed there before we went to Yos the second time we went we stayed outside of it and then the next day like we had gone into Yosemite and then we stayed in Yos in one of the campgrounds so we didn't have to drive back out that spot itself was about 15 minutes from the entrance and it's the east entrance of Yos not the I think more popular one on the west about 15 minutes from there but even closer to to Yos there is a little gas station with like a little gravel lot that a lot of people stayed at if they did have to come out of the park and they would just stay there overnight and then go back in yeah because I know that when we went to we had um we had a little bit of trouble trying to figure out where we were in as Sleep part of it was probably not having the best service and not planning that's good that we have now a few different spots that you've mentioned around that area that you know people can pull up at and actually get a good night sleep at yeah yes and all of those spots were on ioverlander that app and so even our spot I think when I found it it says like best spot ever and so I was like what is this and so that's why we went there initially and then um yeah the other gas station gravel spot is also on I Lander as well oh nice we'll have to like link the coordinates to exactly where this spot is um I know we don't want to give away like all the secrets but at least so you know somebody can find it when they want to go that way do you have any quick tips on um Yus that you guys or like any certain things you really loved since you ventured in a few times I will just say we didn't get our Full Yosemite Experience because right before that um we were in Lake Tahoe and we were um what were we doing paddle boarding oh yes we were paddle boarding and we jumped off this rock and basically I scraped the whole side of my foot on this rock and so it was like clean and it was super tender so I could barely wear shoes so we only did like very short like hikes when we were there and just knowing that we were going to have to come back to experience it fully but I will say if you can't walk a lot or you only want to do short things lower Yosemite Falls was like a one mile easy walk little hike there was another one that was like a mile but it's on the map that they give you and it was I think it was just a mile and so those are that's really all we got to do because of my foot well I would say for sure plan to spend at least like I don't know I feel like couple days three days would maybe be like the minimum um that I would recommend just because it's such a big Park and there's so much to do yes but if you're planning on staying in Yos book it way in advance because it I feel like year round it's basically full so if you're not planning at least like a month and a half out or so you're it can be a lot harder to find a parking spot we were super fortunate that we found one literally the same day um and we it kind of like just became available so we like must have just scooped into that window but it was it was really nice to stay in the park so if we could have done that more days um probably would have upgraded that experience a whole bunch which it was still great but not having to worry about going through all the loopy mountains twice was a was definitely a nice feeling service wise it definitely was very like no Serv like you said at The Visitor Center that was the main Yosemite village I think Visitor Center was the only spot that I've heard of and that we had actual service in it wasn't like amazing but it still worked and so that's where I looked up one more time I was like I'm going to look up the campsites just to see if there was a cancellation or something I really don't want to drive out of the park tonight and so we looked it up and there was one spot and so it happened it was great so don't perfect timing yes yeah I think you did the exact same thing too right yeah we same thing everything was booked up and then all of a sudden there was one that was open yes people cancel all the time yes they do you got keep checking and I can definitely add to that how you mentioned that one of the parks that does get crowded from what we had experienced none of the parks we went kind of in the late fall and they weren't overly crowded Yosemite was the first Park that we went to that was crowded now granted we went on a weekend it was the first day they had opened the park without needing reservation to get in and then it was also like their 100th anniversary so it was definitely crowded but it wasn't like it's such a big Park that we were kind of okay with it really wasn't that big of a deal we expected it to be a lot more crowded we waited maybe like half an hour to get in but really wasn't bad it wasn't like those lines you see at arches I think they were talking about last summer for some reason we only seem to make it to national parks on the holiday weekends unplanned we don't pure coincidence so we've gotten better at uh either planning in advance for that or not going on a holiday weekend so that def do that's a very smart tip definitely if you want the park to yourself don't go on those holiday weekends and especially if you've got a little time in your afternoon or evening during the week like you can get right in there enjoy that whole Trail to yourself it's so nice yes AB yep agreed all right cool so now we're gone to move into our 432 one section so just a few questions a little more rapid fire um if you have answers for them or maybe you'll have you know some unique answers but first one so you guys have a favorite breakfast lunch dinner maybe dessert spot in that area in that area no yeah I think we cooked all our food while we were there yeah we cooked all of our food I don't even think we went to any of their like if they have restaurants we didn't go to any of those I really didn't even look I'm wondering if we can almost like reframe that question because we've had a couple of people have answered that and they said that either in remote locations when you are cooking for yourself is it like a recipe or like a certain distance you make CU that's like amazing you want to share yeah that's a good question because it's always cool to find out like what other people cook and like is it like a simple recipe is it hard or whatever so yeah he's the cook now so you can answer your that uh first soy sauce I was going to saying how much soy sauce are we putting in here yeah so we have a gallon no I'm just kidding when we're making like simpler meals um a got is grilled some chicken and then cut it up into strips and then we have these raw tortillas that you throw on the frying pan and then you flip them over 30 seconds through that cooks them so they taste like restaurant style but we make quesadillas that were pretty easy the secret to a good quesadilla is either Del Taco sauce or uh the bitching sauce B sauce it comes in like a little tub and it's so good it is good he makes chicken fried rice or we've done shrimp fried rice so that's really easy you just throw it all together and cook it um and day old rice day old rice oh and just like fajitas like you know get the ingredients chop it all up and then just use it for f he does well most of our I say most of our recipes are pretty simple it's just like a meat a vegetable and then a delivery device so we kind of rotate through different genres there's an Asian style a Hispanic style sometimes maybe we get like an Italian I don't know but just rotate through the categories well makes it easy because you can buy food and bulk that way so that way you know fill up less often but still have some diversity in your food yeah and with the van it's like always good like if you just use one pot that you have to wash that's always my goal yes exactly so yeah like lunch and dinner uh breakfast we'll do either like egg sandwiches egg burritos or we'll do uh overnight oats are awesome in a van just throw it all together and just eat it in the morning well they're good out of a van too and out of a van Perfect all right so we touched on this a little bit but what are three things to do in or around this this little area that we're talking about the first thing definitely go to yed cuz it's like right there I would say honestly the little town of Reno is like 2 hours it's not right there but it's like two hours North and that's where we kind of went after that spot it's a really cute Town it has a lot of it's near like Taho uh which like Tahoe is very pretty as well so I would say if you have the time it's like two to three hours probably in the vicinity it's really worth it it's gorgeous just some really nice scenery there um it has like a very small town feel and just like a lot of nice Trails like we did that run Loop um there was a running trail that was just really beautiful where like the first half of it was just all grass and then you get to Lake and then you get to like the mountains and then just like um like little suburban houses so that was just a really cool spot so yeah South Reno was really cool I guess Mammoth Lakes could be another one like the actual Mammoth Lakes spot because that's very popular a lot of people know of that area for like skiing and Resorts and that kind of stuff so if you're into that would say it's like right there so yeah nice and if anyone were to have two complaints and not necessarily complaints but things that they might not have planned for uh regarding this kind of obscure hidden Grant Lake Campground area what would they be there is no bathroom so yes if you are a shy pooper um you can no longer be a shy pooper well if you're not even if don't have a way to do that in your van either yes if you can't do it if you're not self the rule is you know be amount of space I think it's 6 feet or 8 feet or something away from the lake so stay away from the water and then you dig a hole that's like six inches deep and then you can go outside and cover it up and then of course if you're self-contained you don't have to worry about that but it is a thing to know because you know things happen I would say that and then um I would definitely recommend like some sort of bug screen um there's not a whole lot of bugs a lot but um the first night I think we were there we just left the door open all day and then when we close it and we turn the like yeah we have like little like colored lights and we turn them on you could see all the Nets and we probably spent like 15 minutes with a fly swatter just like zapping them all so and then like squishing them with their fingers fly so we put up the bug screen the next day so bug screen and a designated shovel yeah or something thank you for your honesty there and that's one of those things that people they don't realize they need it until they need it the bug screen when you're out there and the bugs come out it's like it can ruin the entire evening when you got the mosquitoes and all that fun stuff and then also having a bathroom or a shovel especially if you're making those Mexican fajitas too in the hot sauce exactly it's multi-layered planning so oh my God so many good tips all right one last question guys what is one thing you simply can't leave this Grant Lakes Campground area without doing I really liked um getting in the lake oh yeah getting in was fun it was cold but it was fun well the first time we were there we had been there for about maybe four or five days and I think we hadn't showered for like maybe two days prior to that so we weren't feeling particularly clean so it was nice to go take a dip in the water and just kind of like Get refreshed but it was very cold so it was super refreshing it was more of like he went to go in there and I was like you know like sticking my hands in and like trying to wash my body best I could but it was definitely worth it I say go in if it's nice and if you can handle it if not at least go to Yos because it's Yos is probably a better answer Yos is not a bad fallback plan yeah worst case go to awesome all right guys hey thank you guys very much for coming on the show today we had a great conversation I think our listener is going to learn a ton about this area something we had not even heard of and we're going to try and make it to on our next trip out there awesome love it thanks for having us always love talking about the Mobile Life yeah and hopefully uh we'll meet up on your guys next trip yeah you got it we will see you guys on the road perfect awesome well thanks guys have a good night you too

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