Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
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Why do people make the decision to live full-time in an RV?
Many people choose to live full-time in an RV for the freedom and flexibility it offers. For some, it’s about escaping high housing costs or breaking free from routines that no longer feel fulfilling. Others are drawn to the adventure of travel, the simplicity of downsizing, or the chance to work remotely while exploring new places. It’s often a mix of financial, personal, and lifestyle motivations.

1. Episode Summary
2. Transcript
3. Hanging Out at Rodea Point
4. How Did You Start RVing Full Time?
5. What Made us Decide to Do It?
6. Was It a Dream or a Necessity?
7. How Did Work Fit In?
8. Stuck or Just Ready for a Change?
9. What We Wanted More Of
10. Making the Big Decision
11. Our Biggest Fears
12. The First Trip
13. Research and YouTube
14. RV Myths and Misconceptions
15. Choosing the Right RV
16. Useful Tools and Resources
17. The First RV Trip
18. Rookie Mistakes
19. Would We Have Taken More Time?
20. Stuff We Regret Buying
21. Things We Should Have Bought Sooner
22. What We Got Right
23. Wrapping It Up and Words of Advice
24. Share this Episode

Episode 1: How Did You Get Started RVing (And Would You Do Anything Differently?)
Recorded at Rodea Point, Oregon Coast

In this first episode of Just in Case You’re Wandering, Brad and Becky kick things off with an unscripted conversation from the front seat of their car, parked along the scenic Oregon Coast. They reflect on the journey that led them into full-time RV life back in 2019 and how what started as a necessity quickly became a lifestyle they love.

From the chaos of downsizing in under a month to early rookie mistakes (like tire blowouts and soda explosions), this episode dives into the real, unpolished truth of what it looks like to live, work, and travel full-time from a fifth-wheel RV. Brad shares how his dream of a schoolie evolved, and Becky opens up about her doubts, craft-space sacrifices, and the surprising freedom that came with the shift. Together, they offer laughs, lessons, and insights into everything from choosing the right rig to managing telehealth and teaching jobs on the road.

Whether you’re dreaming about RV life, already living it, or just curious, this episode gives you an honest, funny, and sometimes chaotic look at what it really means to make the leap.

This transcript has been generated automatically and may contain errors and edits for clarity and brevity.

Brad
Hey there everybody. My name is Brad.

Becky
And I’m Becky.

Brad
And we are hanging out here today at a place called Rodea Point. It’s on the Oregon coast. It’s just a little north of Newport, a little bit south of Lincoln City. And we’re just hanging out in our car. Oh, did I say it wrong?

Becky
The opposite of that.

Becky
Yeah. It’s north of Lincoln City, south of—no, north of—you were right. Sorry, we do this all the time.

Brad
No, I was right. That’s OK. Yes. That’s one thing about RVing—we’re never exactly sure where we are at any given point. But I know we’re at Rodea Point. So wherever that is near Newport. And it’s one of our favorite places to come and watch whales. Yeah. It’s kind of like fishing. Are you really fishing if you’re not catching fish? Are you really whale watching if you’re not watching whales?

Becky
But there aren’t any today.

Becky
We’re watching for the possibility of whales.

Brad
Yes. But it’s a beautiful day. A little bit cloudy, mostly blue sky. Nice and calm.

Brad
We are recording from our car, so you’re going to hear some background noise. You might hear the waves crashing in. You might hear this dude next to me in a truck who’s not turning his engine off for some reason.

Becky
You might hear our dogs in the back seat.

Brad
Yeah, that’s fine. Scout’s in the back seat. A couple of little terriers that we love. They explore the coast with us and make a lot of noise sometimes—especially Scout, our little girl who snores like a freight train. So if she gets really relaxed, you’re going to get to meet Scout. But you might hear them shaking a collar or growling low-key at somebody walking by. So if you do hear weird noises, we’re not in a studio or anything like that. We wanted to be out in the world where we live our life on the road.

Brad
I’m sure this is going to be one of those episodes we look back at a year or two from now and cringe listening to because we didn’t know what we were doing. But we’re going to give it a shot and see how it comes out.

Brad
What I thought we’d do is frame each of our episodes around questions—either ones we see online a lot or that people ask us directly. So I haven’t really prepared Becky for any of these questions. And honestly, I wrote them a while ago, so they’re going to feel new to both of us.

Brad
Our big question today is: how did you get started RVing and what might you do differently if you were going to start again? That’s definitely the question I get asked the most. Like, how did you guys even start doing that? So, how long have we been doing this now?

Becky
Let’s see…

Brad
2019?

Becky
Right before the pandemic.

Brad
2018… right before the pandemic hit.

Becky
So 2019.

Brad
Yeah. So we’re five, almost six years in now.

Becky
Six years.

Brad
Yeah. And for the first couple of years, we were stationary. I was going to say stable, but I’m not sure we’re ever stable. But yeah, we were stationary because we both had full-time in-person jobs, so we had to be. But about two and a half, three years ago, we hit the road and have been traveling full-time ever since.

Brad
So that’s just a little bit of background on who we are and what we’re up to. Let’s start by talking about the spark. Where did this idea first come from? What made us even consider living and working from an RV?

Becky
I think this answer is going to be really different for each of us.

Brad
It is.

Becky
For me, it was absolutely necessity. I had gotten a job offer that required us to move to the southern Oregon coast. And Brad got a job offer that also required us to move there. And if you’re familiar with that area—or anywhere along the Oregon coast—housing is a problem. We couldn’t find a house. We couldn’t even find an apartment to rent. Nothing. So we jokingly said, well, what about just an RV for a little while?

Brad
Couple of months, maybe?

Becky
Yeah, tops. And then we’ll have an RV we can travel in, you know, since we like to travel anyway. And then, well, one thing led to another. We bought the RV and actually figured out we really liked it. Which for me is shocking. I never thought I would be an RV person.

Brad
Yeah. It was not shocking that I liked it. It was shocking that you liked it.

Brad
I had been dreaming about tiny house living for a long time. I thought I’d someday build a schoolie—a school bus converted into a camper. That had always been my dream. I even went and bought a bunch of…

Becky
I was just going to tell the story of you making the foam core board schoolie model. Yes. This is what he does when he gets really, really into something. We’ve been married a long time. I’m used to it.

Brad
Yeah. So I had it all 3D built. I was going to figure it out. But there were two main problems. One, we had no money to do it. And two, we had no place to do it. We were living in an apartment and didn’t have access to a shop or anything. So it was never going to be a reality. Just a fun little pipe dream.

Brad
But when the opportunity came to move into an RV, I thought, well, it’s not a schoolie, but it’s the same kind of vibe.

Becky
That portable concept.

Brad
Yeah. So I was all about it. I was really excited to do it.

Brad
The second question here, we’ve already kind of talked about. Was this lifestyle a dream, a necessity, or something in between?

Becky
It started out as a necessity because we had to have a place to live since we had jobs.

Brad
So again, I’d answer differently. It started out as a dream. And because it was a necessity, Becky got on board. So I guess it was something in between, right?

Becky
I guess if you put them both together. I should preface that by saying I actually really do enjoy traveling. I always have. I used to have jobs that required me to travel more. I really liked that. So it wasn’t that. But I’m also sort of an artsy, craftsy kind of person, and those take space. So the idea of giving up my craft space or dedicated hobby space was tough. Painful, actually. But ultimately, it ended up all right.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
So anyway, more about that later.

Brad
Yes, for sure. We’ll get into that. I don’t know if it’ll be this episode, but there are a lot of sacrifices that come with this life. But it also comes with a lot of benefits.

Becky
Our friend in the truck is leaving.

Brad
So maybe it’ll be a little bit quieter now. Good manners 101—when you’re sitting at a beautiful overlook enjoying nature, don’t run your truck full time.

Becky
Turn off your car. We want to hear the waves and the seagulls and all the sounds.

Brad
One other question here about kind of the spark that got us into it is the working thing. A big thing we’re going to talk about on this podcast is working from the road.

Brad
A lot of people out here are retired. They don’t have to worry about Wi-Fi. They can move any day of the week and go anywhere. That wasn’t us, right?

Becky
Yeah. We don’t work-camp or anything like that. I mean, there are lots of people who do that. They go from job to job or work for the state parks and things. That’s not what we do at all.

Brad
So did we already have remote jobs and then decide to live in an RV, or were we trying to figure that out?

Becky
It sort of happened… I mean, it happened for you first. The pandemic helped, which sounds weird to say, but it did. As a lot of people figured out, the pandemic made people realize, oh wait, I don’t have to go to an office to do my job. I can do it from home.

Becky
So that’s kind of where things changed for us. I’ll tell my half and then you can tell yours, because yours is a little different than mine.

Brad
Yeah. It wasn’t really the pandemic that got us into the RV, right? The pandemic hit maybe a year into… I want to say stable again. What’s the word?

Becky
A year or so after. Yeah.

Brad
About a year into stationary living, and we were really thinking, here we are sitting on wheels—why are we not moving around the world? We were looking for the opportunity. We were ready to go remote. But it seemed… remote. It seemed like it was years down the road before we could make that work. And then the pandemic hit. And one of the very few good things about it was that it opened up a lot of work-from-home opportunities.

Becky
Yeah. Remote work.

Brad
So I’m a high school teacher. I was able to move out of my brick-and-mortar classroom into an online school, and that’s still what I do. And I love it.

Becky
Yeah. I worked for a hospital when the pandemic hit. My part of the office went remote because I was supporting medical staff. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I was in that department. So I was able to work from home. That allowed me to go back and finish my graduate degree, and do what I really wanted to do—which was be a mental health counselor. So I took the opportunity to finish grad school, and when things started to open up, I started working in the mental health field.

Becky
Now I work for a company that allows me to do all my services via telehealth. I don’t have to be in an office. I just have to have a dedicated quiet space, which we can talk about later—how we make that work in an RV. But it works.

Brad
That is a big question we get—how in the world do two people work in separate areas in an RV? Because she’s doing things that have to be private, right? I can’t just sit there and listen while she’s doing a therapy session. So how do you separate two working arrangements?

Becky
Right.

Brad
In a 300-ish square foot fifth wheel. We’re not in a Class A.

Becky
I guess we should also say we have children, but they’re adults. They don’t live with us. We could not do this if we had little kids. I couldn’t do my job this way if we had young kids, for sure.

Brad
Yes. For those of you doing that—who are you? How do you do that?

Becky
You’re amazing. I can’t even imagine doing it with kids, but hats off to those of you who do.

Brad
This next question. Were you feeling stuck, stressed, or just curious about something different when you got into RVing? To set the stage a little, we were… I went back to college in my 40s. We both did, to get degrees. I became a teacher. So we were living in a three-bedroom apartment.

Becky
We were in a house then.

Brad
You’re talking about in Newport or in Corvallis?

Becky
Well, you’re talking about in Corvallis. Yeah.

Brad
Yeah, I went to University of Oregon, I mean Oregon State University! Oh my gosh. I know, maybe I need to drink something.

Becky
He doesn’t drink coffee either, folks.

Brad
So when it asks, were we feeling stuck, stressed, or just curious, I think for me it was all of the above. I definitely felt stuck renting, like we would never get out of that loop with the housing prices and everything that was happening.

Becky
Yeah. And we were living on the coast then too. So it was just not feasible to buy a home. It was crazy expensive. And we weren’t entirely sure we were going to stay where we were. We’ve always kind of wanted to explore the coast a little more. Definitely the state, and the country at some point. But we just weren’t quite sure. So I would say it was definitely a blend of all three. Stress was a big part of mine, which prompted the job move. But yeah, definitely all three. And curious, for sure.

Brad
I’ve always felt like a house—even just renting a place with a year lease—felt like an anchor. Like you were stuck in that place. I don’t know if everybody feels that way or if that’s just me.

Becky
I didn’t, but yeah. Apartments, not so much. But we’ve owned homes in the past.

Brad
Even an apartment is a bit of an anchor. You’ve got to give notice. You’ve got to find another one. You’ve got to pack up all your stuff and move. It all has to work out.

Becky
And we don’t have that anymore. Our only anchor is whether the truck is connected to the trailer and it starts.

Brad
Yeah. There’s a story there we’ll save for another day.

Becky
All is well, though. All is well.

Brad
What did we want more of when we decided to go RVing? And what were we hoping to leave behind?

Becky
Oh, I think that goes with the last question.

Brad
How so?

Becky
Because I wanted—once I realized how much I actually liked it—the freedom that it gave me was something. I love that every three weeks or so, our surroundings change. They’re familiar, because we’ve been to some of the places before, but it always feels like someplace new. I love that. And I forgot the second half of the question already.

Brad
What were you hoping to leave behind?

Becky
I wanted more flexibility, more time for just us to be together. We’re one of those weird couples that actually like spending most of our time together. I say weird because I talk to friends who are like, I couldn’t do that, I need space. And I do need space sometimes too. But I’d rather have him in my space. So it works great for us. And what was I hoping to leave behind?

Brad
If anything?

Becky
Oh, definitely things. I think… just complexity. Which sounds funny because RV life is anything but simple. But at the same time, it’s really simple.

Brad
True.

Becky
Because of its minimal aspects. We have limited space, so you can’t take everything you own with you. If you have everything you own, it’s got to fit. So it’s mindful.

Brad
And the complexity we left behind was short-term. Do you remember the upstairs neighbors we had in that apartment in Newport?

Becky
Yes.

Brad
Just the loudest neighbors ever. It was so stressful. We couldn’t get away from it. Now, we sometimes have loud neighbors, but…

Becky
Yeah. We’re like, when do they move? Look at the tag on their trailer. What day do they leave? Who leaves first?

Brad
Yeah. At the most, it’s going to be a few weeks, and then they’re gone. And if it got really bad, we would just move.

Becky
We can go. So you’re not stuck. Definitely freedom.

Brad
Yeah, for sure.

Brad
Let’s talk about actually making the decision, which we said was kind of forced on us in a way. But did it take us a long time to decide, or did we jump in fast?

Becky
Nothing takes us a long time to decide. That’s one thing you’ll learn about us. We jump in headfirst, and we never stay still for too long.

Brad
Yeah, that’s true.

Becky
I think we’ve been married for over 30 years. And where we live and the careers we have… everything. We’ve always just jumped. I think our family wouldn’t know what to do if we were actually the same every single year. About every four or five years, something changes in our life and we pull up stakes and do something different.

Brad
Yeah.

Brad
That’s why I laugh when I keep saying stable instead of stationary, because we are not. We were not.

Becky
Stable. No. I forgot what the question is though.

Brad
Did we jump in fast? We jumped in so fast.

Becky
Oh, so fast. We literally downsized and sold probably 90 percent of our stuff in… what was it, less than a month?

Brad
A month. Because we had to move, right? We had to get out of our apartment. I had to start a new job. People talk about preparing for a year to get ready to go RVing, and we literally fire-saled everything.

Becky
Yeah, we both had to be there.

Becky
We didn’t have that kind of time.

Becky
That being said though, we had been downsizing consistently ever since we moved back to Oregon.

Brad
Well, just because we were moving to smaller and smaller places.

Becky
Right. But I think even though we didn’t know that’s what was happening, we were sort of being prepared. We kept getting rid of things every time we moved. And we still had a lot to get rid of, don’t get me wrong.

Brad
Yeah, even then, it’s amazing how much stuff you have. When you have to get rid of virtually everything, like all of your furniture, it’s just… it was amazing how much we had. We got rid of stuff on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. We had a yard sale. We started giving stuff away to neighbors. I think we stocked that whole Goodwill store for a month.

Becky
Yeah. Things you don’t even think about. Goodwill started to know us by first name.

Brad
Yeah. I honestly thought Goodwill was going to cut us off. Like, that is enough stuff.

Brad
What were our biggest fears starting out?

Becky
For me, there were two fears. One of them wasn’t really a serious fear, but I thought—OK, we have a really good marriage. What if this screws things up and we find out we really don’t like being around each other as much as we think we do?

Becky
That wasn’t a super serious fear, but it was a little bit of a worry.

Brad
Sure.

Becky
The other thing was just like… am I going to lose myself in having to change my life so much?

Brad
Oh, you mean like with your art?

Becky
Like with my art and my crafts, the things I enjoy doing. Am I going to have to become this sort of minimalist hermit that never gets to do the things I love? And that hasn’t happened.

Brad
Yeah. Virtually everywhere we’ve lived, she’s had some kind of scrap room—either dedicated or something else. Scrapbooking, painting…

Becky
Arts and crafts. It’s morphed over the years, but yeah, that was hard. That was hard to give up. So that was my fear. What about you?

Brad
Mine was—and still is—breaking down.

Becky
I laugh because it’s so true.

Brad
Yeah. And I don’t just mean the truck and the RV. I mean our bodies too. There’s some physical labor involved in keeping an RV up and moving it around. So I worry about the truck breaking down, the RV getting water damage, and I worry about our bodies breaking down. How do we move this thing if we reach that point?

Becky
That’s true. I don’t think about how often you have small panic attacks when I walk down the stairs.

Brad
That’s true. We’ve both taken at least one spill down some stairs since we’ve been doing this. We survived it.

Brad
This question is kind of funny. Oh yeah, sorry, you’re getting the real-life sounds of us needing to get a little air moving through the car. It is a gorgeous day here. It doesn’t even matter that there are no whales, because it’s beautiful.

Becky
Yeah, get some more air in here. It’s gorgeous.

Becky
That’s the only drawback to a podcast. You can’t see what we’re seeing. It’s that gorgeous blue-sky kind of day when the water is like the perfect shade of aqua and teal blue. It’s just gorgeous.

Brad
I think what we should do is take some pictures from the places we record and then put them on the website. So yeah, the website, in case you’re wondering, is jicyw.com, which stands for Just In Case You’re Wandering. I’ll have a page there for each of the podcast episodes and we’ll upload some pictures of where we’re hanging out. And our dogs, so you can get to know them a little bit, stuff like that.

Brad
So check that out.

Brad
Here’s the ridiculous question. How did you prepare—financially, emotionally, logistically—for a mobile life and remote work?

Becky
As fast as we could.

Brad
Or the way I’d answer it is, we didn’t. We just jumped right in and figured it out.

Becky
Yeah, that’s how we do pretty much everything. We’re just like, OK, we’re going to do this, and there we go.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
And then we figure it out.

Brad
Yeah, and it worked. Somehow. That’s been our life. We try it, and it works.

Becky
I think that’s why it works, because we’ve done it so many times with so many other things.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
Everything we’ve ever done, including just getting together. We were nineteen. We were really young.

Brad
Yeah, oh absolutely. Getting married, and yes, eloping to Reno, Nevada. No, Winnemucca. We didn’t even make it to Reno. Winnemucca, Nevada.

Becky
We didn’t even have that much money.

Brad
So when she says we jump into things without thinking a lot, she’s not kidding. But they tend to work out.

Becky
Well, I think we had the skills to do it by this point in time. It was like, whatever. We’ve done this. This is not a big deal.

Brad
Yeah, decades later.

Brad
Let’s talk about the research phase. As short as it was, we did do some. We watched a lot of YouTube videos and things like that.

Becky
We did.

Becky
We still watch a lot of YouTube videos. Sometimes now it’s to make fun of the content. I don’t know if I should say that out loud.

Brad
Yeah, absolutely. This is going to be a very honest look at RVing and the RV world.

Becky
If I never hear about Command hooks and wire baskets again, I’m OK.

Brad
Yeah. Every YouTube video acts like they’re the first ones to ever discover Command hooks. Like it’s going to revolutionize your life.

Becky
Truth is, half the time they fall off the wall and don’t do what they’re commanded to do.

Brad
There’s something about RV walls that they just don’t stick to very well.

Brad
Were there myths you believed about RV life or working remotely that didn’t hold up?

Becky
Not about working remotely. I’ve had other jobs where I worked on my own. We’ve owned our own businesses over the years, so I didn’t worry about that. Other than wondering if it was going to be sustainable. Like, is it going to go away when the pandemic is over?

Brad
Right.

Becky
And I don’t want to say the pandemic is over, because I don’t know that it ever really is. People are still dealing with COVID, with long COVID. Anyway, different topic, different podcast.

Brad
Not one we’re going to do.

Becky
No. But yeah, I worried a little bit about whether remote work would continue. I still worry a little, but not as much.

Brad
What myths did you believe about RV life?

Becky
Oh, way more myths about RV life. In my head I either thought, oh my gosh, we’re going to be like the Clampetts, and people are going to think… so that’s what you do, huh? I remember when we first got the RV, I didn’t want to tell anyone we lived in it. I wasn’t going to tell anybody.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
People would ask, where do you live? And I’d just say, oh, in this town.

Brad
There are definitely people who think we’re saying we’re homeless when we say we live full-time in an RV. Like they picture us parked along the side of a road in a big city with no power.

Becky
Right. Like the Clampetts, with stuff tied to the top of the car.

Brad
Exactly. I had to take our dog to the vet for a health issue, and I think the vet thought we were basically homeless. I kept saying things like, we’re only going to be in the area a short time, we live in our RV, and he was really hesitant to prescribe anything. He seemed really worried about the cost.

Becky
We had to explain that we’re fine. We both work full-time. We can afford this.

Brad
Yeah. It was funny because originally it wasn’t necessarily our choice. But now it is. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Becky
It took me a long time. I remember the first time I told a coworker that I lived in an RV, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want them to think I was homeless.

Brad
Really? I didn’t know that.

Becky
Yeah. I would see the broken-down RVs parked in rough parts of town and think, that’s not what I’m doing. I just want you to know.

Brad
You get two reactions from people, and you can usually read it on their face. They either light up and say that’s amazing and ask a bunch of questions, or they give you a look of pity. Like, oh, you poor people. How do you do that?

Becky
And I’m so thankful that the first person I told was not the second kind. They were excited. It was one of my old coworkers and they said, that is the coolest thing. How do you do it? Tell me about the truck, and all the things. It was really fun.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
It was really validating. Like, OK, they’re not looking at me like I’m some weirdo.

Brad
I think it’s becoming more common. With the whole tiny house movement and things like that, people get it. We’re not in the RV from Breaking Bad. We’re not out there making meth.

Becky
Yeah. No crystal meth, nothing like that.

Brad
I think the biggest myths for me… I kind of knew they were myths, but still. Things like sitting around a campfire every night, or spending all day on great adventures, or meeting people on the road and forming relationships and saying, hey, we’re going to this campground, come with us.

Becky
That just doesn’t fit our lifestyle.

Brad
Yeah, we’ve never been super social people anyway. But most of the things you see in commercials—pay for an RV, and you’ll sit by a fire and make s’mores every night—that’s not us.

Becky
That’s more of the weekenders.

Brad
Yeah. We’ll do that sort of thing every once in a while, but it’s pretty rare. We’re living our life.

Becky
Right. This is our life. We’re not camping.

Brad
We’re just living our life in campgrounds. Which I guess is camping.

Becky
I remember thinking that too, like oh yeah, we’re going to be doing all these fun camping things all the time. And we do. We hike a lot, especially when the weather’s nice. In the summer we’ll have our little campfire or propane stove going, we’ll sit around outside… but it’s after a full day of work.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
We’re like most other people on the weekend. We’re doing the things we need to do to get ready for the next week. We might be going grocery shopping or having adventures. That’s part of the joy of this—we do get to explore. But we’re not camping. We’re living.

Brad
And if we feel like camping, we just go outside.

Becky
Right.

Brad
Because we’re in campgrounds all the time. So we are camping. But it doesn’t feel like it every single day.

Becky
Nor could you live like that every day. Financially, we couldn’t. You can’t live like you’re on vacation all the time.

Brad
Who could keep up with the laundry from sitting around a campfire every night?

Becky
No. The RV would smell like smoke all the time.

Brad
So how did we figure out things like choosing the right RV? Oh boy. These are big topics. Let’s just take that first one.

Becky
Well, that one’s an easy one because we just looked online and you said, how about this one? And I went, OK. And you went and looked at it online, and then you drove down and bought it. That was pretty much it.

Brad
Yeah. The options get a lot more limited when you have a month to go from “we have a new job and we need to move” to actually needing to live in the thing. And you’re moving to a small town without a lot of RV dealerships. We got so lucky with our RV. We could not be happier with the one we got.

Becky
We did.

Brad
We’re not going to share what it is or anything like that. We like our privacy, so you won’t see pictures of us on the website or anything like that.

Becky
Yeah.

Brad
But I suppose if you’re really smart, you could figure out who we are. Still, we’re going to keep that back a little bit. It’s basically an early 2010s RV. Built really well. And we love the floor plan. It’s perfect for full-timing.

Becky
Yeah.

Brad
That’s one of the places we got super lucky.

Becky
We really did.

Brad
The other part of that question was how do you figure out things like reliable internet. That’s its own topic, because that’s probably the biggest hurdle we’ve had in this lifestyle.

Becky
That’s a big one.

Brad
We’ll talk about that in an upcoming episode.

Brad
What tools and resources helped you make smarter decisions?

Becky
I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I read a lot of blogs. Especially blogs from other artists on the road, because I was trying to figure out how to pack and what I could take with me. That’s still a work in progress. We’re this many years in, and I’m still constantly going through things thinking, do I really need that?

Brad
Always.

Becky
Same goes for everything in the RV, because weight is something you’re going to hear about from everyone on the road. It’s a big deal. You can’t be overweight or you’ll damage your trailer. And it can be illegal.

Brad
Well, and it’s unsafe too.

Becky
This is our home, so we have to treat it with care.

Brad
Yeah. I found some Facebook groups early on that were really helpful. They were centered around the specific make and model of our RV. It was nice to have a group of people I could ask specific questions, like “Where is the power converter?” Things I couldn’t find. And having an army of people at your fingertips who can say “It’s right here” or “Here’s how I replaced mine” was huge.

Becky
Right. And how do you organize these really weird cabinets?

Brad
Yeah. The cabinets that are crazy deep and super narrow. For sure.

Becky
That’s another episode.

Brad
Let’s talk about our first time on the road. I’m not going to count when we were stationary. I mean the first time we actually hooked up the truck and went on a trip.

Becky
We went to that little campground…

Brad
Down by the river.

Becky
Not a van down by the river.

Brad
No. I can’t remember what river it was.

Becky
It was the Umpqua.

Brad
The Umpqua. So we were camping down there. It was a little RV-specific camping area. So where did we go first and how did it feel? We just said where we went. But how did it feel, that first trip, taking our house somewhere?

Becky
It was exciting. I was so excited. I was nervous too. I remember sitting in the passenger seat looking in the rearview mirror going, “That’s my whole house back there,” and feeling both excited and really nervous. Like, please don’t let anything happen to that. That’s everything.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
Now I still think about that, but not as much as that first time. But it was also really exciting. Like, this is why we have an RV.

Brad
It was so fun. Our daughter was able to come up and hang out with us with her dog.

Becky
Yeah. And she was one of the ones constantly saying, “You guys have a trailer with wheels. Why are you staying still?”

Brad
Yeah. She thought we were crazy for staying stationary as long as we did.

Becky
Maybe we were. But that’s what we needed to do. We didn’t have a choice at the time.

Brad
I think the weirdest thing for me, especially because we’d been stationary for a while, was being in the same house but then opening the door and everything outside being different. That felt so cool.

Becky
I totally forgot about that. Yeah. I remember walking outside and going, “Shoot, I wish I had brought…” and then realizing I did. It’s all inside. It’s there.

Brad
Did I pack it? Wait—everything we own is with us. Yes, I packed it.

Becky
Which makes it really hard now when we actually do go to a hotel or something. I can’t remember what to pack anymore because I’m so used to everything just being there.

Brad
Yeah, we’re always packed for anything.

Becky
We can always take our stuff and go.

Brad
So, rookie mistakes in our first few moves. What did we do that made us go, oh, that was dumb? I know mine clearly.

Becky
I’m thinking about the tire.

Brad
Yes. We’ll post a picture of the tire because I have a picture of it. It was crazy. I’ll let you tell the story.

Becky
Well, I’d need two. I made so many rookie mistakes on that one trip.

Brad
So the first one is, I assumed that if tires had air in them, they were fine. I didn’t know a tire that sat for a long time could dry rot and get terrible. I just didn’t know. I’d never had a trailer sit around for a while.

Becky
And our RV had sat for almost three years while we were stationary. Keep that in mind.

Brad
I thought it was more like two, but either way, they had sat. So I went and made sure they had enough air in them. I knew enough to do that. But then we took off on the trip and blew a tire. But we were talking, and I think we had the radio on. Life was good.

Becky
We did not laugh.

Brad
And I had no idea how long that tire was blown out. I think it was miles. I didn’t notice it. The RV didn’t feel any different. But it had shredded all over the place. It had torn off the fender.

Becky
It looked like spaghetti all over it. It was terrible.

Brad
Yeah. I really think I drove on that thing for miles. We were on a single-lane road, and I didn’t know it was blown until we got to a passing lane and a car came screaming by us trying to wave us off the road. We had no cell signal.

Becky
Just going to pieces. Shredding.

Brad
So that was definitely a rookie mistake. On top of a rookie mistake. And then my third rookie mistake was having zero tools to change a tire on the road.

Becky
Yeah.

Brad
Let alone knowing how it could be done. At that point, I didn’t even know you could carry the right tools to change it yourself. I figured once you had a blowout, you just called someone.

Becky
Which we did. Also, AAA is your friend.

Brad
Still expensive when you have to get help. Actually, that wasn’t even AAA at that time.

Becky
No, you had to go into town, and it was farther than our AAA would tow us at the time.

Brad
Oh, we didn’t have AAA on the RV yet. We only had it on the cars. So get AAA on your RV.

Becky
You’re right. We only had it on the cars.

Brad
Or have something. So we had to call someone. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but between the two of us, we got it aired up and figured out and got the tire on. Three really dumb mistakes. Now, with all the work I’ve done on the RV, I could change a tire in 10 minutes. I have all the tools right there.

Becky
It was crazy. NASCAR, watch out. Is there a NASCAR for RVs?

Brad
I’m sure somewhere. I’ve seen trailer races.

Becky
We’re not going to do that. This is our home. Remember that whole anxiety thing at the beginning?

Brad
Maybe when we’re ready to trade it in, we’ll go to the racetrack.

Becky
No. I couldn’t do that. It would make me sad.

Becky
So, rookie mistakes. I can tell you some from my side. Because those were definitely rookie mistakes, but I’m not in charge of that stuff. So I don’t have to take the fall for that.

Brad
Yeah. Sometimes I am scared.

Becky
Sometimes we didn’t know enough to be scared. Rookie mistake number one: not packing the fridge.

Brad
Ah yes.

Becky
Or not double-checking that I packed the fridge. I got really good at packing the fridge—again, YouTube videos were my friend. But I don’t remember what it was—maybe I was tired—and I left a soda in the fridge. Not a bottle. A fountain drink. With a straw.

Brad
Yeah. Not a screw-on top soda. Like a fast food drink.

Becky
And I put it in the door. I forgot to take it out. Closed the fridge, packed everything up. When we opened the fridge, oh my gosh, I have never seen such a mess.

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
The only other time close to that was recently, when the fridge got too cold and a soda can exploded.

Brad
We heard a thunk. I thought a bird hit the window or something.

Becky
Nope. It was a soda can exploding in the fridge. It was a mess.

Brad
So bad.

Becky
Don’t put your temperature too cold. If your soda is near the vent, it will freeze and explode. Fun fact.

Brad
What about that first move? When we left… I can’t remember the two things that spilled in the top of that cabinet.

Becky
Oh my gosh, the instant biscuits. It’s the instant biscuit story. So we had these jars that had flour and oil and things in them. This was before we really understood how to pack a moving RV. It might have even been that same trip coming back from that first camping trip.

Brad
I think it was. We learned a lot.

Becky
I went to open the cabinet and thought, huh, it’s kind of sticky up there. I climbed up on a little step stool and opened it up… and yeah, we had basically made biscuit dough inside the cabinet. A total mess. It was disgusting.

Brad
So now we’ve learned. We switched to square containers. And I did some remodeling to build little cabinet inserts to help keep things from shifting. No more instant biscuits in our cabinets.

Becky
Yeah. So much better now.

Brad
We did a lot of work RV-proofing. We’ll dedicate a whole podcast episode to that at some point. But there’s…

Becky
Hey. Hey. Finn, stop. OK?

Brad
He is saving us right now. He’s saving our lives from people nearby looking at the ocean.

Brad
The other mistake I was going to mention… this is my dumb mistake that the whole world gets to see every day. I forgot to put down the tailgate on the truck before pulling away. So I basically snagged it on the pin box of the RV and bent the crap out of my tailgate. I’m still mad about that and I’m still going to replace it someday.

Becky
Yeah.

Brad
It’s one of those tiny things that takes half a second of not thinking and suddenly you’ve done something dumb.

Becky
You only do it once, usually.

Brad
I will prove you wrong one of these days. But yeah.

Brad
If we could do it over again, would we have taken more time?

Becky
No. Because we never do. I don’t think it would’ve helped us.

Brad
I don’t think we’re wired that way.

Becky
We work much better flying by the seat of our pants. We always have. It would’ve just made me more stressed. Even when we moved from Idaho to Oregon, we had a long process of getting ready and I remember being stressed out the whole time. I’m definitely a “get in, get it done, get it over with” kind of person.

Brad
Yeah. Kind of like pulling a Band-Aid off fast. If we’re going to do it, let’s just do it.

Brad
Are there things you wish you hadn’t bought when we started out? Something we wasted money on?

Becky
Yes. But they were things that worked for other people, so I thought they might work for us.

Brad
Like what?

Becky
Like those springy curtain rods in the fridge that are supposed to keep things steady. They kind of worked in the original fridge, the propane-electric combo one that came with the RV. But they didn’t always stay put. They bent. Maybe I just bought cheap ones.

Becky
Also, I’ve tried a variety of different closet organizing systems. I’m still not crazy about what we have now, but I haven’t found the right one yet.

Brad
I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that. You don’t know what you need until you buy it and try it and see if it works.

Becky
Biggest thing I’ve learned is: measure, measure, measure, and then measure again. I’ve bought things thinking, oh, that’ll fit—it looks small. Then I get it there and… it’s not even close.

Becky
And you don’t need as many command hooks as they say you do. You just don’t. And you can only use so many wire baskets.

Brad
Yeah, for sure.

Becky
I actually like plastic baskets better. Especially since we live on the coast. It’s humid. Anything metal starts to look gross. Plastic, I can take it out, wash it, put it back, and it’s fine. Plus, they’re cheap. I buy them at the dollar store. If one cracks, I don’t care.

Brad
I don’t think there’s anything I regret buying. Maybe some tools I don’t use often. But if you’re on the road and want to avoid paying a fortune to get things fixed, you need a lot of tools.

Brad
Is there anything we should have bought way earlier than we did?

Becky
The under-bed protector. The little lift thing for our mattress.

Brad
Oh my gosh, yeah. We had a mold problem under the mattress.

Becky
We found a great solution for that, but we had a nice mattress and I would’ve liked to keep it longer. That destroyed it. So we…

Brad
Yeah, we had to get rid of it.

Brad
We bought some little plastic spacers that give about a quarter inch of air between the mattress and the platform. I’m assuming it’s working, because I haven’t looked. I’m in denial.

Becky
I look every once in a while when I change the sheets, and it’s fine. But yeah, that and our little tables.

Brad
Oh, the portable tables?

Becky
No, not the TV tray ones. The ones beside the couch. The side tables with little chargers and storage.

Brad
Oh right. Just upgrading the really crappy furniture that came with the RV.

Becky
Those are very handy when you need storage space.

Brad
We waited too long to do that. My one thing that I’m so glad we bought, and wish we had bought sooner, was the fold-out stairs.

Becky
Oh yeah.

Brad
We had the diving board-style stairs that fold out from underneath the door. I hated those.

Becky
Tell them what we had before that.

Brad
When we were stationary, I built a beautiful set of wooden stairs. They were amazing. But we tried to travel with them for the first month or two, loading them in and out of the truck, and it just about killed me.

Becky
Not a good idea.

Brad
So yeah, replacing those with the fold-out stairs is probably the thing I’m most glad we upgraded. Saved my body from a lot of pain.

Becky
Even more than your LevelMate Pro?

Brad
There are so many things. That’ll be another podcast episode. But yeah, if I had to pick one right now, I’d say the stairs. Just so much easier. No more slipping, no more shifting.

Becky
Yeah, the stairs are nice. It’s nice to be able to walk up and down and feel like they’re sturdy.

Brad
Alright, let’s wrap this up with a good one. What did we get right? Let’s give ourselves a little credit. What decisions did we make that made life easier early on?

Becky
Our campground membership.

Brad
Oh yeah. We bought into Thousand Trails.

Becky
I know it’s not for everybody. We’ve seen and read and watched all the pros and cons. But for us, it works.

Brad
We love it. We still do some state parks and other campgrounds, but Thousand Trails is our home base. Our go-to.

Becky
Yeah. It’s so nice not to have to think. We have the package that lets us book 180 days out, stay three weeks at a time, and go park-to-park.

Brad
We could spend all year in Thousand Trails if we wanted to.

Becky
It helps so much. Especially since I’m the one planning out our route. Knowing how far in advance we’re booked helps with the internet planning too.

Brad
My answer would be that we got an RV with a washer and dryer.

Becky
Oh my gosh. How could I forget that?

Brad
I can’t imagine doing this life without a washer and dryer.

Becky
No.

Brad
All the parks have laundry rooms, and we use them sometimes—for blankets or big stuff—but being able to do laundry in our own space? Total game changer.

Becky
If we ever switch out RVs, we will definitely get another washer and dryer or move the one we have. No question.

Brad
I didn’t set a timer, but I think this is about how long our podcast episodes are going to last. My computer just died with the last question on it, but I remember what it was. The last question we’ll ask today is: What would you tell someone who was in the same situation we were in? Thinking about going full-time RV or not?

Becky
That’s loaded, because it depends. But I would say, more than anything else—yes, financial stuff is important. Jobs and how you’re going to support yourself on the road, all of that. But I think even more important than that is your relationship. If you’re married and you’re doing this… can you do that?

Brad
Yeah.

Becky
There are couples that would probably kill each other on the road. We don’t happen to be one of them. But you have to know how your relationships are going to handle the close quarters.

Brad
We’ve been married thirty years before we started doing this.

Becky
Yeah. So we’ve been through ups and downs and all the stuff. There have been times on the road when we’ve been frustrated, or the space isn’t working, or it’s raining and wet and cold. We’ve been snappy with each other sometimes. But for the most part, we get over it pretty quick.

Brad
Yeah. I think RV life won’t leave your relationship the same. It’s going to make it stronger, or it’s going to magnify the problems.

Becky
Because you’re in a small space. Yes, you can go in another room or upstairs if you have a loft. But again…

Brad
You get in the car and go to the ocean and look at the whales.

Becky
Exactly. But yeah, that’s my biggest advice. Make sure your relationship is solid, especially if your life is always going to be moving.

Brad
I think my advice would be: be prepared to learn. Be ready to do things you never thought you’d have to do. Mechanical stuff, especially. When people say towing an RV is like going through an earthquake every time you move, it’s true. And these things—no matter what brand, how much money you spend—they’re not built for how much we put them through.

Becky
That is so true.

Brad
Things break. Seals wear out. Stuff needs to be lubricated. Things fall off or shake loose. All of that was a mystery to me when we started. But I had to just decide, OK, I’m going to figure this out.

Becky
Same goes for the inside too. How to pack so stuff doesn’t break. Learning what will break anyway and being okay with it. Constant simplification.

Brad
Yeah. And thank goodness for YouTube and forums. I’ve had to learn how to fix almost every part of our RV. There are only a few things I wouldn’t tackle myself. And there’s comfort in knowing that I can fix almost anything on this thing now. Because if you’re full-time, you can’t really just leave your house at a shop for three months while someone gets around to it.

Becky
We’d have to be in a hotel or stay with someone. We don’t want to figure that out.

Brad
So yeah. Be ready to learn, scrape your knuckles, watch a bunch of videos, and carry more tools than you think you’ll need.

Becky
And just keep simplifying. Inside and out. But it’s worth it.

Brad
A couple of goals for this podcast—we’re hoping to post about once a week. We’re always going to be posting after we’ve left the place we’re recording from. So even though we’re sitting here right now outside of Newport looking at the ocean, when you hear this we’ll be somewhere new. But we want to take you with us into the sounds and experiences of all the places we go.

Becky
Yes.

Brad
We’d love to hear your questions or your comments. If you want to tell me I was an idiot for not knowing how to change an RV tire on the side of the road, that’s fine too.

Becky
If you have ideas or topics you want to hear about…

Brad
You can check out the website. It’s jicyw.com, which stands for Just In Case You’re Wandering. That’s Becky’s bit of cleverness.

Becky
It works. Down the road, yes.

Brad
I love it. On the site, you’ll see a page for each podcast episode. We’ll post pictures of where we recorded, links to anything we mentioned, and there’ll be a place to leave comments. Or you can email us—[email protected] and [email protected].

Becky
I don’t think I have anything else. It’s not sunny anymore. The clouds have rolled in, as they do on the coast in the afternoon. Looks like we might get a little rain.

Brad
It’s sprinkling a bit. We haven’t seen one whale, but we’re going to take a picture anyway. And now it’s going to be cloudy instead of that amazing blue sky we had earlier.

Becky
Yep.

Brad
If you’re on the road, be safe and let us know about your adventures. If you’re not on the road yet, get on the road. It’s such a good, fun, challenging life. It’s not for everybody, but it is so for us. We love it.

Becky
Whether you’re a full-timer or a weekend warrior, get out there. With all the stress going on in the world, there’s something really good about being away from it for a while. Give yourself some space.

Brad
Yeah, absolutely. Even if you’re just pondering it, that’s awesome. Thanks for wandering with us.

Becky
That’s right. Thanks for wandering with us.

Brad
Reach out and let us know if there’s anything you want to hear us talk about.

Becky
Bye from all of us.

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