Just In Case You're Wandering - A Full-Time RVing Podcast

Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
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What surprises people the most about full-time RV living?
Many new full-time RVers are surprised by how quickly they adjust to living in a smaller space, how deeply the RV feels like home, and how much they enjoy the constant movement. Emotional reactions, routines, and unexpected joys, like discovering a love for tinkering or a sense of freedom, often differ from what people expect before hitting the road.

1. Episode Summary
2. Transcript
3. What Surprised Us Most About Full-Time RV Life
4. Adjusting to RV Cooking and Holiday Traditions
5. Discovering New Things About Ourselves
6. The RV Learning Curve
7. What We Miss (or Don’t)
8. Work Routines, Internet, and Unexpected Perks
9. The RV Community (and a Little Kravitz-ing)
10. RV Park Rules and the Ten-Year Rule Frustration
11. When We Knew This Might Actually Work
12. Surprises That Still Catch Us Off Guard
13. Rituals, Habits, and Lucky Charms
14. Is RV Life Better for Introverts or Extroverts?
15. Share this Episode

Episode 4: What Surprised Us Most About Full-Time RV Living?
Recorded at Sunriver, Oregon

When we first hit the road full time, we had all kinds of ideas about what it would be like. But the truth is, most of those assumptions were wrong. Some surprises were beautiful. Others were challenging. All of them shaped our journey.

In this episode, we unpack the emotional, practical, and even humorous surprises of full-time RV living. From the reality of moving days and managing internet on the road, to unexpected emotional growth and the weird rituals we didn’t know we had, this is our honest look at what has (and hasn’t) gone according to plan.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Whether you’re dreaming of RV life or already deep in it, our reflections might help you prepare, or remind you that you’re not alone in your surprises.

Want more insight into RV living? Explore the full transcript below or check out our community.

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

Becky: Hi everybody, I’m Becky. Brad and I are coming to you from beautiful Bend, Oregon, with another episode of Just in Case You’re Wondering.

Brad: Yeah, we made the move away from the ocean, which always makes us a little bit sad. But it’s beautiful here in Bend. Spring is springing, the skies are mostly blue, and we’ve had just a little rain.

Becky: We’ve also had a couple of days in the 80s and absolutely gorgeous. Hopefully, we’ll get a few more of those before we leave. We’ll definitely be back to catch some of that Central Oregon summer.

Brad: Which means you can’t hear the ocean anymore, which is a little sad. You probably can hear that some folks are camped pretty close to us. Kids, dogs, and now our dogs are answering them. A little moment of chaos, which just happens.

Becky: The dogs are saying hello.

Brad: Right after that chaos, I had to cut real quick and let our dogs inside. Although you can probably still hear our neighbors’ dogs—very excited to know other dogs are nearby.

Becky: This is life on the road.

Brad: Yeah, and since it’s Friday night as we’re recording, you may hear other campers rolling in. Parks tend to fill up on the weekend.

Becky: Summer is just about here, and it feels like it. As we travel around, we’re noticing more and more people hitting the road.

Brad: Yeah. I also hear birds in the trees, although this spot is weird. At dawn, there’s a whole chorus, but during the day, the birds go totally quiet. Not sure what they’re up to, but it’s different.

Brad: So today our big question is, what surprised us most about full-time RV life? I know we’ve touched on this before, but we’ve got some different angles today. Just a reminder, I’ve organized this podcast into seasons, and season one is all about getting started. So some of these questions may sound familiar, but it’s all part of figuring things out. And yes, I cheated and prepared ahead of time.

Becky: Cheating, cheating, cheating. You do this all the time.

Brad: I’ve invited you to take over question-writing and put me on the spot, so anytime you’re ready to do that…

Becky: One of these days. One of these days.

Brad: Alright, so let’s start here: was there a moment early on that made you stop and think, oh, wait, this is not what I pictured?

Becky: There were a lot of those moments. I don’t even know how many times I thought, wow, this isn’t what I expected. Living stationary wasn’t what I pictured either. I thought it would feel really crowded or get old quickly. But it didn’t, which surprised me.

Brad: We were lucky though. That first park we stayed at while stationary had huge spaces, which is not typical.

Becky: Not normal at all. It wasn’t your parking-lot-style RV camp. And it wasn’t just the outdoor space—inside the RV too. I thought we’d get on each other’s nerves, but we didn’t. I should’ve known better. Back when we first got married, we rented this tiny little travel trailer. I don’t even know how we did it.

Brad: But we didn’t own anything back then.

Becky: Right, just a mattress on the floor and a stereo. We were basically kids. But even then, it was a smaller space, and we were newlyweds, so you’d think we’d struggle.

Brad: That’s true.

Becky: Another surprise was moving. I thought moving every three to four weeks would get old fast. But it doesn’t. By the time we hit that mark, I’m ready to hit the road again, even if we’re heading to a place we’ve already been. I just really like the change of scenery.

Brad: I definitely thought that too.

Becky: We’ve stayed in some places just a week, and now that feels rushed. I wouldn’t want to move more than once a week or even more than every two or three weeks regularly. It’s nice to plant for a bit and get to know the area.

Brad: With our package, we can extend stays a couple times a year to a full month, which is great. We usually use those around the holidays when we want to be closer to family.

Becky: Yeah, that helps us build in a little longer break. What about you? Any “this is not what I pictured” moments?

Brad: Oh, there are a few. One I’m not sure I can talk about on the podcast.

Becky: Oh no, we’re being honest here. You have to say it.

Brad: Now I’m going to dig at you a little.

Becky: Let’s just say that the intimate life in a camper is not what I pictured. Everybody knows what’s happening if you’re not careful. It feels like everyone’s listening, even if they aren’t. So that’s all I’ll say about that.

Brad: It definitely feels that way, yeah. Moving on… one of my big surprises was during our first move. We were heading to Florence, and if you’ve been to that park, you know it gets muddy. I got into a site I couldn’t get level. I stacked one side as high as I could and still couldn’t get it. So I ended up digging a hole on the other side, in the rain and mud, under the slide-out, to drop the wheels down and finally get level.

Becky: He actually did that. I remember it now.

Brad: And it worked. I filled the hole back in before we left. Nobody would’ve known.

Becky: Because we’re big believers in leaving it better than we found it.

Brad: Yeah, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. And I’ve had to do it more than once.

Becky: But that was the biggest one. Lots of digging. And probably lots of swearing too.

Brad: Yeah. There were definitely moments of “why are we doing this?”

Becky: You know what else wasn’t what I pictured? Cooking. It’s not that we don’t have a full kitchen—it’s functional—but it’s not a full-sized kitchen. We have an oven, but we don’t really use it.

Brad: Well, we do have one, but we use it for storage like a lot of people. Only those amazing, rare people we’ve talked about before use the oven for actual cooking.

Becky: The oven fairies. Or maybe oven geniuses. I don’t know. Magicians. Either way, we’ve thought about taking it out and putting in a convection oven or maybe even a small freezer.

Brad: That would be nice.

Becky: So yeah, cooking isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. Now, emotional stuff—was there anything early on that caught you off guard, good or bad?

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: Our first Christmas in the RV was both good and bad emotionally. We’ve always lived in places where I could put up a huge real tree and all the decorations. I love Christmas, and I go all in. So that first year, I had to pare way down. It was fun to figure out how to make a small space feel cozy and festive, but also kind of sad that I couldn’t put up all the things I used to.

Brad: That makes sense. For me, the surprise was how much it feels like coming home when we get back to the RV, more than any house we’ve rented or owned. And we put a lot of work into some of those houses. Still, this feels more like home to me. Even though the place changes, the RV feels cozy and familiar.

Becky: Yeah, you’ve said that before. I didn’t expect it either. I still love our stick-and-brick house that we had, and I always will, but I wouldn’t go back to it now. I love the life we have.

Brad: Yeah, for a lot of reasons outside the scope of this podcast.

Brad: So what did we discover about ourselves being out on the road full time? We’ve already talked a bit about how our relationship has changed, but what about personal discoveries? I can go first if that helps.

Becky: Yeah, go first. I’ve got to think about this one.

Brad: I’ve always liked tinkering with things, but I’ve discovered I actually really enjoy working on the RV. Fixing things. Improving things. You might laugh at that.

Becky: Positive affirmation here. We should talk about this with your therapist.

Brad: Even ask me while I’m in the middle of a project. Even then, I think it’s empowering. It’s fulfilling to figure things out, even when it doesn’t go well—which is often. But at the end of the day, I solve it, and there’s a sense of accomplishment I don’t get from many other things. My job doesn’t have instant gratification, so I really enjoy the hands-on part of RV life.

Becky: I can see that. You’ve done some great projects. We should talk about those sometime.

Brad: Definitely. That’s on the schedule.

Becky: That’s one of the awesome things I’ve really enjoyed. All the modifications and solutions you’ve figured out to make life on the road work better for us.

Brad: It really does feel more like home when you customize things and make them fit your life.

Becky: I wonder if that’s part of why it feels like home, even more than that one house we fixed up. Still, I think one of the biggest things I discovered about myself is that I don’t need the kind of roots I thought I did. I had this whole story in my head—get married, live in one house, raise kids, have grandkids visit on the porch swing, all of it. But it turns out I’m just as happy, maybe even happier, with the life we’ve built now. My roots are still down. They’re just not tied to one place. I’ve got people I love, I stay in touch with friends, I have my kids and you and the dogs, and that’s what matters. I’m fulfilled. I didn’t expect that.

Brad: That’s actually a great thing to discover.

Becky: I’ve also found that I’m more adaptable than I thought. And you know, we talked about moving earlier, but I really didn’t expect to like moving this often. I thought the frequency would be too much. You had to talk me into that membership that required moving every few weeks. But I’ve ended up really liking it.

Brad: Yeah, moving days are still a lot of work.

Becky: They are. We’ll never like moving days.

Brad: But I do like moving every two to three weeks now. I get an itch if we’re parked too long.

Becky: I like that it forces us to do a deep clean. We pack everything up, wipe everything down, and when we unpack it all again, it feels fresh. I never set things up exactly the same way twice. I’ve discovered I like that.

Brad: This might come back to the pillow thing.

Becky: The pillows are definitely part of that. We should post a picture of the pillows sometime.

Brad: I think I will. If you’ve listened to the last episode, you already know about the pillows.

Becky: They’re making a reappearance because I’ve learned that I like changing up the look of the RV. I used to move furniture and decor around constantly in our house. You can’t do that in an RV, so now I get creative with pillows and smaller decor. It keeps things feeling fresh and new. The pillows are staying.

Brad: We might have to do a poll about that.

Becky: I’ll tell you right now, no matter what the poll says, the pillows are staying. And you’ll keep complaining.

Brad: Some things never change.

Brad: Let’s talk about the learning curve. Do you think RVing was steeper or easier than you expected?

Becky: It was actually easier than I expected. I thought packing up would be a lot harder. I mean, other than the infamous instant biscuits episode and a few other little things, it’s been easier than I thought. It’s becoming a rhythm, and I think that’s what appeals to me so much. I like things that have a rhythm.

Brad: The process almost has to become a rhythm.

Becky: Oh yeah, and we’ve created some pretty solid routines. That helps a lot.

Brad: For me, in at least one way, it was harder than I expected. I like tinkering and doing my own repairs, and I assumed, like with a car, there’d be a manual. There isn’t. At least with RVs, almost none of them have wiring diagrams. The factories wire each one a little differently. There’s no authoritative manual, so it’s all a bit of a mystery. That’s fun sometimes, but when you really need to fix something, it’s not.

Becky: I’ve heard some moments that didn’t sound fun.

Brad: Yeah, and there’ll be more of those, I’m sure.

Brad: So did we overestimate or underestimate how much we’d miss certain things?

Becky: I definitely overestimated. I thought I’d miss things a lot more than I do. I mean, sure, I miss some stuff, but not as much as I expected. The stuff I do miss would’ve been the same even if we’d stayed in a sticks and bricks house. Like having the kids far away. That was going to happen no matter what.

Brad: Yeah, and you could argue RV life makes that better. But when two of your kids live in New York state and we’re out here on the West Coast, it costs a fortune to haul this house out there.

Becky: We are thinking about it though. There’s a lot of the country we want to see.

Brad: Yeah, once our jobs give us a little more flexibility to get farther from the Northwest.

Becky: That’s your job.

Brad: It is. But once we can, we’ll definitely go explore more. Still, I sometimes think I underestimated how much I’d miss four walls that don’t shake in the wind. But not enough to want to stop.

Becky: I get that. But for me, it’s more about the places we’ve discovered and then had to leave. Like burritos.

Brad: Oh my gosh, if you’re ever near Aberdeen, Washington, find the little restaurant called La Salvadoreña. Their burritos haunt me. I can’t stop thinking about them.

Becky: You think about them even when we’re nowhere nearby.

Brad: Exactly. And it’s not just burritos. It’s scenic places too, or relaxing spots that I fall in love with. Sometimes I think, I’d love to live here for a year. But then after a few weeks, that itch comes back.

Becky: That itch is strong. I always want to keep going more than I want to stay.

Brad: Something I also underestimated is just how much driving we have to do. A lot of the parks are outside of town, so a grocery run is 30 to 45 minutes each way. And medical care, like when we drove from Bend to Portland for a dental appointment. We put a lot of miles on our little tow car.

Becky: Same when we were in Newport and had to get to Portland. That car saves us. We’d run our truck into the ground if we used it for all that driving.

Brad: This is the argument for not buying a Jeep.

Becky: He really wants a Jeep.

Brad: I do. But we’d be broke on gas.

Becky: That’s why we don’t get a Jeep.

Brad: Yeah. So there’s more driving in this lifestyle than I expected.

Brad: How did our routines or work habits get unexpectedly disrupted or improved by living full time in an RV?

Becky: Internet. That’s probably the biggest thing that interrupts my work. But in terms of improvement? Totally. I’ve worked in offices my whole life, and now I can work wherever I am. I’ve got flexibility and comfort. My own chair. My own space. It’s such an upgrade.

Brad: I’d add one caveat. I think it’s even better because we’re on the road. My mental health is way better in this lifestyle. When I worked in a school, every minute of my day was accounted for. Now I’ve got meetings and classes and things, but when I get a break, I can walk the dog. Not just around the same block I’ve seen forever, but in a new, beautiful setting every couple of weeks. It’s relaxing and empowering in a way I didn’t expect.

Becky: That’s true. I just meant the work-from-home part would’ve been better no matter where we were. But yeah, I can’t imagine going back to an office.

Brad: That’s one of my biggest worries—that something happens and we have to go back to full-time, in-person work.

Becky: We’re not going to talk about that. I’m not hearing that.

Brad: Alright. But the internet thing is still more disruptive than it would be in a sticks-and-bricks house. No matter how good your mobile setup is, it’s never as consistent as a high-speed cable line running into a building.

Becky: That’s true. But we did finally upgrade to the Peplink router, and wow, that was a journey.

Brad: Yeah, getting it dialed in took a week of troubleshooting. I was trying to do some really specific things with it, and it just kept failing. But I think we’ve got it now, and it’s working really well. Fingers crossed.

Becky: We’re still holding our breath, but yeah, it might have solved some of the internet issues.

Brad: Were you surprised by how welcoming or not the RV community was?

Becky: This makes me think of when we were stationary and you were Kravitz-ing on the neighbors.

Brad: You have to explain what that means.

Becky: Kravitz-ing comes from the show Bewitched. Mrs. Kravitz was the neighbor always peeking out her window, watching what Samantha the witch was up to. That’s you. You Kravitz.

Brad: I think everyone in RV parks does a little Kravitz-ing.

Becky: It’s true. Our dogs do it too. They sit on the back of the couch and watch out the window. We call it dog TV.

Brad: Most of my Kravitz-ing is gear related. I’m just curious about other people’s setups—cool fire pits, interesting layouts. Not spying.

Becky: Sure, sure. But I think that’s part of what surprised me. Some people in the RV community are super friendly and outgoing. Others are quieter and keep to themselves. There’s space for everyone.

Brad: We’ve almost never had someone knock on our door. If you’re inside, people usually respect that. But if I’m out working on something, people will chat. Especially if they’re walking dogs.

Becky: Everyone’s been nice. And if you open a toolbox, suddenly people appear. It’s like sending out a bat signal.

Brad: That’s true. I was also surprised by how many lonely people are out here. A lot of solo travelers, looking for connection. If I say hi and ask how someone’s day is, sometimes I end up with a new best friend who watches for me to come outside.

Becky: He prefers to Kravitz.

Brad: Yep. Just from a distance.

Brad: So this isn’t really about the RV community itself, but it’s definitely related: RV park owners.

Becky: Just the way you said that made me nervous for a second.

Brad: Just in case you didn’t know, a lot of RV parks won’t accept rigs that are over ten years old.

Becky: Anybody who’s been RVing more than five minutes learns that quickly.

Brad: And it’s frustrating. We bought our RV just under the ten-year mark, so we were fine getting in at first. But we were looking at other places to move while we were stationary, and we got turned down by several because our RV was now technically over ten years old.

Becky: Even though ours looks great. We take really good care of it. Some people say as long as it looks nice, parks will let you in.

Brad: That may be true sometimes, but it’s hit or miss. And we’ve definitely had trouble with it.

Becky: I get it to a degree. We’ve seen parks where the rigs look like they’ve been sitting there untouched for decades, moss growing on them, nothing maintained. I can see why a park would want to avoid that.

Brad: Totally. But there should be more flexibility. It’s not just about age. And it becomes a real challenge.

Becky: That’s one of the things I love about Thousand Trails. No age limit. You see a mix of older RVs in great shape and brand-new flashy ones. It’s a nice blend, and it feels more welcoming.

Brad: I love that mix. That’s my favorite kind of Kravitz-ing—what kind of house do you drive?

Becky: I knew it. You’re Kravitz-ing again.

Brad: Was there a moment when you realized this lifestyle might actually work for us?

Becky: I don’t remember a specific moment, but there was definitely a shift. One day I realized I didn’t miss our old life. I thought, yeah, I like this. I don’t want to go back.

Brad: I had a few aha moments. One was the first time I backed into a really tricky site. It didn’t go smoothly, but I got us in and leveled. I remember thinking, if I can get into this site, I can handle most places. It helped that I used to drive semis in my early twenties, but still, I was nervous pulling into that park.

Becky: Walkie talkies help a lot on those days.

Brad: They really do. We use ours for all kinds of things. Another big moment for me was when we finished a full week of work and it all worked. Internet held up. No emergencies. We got everything done. I thought, if we can do one week, we can do another.

Becky: That happened for me during the pandemic, when I got to work from home for the first time. I realized, hey, I don’t need an office. It was a big deal. Not specifically about RV life, but it set the stage.

Brad: Another big one was financial. That first month we didn’t have to pay rent, utilities, or garbage and water bills. It felt like we had a little flexibility again.

Becky: It’s not a cheap lifestyle, especially with payments and maintenance, but still, that was a great moment.

Brad: So what’s one surprise that still catches you off guard, even now?

Becky: I think I still get caught off guard by the fact that this is our life. Every time we pull out of a campground and hit the road, I’m following you in the car, towing our house, and I look up and think, that’s my whole life right there. Everything and almost everyone I love is in that rig in front of me. It still just hits me sometimes—whoa, this is so cool. I never thought this would be my life.

Brad: I have the same feeling. As soon as we’re set up somewhere and I get to sit down in my recliner, I think, we live here now. Like, we live in Bend. Or we live in Newport. Or we live in California. Wherever we are, we live there. That little thrill catches me off guard every time. It makes me really happy.

Becky: That’s true. It is a thrill.

Brad: The other thing that still surprises me is how much work it takes to actually move. Every time. I forget how physically exhausting it is.

Becky: Move days are tiring. It’s not one huge thing—it’s all the little things. But it adds up fast.

Brad: A couple solid hours of lifting, packing, securing, checking tires, wondering if the truck will start or if the slide will come in. It’s a lot. That always surprises me a little.

Becky: It’s getting easier though. We keep fine-tuning things every time we move.

Brad: I’ve got a couple of listener questions here that I’m not sure how to answer, so help me out. Have we developed any weird little travel rituals or habits?

Becky: Weird little habits… I don’t know if they’re weird, but we do have a few things we always do. Like, as soon as you pull out of the site and I’m following behind, I always ask you to check all the lights.

Brad: And we always say goodbye to the place. We say it over the walkies. “Thanks, wherever we are. Goodbye.”

Becky: Yeah, that’s true. That is a little ritual.

Brad: We used to order pizza the day before a move, knowing we’d be too tired to cook after setup. Leftovers were easy and perfect.

Becky: We did, but now that we’re eating healthier, it doesn’t work quite the same way. But yeah, it was a thing for a while.

Brad: Alright, next question. Do we have a good luck charm we always bring with us?

Becky: A good luck charm… I don’t know if I’d call it that, but there are things I always put up right away that make it feel like home. Like the drawing our youngest daughter commissioned of us and Finn. That’s one of the first things I hang up and one of the last things I take down.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: And I’ve got this little lady Buddha statue I bought when I worked at the community mental health center. She’s peaceful and meditative, and I set her up with little stones and crystals I’ve collected on the road. They go in a little dish with driftwood or beach things. It’s probably weird, but it feels like good energy to me.

Brad: I love that. The only thing I could think of is my little Don Quixote statue. If you don’t know who that is, he’s a character from a really old novel, kind of a role model for me. I’ve got a tattoo of him and everything. So he comes with us and sits up by my desk. Though he’s missing the tip of his spear now, and his arm broke off on this last move.

Becky: We’ll fix it.

Brad: Maybe. Not sure what that says about my good luck charm if he’s in pieces.

Becky: Good luck comes with occasional bumps. That’s profound.

Brad: You talk to people all day and come up with these little gems.

Brad: Last question today. Do you think full-time RV life is better for introverts or extroverts?

Becky: All of the above. Because if you’re an introvert, you can keep to yourself. You don’t have to get out and do stuff. You can choose how social you want to be. This life can be whatever you make it.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: And if you’re an extrovert and you love meeting people and getting involved in activities, there are plenty of campgrounds with things going on. You can explore new communities, meet other RVers, join online groups. There’s a lot out there.

Brad: I agree. I think we lean more toward the introvert side, but we’ve definitely seen plenty of very social folks living this life too. You find whatever version of the lifestyle works for you, which is one of the coolest parts.

Becky: Totally.

Brad: I think that’s going to wrap it up for today. Anything we need to tell them before we go?

Becky: Drive safe out there.

Brad: Yep, drive safe if it’s a move day and you’re listening while going down the road. We’d love to hear from you. You can visit us at jicyw.com, which stands for just in case you’re wondering dot com. Or email us. I’m [email protected].

Becky: And I’m [email protected]. Come say hi on the website.

Brad: Also, if you listen on your favorite podcast app, leave us a rating. Give us some stars or a review if you’re enjoying the show.

Becky: We’re not asking for anything that doesn’t feel right to you, but if you like what you hear, help us get the word out.

Brad: Yeah, even better, tell someone you know who might enjoy it. We’re not doing this for money or trying to monetize. This is just our way of connecting with people out there in the world.

Becky: Tell your RV friends too. It’s just for fun.

Brad: There’s also a community space on the website. Click “Community” on the main page. You can ask general questions, suggest podcast topics, or leave thoughts on specific episodes.

Becky: That’s it for now. Thanks for wandering with us again. We’ll be in Bend for a couple more weeks. Not sure where we’ll record next, but we’ll be somewhere around here.

Brad: Yep. Say hi if you see us, and we’ll post some pictures soon. Bye.

Becky: Bye.

Do you have a question or comment about this episode? Join the community discussion here!

• How Did You Start RVing Full-Time?
• What Is It Like to Work and Live Full-Time in an RV?
• What Do People Get Wrong About Full Time RVing?

Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
This page may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We only recommend products we’ve personally used and love.

What are the biggest surprises about full-time RV living while working remotely?
Full-time RV life brings surprises like windstorms shaking your home, unexpected fire evacuations, limited closet space, and the joy of ever-changing “backyards.” While it offers freedom and adventure, it also requires flexibility, problem-solving, and a willingness to adapt to small-space challenges.

1. Episode Summary
2. Transcript
3. Apps, Tools, and Tech
4. RV Life vs. Reality
5. Chasing the Perfect View
6. Things We Miss (and Don’t)
7. What We Actually Miss
8. Things That Turned Out Overrated
9. Things Nobody Warned Us About
10. We Should Have Figured Out Sooner…
11. Falling in Love With RV Life
12. Life Logistics
13. Magical Moments
14. Pinch-Me Moments
15. Relationships in 300 Square Feet
16. Is It Romantic?
17. Let’s Talk About Bathrooms…
18. Things That Turned Out Easier
19. How “Normal” Has Changed
20. Ridiculous Must-Haves
21. Weather
22. RV Life Myths: Rapid-Fire
23. Share this Episode

Episode 3: What Do People Get Wrong About Full Time RVing?
Recorded at “Purgatory Cove,” Oregon Coast.

Is full-time RV living really all mountain views and cozy campfires? This episode dives into the surprising, often unspoken realities of working full-time while living in an RV. From windstorms that shake your entire home to the joys of portable date nights, Brad and Becky unpack what RV life actually looks like, mess, magic, and all.

This conversation is packed with laughter, real talk, and valuable takeaways for anyone considering a mobile lifestyle. If you’ve ever wondered whether you could really live, work, and travel full-time from the road, this is the episode that tells it like it is.

Key takeaways from the episode:

This episode pulls back the curtain on full-time RV living in the best way possible: with honesty, humor, and a whole lot of firsthand experience.

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

Brad: Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Just in Case You’re Wandering. We are in Newport still. This is our last day in Newport and we are sitting out at what is my favorite place along the coast here. I don’t think it even has a name. We call it Purgatory Cove. Do you want to tell them why?

Becky: Sure. So this is dating ourselves probably, but that’s OK. If you’ve ever—first of all, if you haven’t watched it, you should because it’s a great movie. It’s called On Golden Pond. Classic. Total classic movie. Katharine Hepburn.

Brad: Certainly.

Becky: Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, awesome movie. I won’t tell the whole story, but basically their summer house is on this lake or pond called Golden Pond. There’s a section in the pond called Purgatory Cove where they go fishing and it’s full of rocks. It’s really hard to get into. It eats boats and all the things. So this place that we’re at today, if it were a lake, would be Purgatory Cove because it’s full of rocks. It eats cars. But we are here anyway because it’s secluded and it’s gorgeous. We’ll definitely post some pictures because it’s a gorgeous blue sky. This is the kind of day that makes me want to be at the coast all the time.

Brad: Yeah. So when we drive in, we drive in really slow and we’re dodging big, sharp rocks all the way in. They’re not like boulders, it’s just gravel with some really sharp rocks mixed in. It’s a bit of a trick. Probably shouldn’t bring this little car in here, but I do it all the time because I love it out here. I wish I could tell you where it is.

Brad: But like I said, it doesn’t really have a name. It’s more of just a big pull-off section. What I love about it is there are some bluffs between the highway and the ocean. So you can kind of pull around the other side of those bluffs, like we are right now, and you don’t hear the highway at all. You probably hear the ocean in the background. For us it’s not angry today, it’s beautiful, but it’s making a little bit of noise out there. Waving at us.

Becky: As she does.

Brad: Yeah. In fact, I might readjust our windows here a little bit. So if you hear some background noise, I’m going to roll my window up and yours down a little bit. Keep some air in here and take out some of that ocean noise.

Brad: Before we jump into today’s topic, I thought of a couple of things I wanted to add to what we talked about in our last episode. We were talking about how I do some research on what kind of cell coverage we’re going to get at the parks we go to. I mentioned Google Earth and Google Maps and stuff. But there are a couple of apps I use all the time too. One is called ” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>CellMapper. If you want to check that out, another one is Network Cell Info Lite, and then there’s one called OpenSignal. None of them are user friendly. They all take some figuring out, but once you do, they work really well for me. I can zoom in on a location and see what kind of cell signal people are getting, even down to what area of the park—north side, south side, whatever—has the best chance. So just thought I’d mention that if that’s your world.

That reminded me of a question I was thinking about after that episode. What apps do you wish existed? Like if you could create or pay someone to create the perfect app for RVers, what would it be? I have a couple ideas if you need to think about it.

Becky: I would really—this is more about the individual parks—but I’d love to have park websites with better pictures, especially of the sites. Maybe an app where you could book and see actual site photos.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: Other than that, I can’t really think… well, maybe an app that tells you more about whether or not you should drive your RV under certain bridges and things like that.

Brad: 100%. That’s the app I was going to mention.

Becky: My guess is there probably is something like that, I just don’t know what it’s called. So if you’re out there and you happen to know, drop us a link. Drop us a line. Let us know.

Brad: Yeah, and that’s really my ulterior motive in bringing this up. Hopefully some of you have heard of apps like this and you’re like, dude, why aren’t you using this? And I’ll be like, I didn’t even know it existed. That would be my number one: how to spot unfriendly roads for RVs. Whether that’s low bridges, tight turns, or super rough roads. I can’t believe Google Maps doesn’t have a little button you can hit and just say “RV—show me RV-friendly.” And maybe they do and I just don’t know where it is.

Brad: If you know of one, reach out to us—[email protected] or [email protected]—or just leave us a message on the community discussion board. That would be amazing.

The only other one I thought would be cool is if there was an app where you could punch in the make and model of your RV and it would give you a complete maintenance schedule with reminders. I use an app called AutoAssist—it’s like “auto assist” without the first “a” or something, I don’t know—but I’ve had to go in and manually add every single maintenance item and timer. So there’s kind of a back way to do it, but it would be amazing if I could just tell it what my RV is and have it map that out for me. So if you know anything like that too, let us know.

The only other thing I think we left uncovered about how working life affects the campgrounds we go to is how it affects the days we’re able to move.

Becky: Yeah, and this is probably really individualized to your own work schedule. For us, we work Monday through Friday, basically. So for us, moving has to be on the weekends. We can’t move during the week. Lots of people have more flexibility. If you can, great. But for us, it has to be the weekend or it just doesn’t work. So yeah, we move typically on the weekend.

Brad: Yeah, it’s always on a Sunday unless something weird happens. We were told Saturdays are really busy move-in days. A lot of people come in just for the weekend on a Saturday afternoon. I’m glad we listened to that advice about doing it on Sundays instead. There’s still traffic, but it’s people headed out, which makes it easier than trying to get in and find a spot.

Becky: Yeah, and if you’re not going to a place with assigned sites, it can open up more options for you. For us that doesn’t make a big difference anymore since with Thousand Trails we’re assigned sites almost everywhere now. So yeah, weekends for us. But again, your mileage may vary.

Brad: Yeah.

Brad: And you might be comfortable with evening moves—I never want to set up in the dark, like ever. We could theoretically move at night, but that’s tough too since you have to be out of most parks at a certain time.

Becky: Yeah, check-in and check-out times make a difference too.

Brad: That’s something I don’t think everybody thinks about when they get into RV life. They think, oh, we can go anywhere, anytime. And maybe. But you probably don’t want to be moving in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon when you’ve got work to do. Just something to think about.

Brad: So today we’re going to answer the question, what do people get wrong about full-time RV living? I know it feels like we’ve touched on this already, and we have, but we’re going to go a little deeper with it today. We’ll look at some different angles. We’re kind of pulling back the curtain on full-time RV life. Talking about the myths, assumptions, some of the weird questions, and truths that nobody tells you. I thought we’d start with what we’ll call the Instagram Mirage—the way Instagram makes full-time RVing look. So what’s a glamorous RV living moment that people post on Instagram, but in reality, it’s a lot different?

Becky: Well, I mean, you can broaden that. Instagram, TikTok, videos of RVers—they’re all showing beautiful RVs, fancy tours, and the ones that always get me are the ones where you look inside and it looks like they pulled it right off the sales lot. Like they never touch anything. It’s always perfectly staged. I get it, we want to put our best foot forward, but that’s not reality, at least not for us. There’s stuff on the kitchen counter. We live here. This is our home. Sometimes, I don’t need to see everybody’s messy counters, but sometimes it’s refreshing to see the real side of it. When you’re actually living there, it’s a small space and it doesn’t always look like the showroom.

Brad: Rarely, if ever, does it look like the showroom. Unless you’re getting ready to take a picture for Instagram or maybe for our website.

Becky: That’s true. I always want to see behind the photographer—where they’ve stashed all the stuff that’s normally sitting on the counter or piled in the closet.

Brad: Absolutely. That would be mine too, except a different angle. You see so many people who’ve redecorated their RVs so they look like these amazing beach cottages or something. And I know people really do that, but I don’t think they do it while they’re living in it full time.

Becky: I do. I’ve watched some of those videos. I think it’s harder—probably a lot harder—but we’ve done some renovations in our RV while living in it, and it’s difficult. Especially when you’re moving every so often. You’ve got to pack everything up. Sometimes you have to time your projects to finish before you move, or you have to pack up things halfway through and start again at the next place. I love the look of those RVs. I think people have great imaginations, and I get a lot of inspiration from them, but yeah. I wonder sometimes—how do you do that? A lot of them renovate before they move in. We didn’t have that option.

Brad: Right. When you’re moving every few weeks, you’re not too worried about redecorating. We’re getting ready to hopefully redo our floors—pull out the carpet and put in wood flooring—and just the logistics of that seem overwhelming. We’re going to have to literally put stuff outside or shove the bedroom full of things just to make room to work.

Becky: We’ll figure it out. We always do. We’ve redone our bathroom. We figured that out. It makes things crazy and messy for a little while, but you figure it out. And the results are worth it.

Brad: Sticking with the Instagram thing—not only do people post beautiful pictures of their RVs, but also of their perfect view campsite. So the question is, have we ever done anything dumb trying to get the perfect view?

Becky: I’m glad you added “for the view” and didn’t just stop at “Have we done anything dumb?” because we’ve definitely done lots of dumb things. But have we done anything dumb to get the perfect view? I don’t think so.

Brad: Oh, we’re going to talk about all the dumb things. But yeah, I don’t think we’ve done anything crazy for a view.

Becky: We’ve been really lucky and had some amazing spots. And when we’ve had the opportunity to pick a spot—especially at state campgrounds where there’s a lake or a river—we try to get near those views. It’s nice to have that out your window once in a while, but we’re not going to do something stupid. This is our home, so we don’t want to risk that.

Brad: Yeah. I’ve put the RV in a few tricky spots because we wanted the view, but I don’t think that’s dumb. That’s just wanting a nice place.

Becky: Happens sometimes. You want a view. But like you said, we’re not doing stuff that puts us at risk. Again, it’s our home.

Brad: What I have seen is other people doing dumb stuff to try to get that open view. Like, people pulling in and trying to park their RV sideways across the site so their window faces a certain direction.

Becky: Oh, we’ve seen lots of that. Someday we should just do an episode on the things we’ve seen people try to do while parking. Watching neighbors try to move in and out of sites can be very entertaining.

Brad: We’re actually going to talk about that a little later.

Becky: Oh, how funny. I didn’t know that. He doesn’t tell me the questions in advance, just so you all know.

Brad: Yeah, I’ve seen people pull in and park weird angles trying to get a view. And I’m thinking, if that site next to you fills up, you’re not getting out. And I’ve seen people spend so much time just waiting for a site to open up so they can move into it. Like, are you even relaxing? Or are you just obsessing?

Becky: Looks super stressful. Also, if you hear that sound in the background, one of our dogs is laying on the back seat and she snores like a freight train. So, just FYI. Everything’s fine.

Brad: Yeah, hang on, let me be quiet for a second… Yep. That would be Scout.

Becky: She’s our little snore bug.

Brad: That just means she’s happy and sleeping.

Becky: She needs a doggy CPAP.

Brad: I’ve literally searched Amazon to see if there’s such a thing as a doggy CPAP, and I don’t think there is.

Brad: All right. So let’s move on to things we actually miss and things we don’t miss about living in a house compared to living on the road in an RV. What’s something people assume we miss, but we actually don’t?

Becky: Hmm.

Brad: Scout’s really snoring back here. I’ll answer for me and give you a second to think. For me, I think it’s having a big kitchen. A lot of people, when you tell them you live in an RV, say, “Oh, I could never do that, I need my big kitchen.” But I don’t miss it. I think it’s partly because our floor plan has a lot of counter space.

Becky: Yeah, compared to a lot of RVs, we do have a nice amount of counter space.

Brad: But I don’t think I ever find myself wishing for a bigger kitchen.

Becky: I don’t wish for a bigger kitchen, which is funny, because I thought I would. What I do miss, and I don’t understand why it’s not a regular thing in RVs, is an actual oven. RV ovens… I know some people figure them out, but the only times I’ve used ours, it’s just been terrible. I use the stovetop all the time, but yeah. I miss having an oven. That’s something I miss. But we’re talking about things people think we’d miss and we don’t, so I digress.

Brad: Right. That’s OK. And it’s OK if you don’t have anything.

Becky: Probably space. Maybe just having four solid walls that don’t move in storms or anything like that. I’m sure there are things people think we’d miss, like “Don’t you miss that stability?” But not really. I mean, there’s stuff I miss, but not stuff I’d want back badly enough to give up this lifestyle.

Brad: I think people probably assume we miss having our own yard.

Becky: We have the best yards ever. I don’t even know why people think that. Every time we go somewhere, we have a new yard. And I don’t have to mow it.

Brad: Yeah, or water it or maintain it.

Becky: Or weed it. And if we don’t have a good yard, we will when we move next time.

Brad: Or we’re five minutes from something beautiful. We don’t need a yard when we can go to the beach or the mountains or the trees.

Brad: So how about a small, random thing we actually do miss from living in a house that we didn’t expect to miss?

Becky: Well, like I said, the oven.

Brad: OK, that’s not really a small thing. That’s a pretty big one, but it counts.

Becky: Yeah. Small thing… I don’t know if it’s small or not, but consistent water pressure.

Brad: Oh yeah. Most parks are fine, but there are some where you’re like, this is going to be a long three weeks with this dribbly water pressure.

Becky: And we’ve done the shower upgrade thing everyone talks about, with the new showerhead, and that helps. But yeah, you’re still relying on the park.

Brad: Sure.

Becky: Otherwise, it’s mostly appliance things. I love our washer-dryer combo unit, but I do miss having a real washer and dryer. Ours works, but yeah.

Brad: Yeah. Doesn’t take, what, four or five hours to run a load through?

Becky: Yeah.

Brad: For me, and this feels small, but it’s major in an RV—full-sized garbage cans. I feel like I’m taking out the trash every day because all we can fit under the sink is a tiny garbage can.

Becky: Right. He takes the garbage out a lot. And it’s crazy how much garbage even just two people and two dogs can make. It’s probably not that much, but with small cans, it feels like it.

Brad: Are there any household things that we now think are totally overrated? Stuff that we thought we needed in a house, but now we’re like, wow, we can totally live without that?

Becky: I don’t know, because I haven’t really had to give up things I cared deeply about. I can’t think of anything.

Brad: I know for me, when I first looked at the size of the water heater in the RV—like ten gallons—I thought, can you even take a shower on ten gallons? But now when I look at a regular house water heater…

Becky: Oh yeah.

Brad: I think, why would you ever need that much hot water? I mean, it’s rare we ever run out.

Becky: No, we time it so we don’t shower right after each other, but we’ve never run out. And that’s on just ten gallons.

Brad: Which is more than I expected.

Becky: And we’re pretty conservative about water usage too. We try to be smart about the resources.

Brad: All right. So let’s move on to stuff nobody warned us about when we got into RV life. Things that surprised us. And again, I can give you mine if you need a second to think.

Becky: Well, nobody warned us about anything because we kind of just jumped in. So we had to figure it all out on our own.

Brad: That’s true. But even with the videos and research we did, was there anything that came up and made you go, “Wow, nobody mentioned this”?

Becky: Go ahead and tell yours while I think for a second.

Brad: For me, it was the wind. I’ve never seen YouTubers talk about what a windstorm feels like in an RV. And when you’re full-timing, you’re in it. You’re not going to pack up and go home early. You are home. We’ve had some pretty sleepless nights wondering, are we going over? Are we going to end up on our side? It’s never come close to that, but it can really move and shake like it’s going to.

Becky: Yeah, I think I kind of expected that. I grew up in a mobile home—a real one, like an old-school aluminum trailer—and those shook a lot in storms. But yeah, that first really big windstorm we had in the RV was definitely more unnerving than I thought it would be.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: The thing I wish I’d known more about is how to take care of things inside the RV—like, what kind of cleaners to use, what you can safely put down the drains, all that. The materials in RVs are different, and it matters. I think I might have made some different choices early on if I’d known more.

Brad: That’s a good one. I wouldn’t have thought of that.

Brad: Is there anything we moved in thinking, “Eh, we’ll figure that out later,” and looking back, we wish we’d figured it out way sooner?

Becky: I think—I mean, we switched it out pretty quickly—but I think changing out the furniture for more comfortable stuff. We survived with what was in it for maybe…

Brad: A year?

Becky: Yeah, probably a year. Which seems crazy now because it was so uncomfortable.

Brad: It was bad.

Becky: Also, I wish we’d figured out the mattress situation sooner—the whole mold problem underneath.

Brad: Oh, the mold under the mattress, yes. 100%.

Becky: That was a problem. Otherwise, I can’t really think of anything else.

Brad: I see so many people online say, “You don’t have to worry about mold under the mattress, that never happens.” That is not true.

Becky: Well, and we’re on the West Coast. It’s more humid here. And probably in Florida or the South too. In dry, central parts of the country, maybe not. But in coastal or humid climates, yeah, it’s a thing.

Brad: Yeah. I also wish we’d figured out our storage unit situation sooner. When we first moved in—like we’ve talked about—it was very short term, so we just had to throw stuff somewhere. We do have a storage unit with things like your scrapbooks…

Becky: Used to scrapbook. It’s been a long time. But yeah, we have stuff like that. And I think most full-timers have some things they want to keep but can’t take with them. Whether they store it with family or like us, in a little storage unit. We organized it a lot better this year and got it into a more central location, which helps.

Brad: And that’s what I was talking about—thinking through where that storage should actually be. For a while it was three hours away from where we normally traveled. So if we needed something, it was a six-hour round trip. Now we’ve moved it to a more central spot, and it’s made everything easier.

Becky: Yes, which is another thing. Some full-timers keep a home base. They haven’t sold their house. So they’ve got that to fall back on. We don’t.

Brad: Right. No sticks and bricks for us.

Becky: So a storage unit becomes that place for the things we can’t or don’t want to carry.

Brad: Is there something people should have warned us about but didn’t? Something we didn’t expect about getting into RV life?

Becky: That you might like it more than you think.

Brad: Ah, that’s an interesting one. Yeah, that it might become kind of addictive. I like that.

Becky: Yeah.

Brad: I remember asking you once, if we hit the lottery and had millions of dollars, would we buy a big fancy house or a really nice RV?

Becky: And I said, we’d buy a really nice RV and maybe a plot of land.

Brad: Yeah, a home base somewhere, but not another house.

Becky: Probably not. And honestly, I never expected that would be my answer either. But yeah, this lifestyle has opened my eyes to realizing there might be things you thought would never work for you that turn out to be something you enjoy more than you ever imagined.

Brad: Yeah. I think it’s addictive.

Becky: It is. I love that feeling right now, thinking about the adventure ahead—new places, some familiar ones, and just knowing there’s always something new around the corner. It scratches that travel itch I’ve always had. Even if it’s not huge international trips, it still feels like enough.

Brad: Yeah. I would never have thought this for me, but after about three weeks in one place, I start to get that itch to move. Like the stores are all the same now, I’ve seen everything. I don’t want to move faster than that, because then you don’t really get to settle in and enjoy a place, but after three weeks, I’m ready.

Becky: We do have some shorter stays during the summer—sometimes just a week or two.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: But for the most part, yeah. About three weeks in, I’m ready to go.

Brad: I’m never ready for the work of it, but I’m always ready for the adventure.

Becky: And there’s something nice about getting to a new place and setting everything up. It makes things feel fresh and clean and put together. It’s like a little restart every time.

Brad: Yeah. Kind of like a forced spring cleaning every three weeks.

Brad: I think for me, something I wish I’d known is just how hard it would be to prove our residency. Like, we rent a mailbox that was marketed as a “real street address” and for some things it is—but not for the important things.

Becky: Yeah, there are some things it works for, but others where it just doesn’t.

Brad: Especially for things like starting a business or applying for a license, or anything where you need to prove you live somewhere. It’s a mess. It’s tricky.

Becky: I’m hoping that as more people live mobile lifestyles, more options become available. There are states where it’s easier to set up “traveling residency,” but I don’t want to give up being a resident of Oregon.

Brad: Yeah. We love Oregon.

Becky: That’s home.

Brad: Yep. For sure.

Brad: So let’s call this next part “Mythical Creature Sightings”—OK, that might be a little much—but what’s a moment that actually did feel as magical as the brochures promised?

Becky: Oh, we’ve had a few of those. The one that really stands out to me was at Pacific City, up on the top of the campground. We didn’t even know that area existed. It used to have cabins, but they moved them out and opened it up to campers. We got there right before they closed that section for the winter and we had an ocean view—right out my kitchen window.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: That was one of those moments. Another was in Ashland, camping right by Emigrant Lake, sitting outside in the sun watching the sunset. Or Lake Owyhee too.

Brad: Yeah, for sure.

Becky: We’ve had some amazing spots. Not all of them are like that, but when you get one, it’s magic.

Brad: That Pacific City spot made my list too. Once we pulled in, there was one neighbor, and they left the next day. Then the park closed the section, so we had the whole bluff and ocean view to ourselves.

Becky: Probably never happen again, but we loved it.

Brad: Another moment I think of was in Seaside, the day all the elk came into the park. I got pictures—I’ll post them on the website.

Becky: I don’t think I saw that.

Brad: You might have missed it. But yeah, just full-on elk wandering through. It felt surreal.

Becky: Sometimes it’s the everyday moments too. Like last summer in Bend, just sitting outside in the trees. It was beautiful and peaceful. Or sitting around the campfire. Those are the moments where you think, “Yep, this is why we do this.”

Brad: Yeah. In some ways, it feels like we retired before we actually quit our jobs.

Becky: You know how they always say you wish you had the wisdom of your older years in the body of your 20s? I feel like we’re getting to do a little of that with retirement. We’re still young enough to do the things, but we’re living a lifestyle that feels like retirement.

Brad: That leads us right into the next question: Have we ever had a “pinch me” moment while living on the road?

Becky: Oh, those magical ones we just talked about were definitely pinch-me moments.

Brad: I think they happen all the time. Sometimes it’s just driving down the road into a new place. I really remember it in Leavenworth, Washington. I was driving through town and just thought, we live here. This amazing place that I’ve never been before—and now we live here. Most people leave a place like that thinking, “Will we ever come back?” But we get to live there for a while. That gives me chills.

Becky: Yeah, I have those moments too—especially driving between spots. I follow behind you in the car and I’ll see the trailer ahead of me and think, that’s my house. It’s going where I’m going. I’m going somewhere new or somewhere I love. It’s cool. I need to pay more attention to those moments. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget how cool it is.

Brad: Yeah. I have pinch-me moments just stepping out the front door sometimes. It hits you that you’re in a totally different place. You kind of forget where you are until you step outside and go, oh yeah.

Becky: That always happens the morning after we move. I walk out and think, wait, where am I? Oh yeah, this is our new place.

Brad: So now we’re going to talk relationships. How has full-time RV life changed our relationship—for better or worse?

Becky: Well, like I’ve said before, we actually like spending time together.

Brad: (nods)

Becky: He’s nodding, which no one can see. So yes, he agrees. I don’t know if it’s changed our relationship, but it’s deepened it. We’ve always been close. Like any marriage, we’ve had ups and downs. But this lifestyle has really solidified that team feeling. We’re in this together. We explore together. It’s been great. I suppose there are moments where it might be nice to have a little more space…

Brad: Not really. Honestly.

Becky: He’s shaking his head again.

Brad: For me, I think it’s given us more perspective. Little things we might have argued about before, we now realize just don’t matter. It’s like, why waste time on that?

Becky: I totally agree. And RV life will either bring that out in people or bring out the opposite. In a small space, you’ll either argue constantly—or you’ll realize the small stuff isn’t worth it. And also, slamming a door in an RV doesn’t have that satisfying thud. So there’s no dramatic exits.

Brad: Yeah, the doors are too light.

Brad: All right, we’re going to get a little personal here. One of the questions people sometimes wonder is… is living in a tiny space as romantic as people imagine?

Becky: People imagine it’s romantic?

Brad: I think so. You know, the idea of running away together, living by the sea in a little trailer—it feels like it would be romantic.

Becky: A little cozy love nest. I get that. I think it can be romantic. But like everything else in life, if you want romance, you have to make romance. You have to put in the effort. It doesn’t just happen because you’re living in a small space.

Brad: Yeah. And one thing I’m just realizing now—it kind of feels like we go on more “dates” in this lifestyle. We eat out more often, we explore new places. It’s not always a formal “date night,” but we’re sharing experiences in a way that makes it feel like dating again.

Becky: That’s true. I hadn’t thought about that. Like when we pulled into Newport, we started thinking about where we wanted to go eat, the places we love, and we make a plan to go back. It feels special, like a little getaway, because we’re not there all the time.

Brad: Yeah. It’s not like when you live in the same place and you say, “Oh, we’ll go there someday.” Now it’s like, “We better go there before we move.”

Becky: Especially if it might be a while before we’re back—or it might not be there at all next time.

Brad: So that was a sweet little moment… and now I’m going to completely undercut it by talking about something a little less sweet. Here’s an admission about real RV life: we have a rule in our house that we never speak of the sounds or smells that come from the bathroom.

Becky: I can’t believe you’re telling people this.

Brad: If we’re going to be real about RV life, we’ve got to talk about it all.

Becky: We’re not talking about everything. Some things stay private so people keep listening.

Brad: But you can’t get away from it in an RV. It’s a small space. So we made a rule—no shame, no pointing it out. We’re human. That’s just how it is.

Becky: Yeah. We don’t comment. It’s just part of life. But yeah, that’s definitely not the romantic part of RV life.

Brad: All right, I’m going to give you the option to pass on this next one if you want to.

Becky: Thanks. By the way, I already have that option.

Brad: Yes, you do. The question is… is sex different in an RV?

Becky: Is it different? Sort of. Mostly because RVs are small and the walls are thin. If you have neighbors close, you’re aware of that. You can hear more than you think. So it makes you more careful, more aware.

Brad: Yeah. Definitely more self-conscious if someone’s sitting outside nearby.

Becky: But is it different otherwise? No. It’s not like the mechanics change. But yeah, awareness is part of it.

Brad: The wind isn’t the only thing that rocks the RV.

Becky: Oh my gosh.

Brad: I’ve definitely had moments where I wonder if our neighbors can hear something they probably didn’t want to.

Becky: Well, there is that saying: “If the RV’s a-rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.” But seriously, you live there. You love there. You argue there. You cook there. You do all the things there.

Brad: Yeah. And that’s another reason I can’t imagine full-timing with kids.

Becky: Right? Even in bunkhouse RVs, there’s no real privacy. I don’t know how families do it. Those tiny homes where you have one loft for the kids and one for the adults—with no walls or doors—I just don’t get how that works.

Brad: Maybe lots of playdates?

Becky: Maybe. But yeah, I couldn’t do this lifestyle with kids. And that’s definitely one of the reasons.

Brad: OK, we’ll move on from that. What’s something that turned out way easier than we expected?

Becky: Working. Especially with what I do, I was really worried about privacy and whether it would work out. And it has. It’s worked great. Even with internet stuff—it’s been pretty good overall. So yeah, working has been a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Brad: Yeah. For me—and this is going to sound dumb—but getting on the roof of the RV. For the first two years, I was terrified of it. I’m a bigger guy, and I thought, am I going to fall through? Am I going to fall off? I just psyched myself out. We kept saying we’d hire someone to do the roof inspections, and we never did. Finally, I just got up there. And it was fine. A little freaky the first time, but now I’m up there so often I don’t even think about it. I just go.

Becky: I think cooking in the RV has been easier than I expected too. Sure, the oven’s terrible, but overall, it’s not bad. We do have decent counter space. Sometimes it still feels small, but I’ve figured out how to work with it. And just living full time in the RV—I thought that would be a huge challenge, and it’s really not.

Brad: Yeah.

Becky: I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this at first. But it turned out to be way more doable than I thought.

Brad: On the flip side, what’s something that’s stupidly hard, that we thought would be easy?

Becky: Hmm.

Brad: For me, it was leveling the RV. I thought it would be easy—especially if you have one of those automatic systems. But we don’t. So I’m back to blocks and wedges and levels. It’s gotten easier with some tools, but it always feels like it should be simpler than it is.

Becky: I think the closet in our RV. I love the RV, but I hate the closet. It’s weirdly shaped, it curves with the front of the trailer. There are these tiny “cubbies” that are basically useless. Nothing fits. It just wasn’t designed well. It’s taken forever to figure out how to store stuff in there, and even now, it’s my least favorite part of the RV.

Brad: Yeah. I’d love to custom-build shelves in there. But they’d have to be totally custom—not something you can just buy.

Brad: So, how has our “normal” changed since moving into an RV? What comes to mind?

Becky: That I have to explain to people that I’m not homeless.

Brad: Right.

Becky: That this is a choice. I’m not doing this because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to. Some people think it’s awesome. Others look at you like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” It’s a weird mix of reactions.

Brad: I remember talking to a student and mentioning we were moving that weekend. I said, “We live in an RV, so we move all the time,” and he got real quiet and then said, “Are you guys okay?” Like either we were broke or running from the law.

Becky: We’re not Breaking Bad, I swear.

Brad: I think our normal is still a lot like everyone else’s. We work, eat, sleep, take the dogs for walks, pay bills. But we do it in about 300 square feet, and we move every few weeks.

Becky: Yeah. It’s still life.

Brad: But there’s definitely one thing I think about more now than ever before.

Becky: What?

Brad: Poop.

Becky: Oh. Yeah. That’s true.

Brad: It’s not like I’m constantly dealing with it, and it’s not as bad as people think. But it’s always in the back of your mind—how full is the tank? When was the last time I dumped it? You can’t just flush and forget it like in a house.

Becky: You do take that for granted in a house. You flush it, it’s gone. You never think about it again.

Brad: In an RV, you deal with it at least once a week. And like I said, it’s not terrible. If someone’s avoiding RV life because they’re scared of dealing with tanks, don’t be. If you learn the right way to do it, it’s not a big deal.

Brad: OK, since we were just talking about not fighting much… let’s see if this starts one. What’s a ridiculous item we refuse to live without, even in an RV?

Becky: Are you saying “we,” or “I”?

Brad: We both get to answer.

Becky: OK. Well, I already know what you’re going to complain about.

Brad: What is it?

Becky: Pillows. You hate pillows.

Brad: Yes. Not just pillows. Massive, human-sized pillows.

Becky: They are not massive. They are normal king-sized bed pillows. Everyone knows what those are. And we have fewer than we used to. I’ve cut way back.

Brad: It’s true. But there are still three that serve no function except to be moved from one place to another every single day.

Becky: They make the bed feel like home. There are few things I really care about keeping, and those pillows are one of them. So… suck it up.

Brad: I’m trying. I have been for years. And I’ll keep trying. That’s my answer. Pillows.

Becky: OK, so what’s yours? What’s the thing you won’t give up?

Brad: I don’t know. I don’t think I have anything I absolutely won’t let go of.

Brad: Maybe my guitar?. I don’t play it much, and it takes up space. But we found a way to hang it on the wall, so it’s out of the way. I still feel a little guilty sometimes, but I like having it around.

Becky: Yeah, it’s not in the way at all. I don’t think there’s anything else you’re unreasonable about. Just the pillows.

Brad: OK, so other than pillows, what are some of the small things that make our RV feel like home, even though we move every few weeks?

Becky: The pictures on the wall. Little bits of decor. I’ve learned to be really mindful of what things get to take up space. I like to change things up, so I’ve had to figure out how to do that in a way that makes sense in a small space. But yeah, just like in a house—it’s the little touches.

Brad: Yeah. And I’ll give you credit for that. I really appreciate the work you do to make our space feel homey. Every time we move, you unpack those little things and make it feel like our place again.

Becky: Thanks. And same to you—you always get the outdoor setup done, with the fence for the dogs, the signs, the little flag. You do a great job making the outside feel like ours too.

Brad: I think that helps a lot—having that sense of home both inside and out. And we’ve done some customizations too. We’re not worried about resale. We’ll live in this until it falls apart. So we’ve made it work for us.

Becky: Yeah. And if you are worried about resale, you might make different choices. But we never even talk about it. We’ll deal with it when the time comes.

Brad: Let’s talk weather. We already mentioned wind, but how does weather affect full-time RV life?

Becky: Wind is the worst by far. Snow’s not fun. Ice is really not fun. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we get ice storms and they can be intense.

Brad: We’ve had some really bad ones. One was so bad we had to get a hotel because we lost power and couldn’t even get back up to the RV.

Becky: Yeah. But on the flip side, one of my favorite sounds in the world is rain on the RV roof. Not when it’s pounding during a Zoom call, but when it’s soft and steady—it’s peaceful.

Brad: That’s one of my favorite parts too. In a house, you can go a whole day without even noticing the weather. But in the RV, you feel the weather. You hear it. You see it out the windows. It makes you feel connected to the world.

Becky: Yeah, it’s really grounding. You live with the weather instead of around it.

Brad: So… have we ever had to make an emergency move because of weather?

Becky: I just talked about the ice storm. But if you mean actually moving the trailer because of weather…

Brad: I’m thinking about fire season last summer.

Becky: Oh. Yes. That.

Brad: We were on our summer loop through Eastern Oregon and Washington. In a matter of 48 hours, we had to move from two different campgrounds due to wildfire evacuations.

Becky: Actually three. We had one reservation we couldn’t even check into because the fire got too close. Then the second one we moved to got shut down, and then the third one—yep, same thing. That was stressful.

Brad: Yeah, we were basically chased out of the region by different fires. We finally just said, “We’re going back to the green side of the state.”

Becky: Yep. And I’m really glad we planned this summer differently.

Brad: Me too. But yeah, fire is a real consideration, especially in late summer. You’ve got to stay flexible and be ready to move if something flares up.

Becky: There was one windstorm back when we were stationary that made me wonder if we’d have to hook up and leave. That was rough.

Brad: I remember putting the slides in so they wouldn’t catch the wind.

Becky: We’ve had a few moments like that, and some borderline flooding days, but so far, we’ve been able to stay put. But fire’s definitely been the most serious threat we’ve dealt with.

Brad: All right. Let’s end with a rapid-fire list of RV myths. Just quick yes or no—maybe a sentence if we need it.

Brad: You can always find a place to camp for free for the night.

Becky: It’s hard. Maybe a parking lot in an emergency, but truly free campgrounds? Not easy.

Brad: Yeah, I’d say no. Especially if you’re in a remote spot. It’s not guaranteed.

Brad: If a campground says they have Wi-Fi, it’ll work well.

Becky: No.

Brad: Nope. Never count on it.

Brad: RV life is cheaper than traditional living.

Becky: It can be, but not always.

Brad: Yeah. Depends how you do it. We’ve seen $1 million RVs, so…

Brad: Full-timers are always traveling to new places.

Becky: Not always. Some rotate between just a few parks.

Brad: Yep. A lot of people full-time in a small loop near where they work.

Brad: Living small means living stress-free.

Becky: Nope. Still life. Still stress—just different kinds.

Brad: You’ll automatically become a minimalist when you move into an RV.

Becky: No. You should, but it doesn’t just happen.

Brad: You can hire someone to do all your RV maintenance.

Becky: Sure, but it’s expensive. I married one instead.

Brad: Yeah. And you’ll be waiting weeks or months for service. Better to learn to do it yourself.

Brad: People will think you’re weird for living full-time in an RV.

Becky: Yes. And I’m fine with that.

Brad: Yeah. Same. We were weird before the RV.

Brad: Campgrounds are always peaceful and quiet.

Becky: Sometimes. But it depends on your neighbors and whether there’s maintenance or construction happening.

Brad: Yep. Real life still happens.

Brad: Tiny living means more arguments.

Becky: Not necessarily. It might reveal stuff that was already there. Or help you let go of the small stuff.

Brad: Agreed.

Brad: Black tanks are the worst part of RV life.

Becky: I don’t deal with it.

Brad: I thought it would be. But it’s really not. It’s manageable if you learn how.

Brad: Every day feels like a vacation.

Becky: Nope. Most days are just regular life.

Brad: Yeah. You’re still working, cooking, cleaning. It’s not all adventure.

Brad: Most people only live in RVs for a few years and then go back to a house.

Becky: Some do. Some don’t. Totally depends on the person.

Brad: Yeah. People ask how long we’re going to do this. I say, as long as we’re physically able. We’re not in a rush to change.

Becky: We love it. And for now, it works.

Brad: Yeah. And look where we are today—sitting in Newport, staring at the ocean. Tomorrow, we’ll live somewhere else. And that’s the beauty of it.

Becky: Safe travels, wherever you’re headed.

Brad: As always, you can head to the website. This is episode three, so you can find it at jicyw.com/3. We’ve got photos, links, and a space to leave comments or questions. You can also join the community board there.

Becky: Or just say hi. We’d love to know you’re out there.

Brad: I always picture people listening to this on a moving day.

Becky: Or maybe wondering if RV life might be for them.

Brad: It’s not as scary as you think. And the benefits are real.

Becky: Thanks for wondering with us.

Brad: We’ll see you down the road.

Do you have a question or comment about this episode? Join the community discussion here!

• How Did You Start RVing Full-Time?
• What Is It Like to Work and Live Full-Time in an RV?
• What Surprised Us Most About Full-Time RV Living?

Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
This page may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We only recommend products we’ve personally used and love.

How do people successfully work remotely from an RV?
Successful RV workers combine reliable internet solutions, flexible workspace setups, and clear boundaries to create a sustainable work-from-the-road lifestyle. They prioritize strong Wi-Fi, use flexible furniture to adapt small spaces, and maintain routines to stay productive while traveling full-time

1. Episode Summary
2. Transcript
3. How Working Affects Where We Stay
4. How We Choose Campsites
5. How Do You Get Good Enough Wi-Fi?
6. What Worked and What Didn't?
7. Our Current Setup and What We'd Change
8. Two Workspaces in an RV?
9. The Weirdest Places We've Worked From
10. Packing Up Our Offices on Moving Day
11. What Fun Do You Miss Working from Your RV?
12. The Best Parts of Working from the Road
13. The Downsides Nobody Talks About
14. Do We Miss Coworkers and Office Life?
15. Stay Connected with Friends and Family
16. What We Wish We Knew
17. Thinking About Working from an RV?
18. Share this Episode

Episode 2: What Is It Like to Work and Live Full-Time in an RV?
Recorded at Lost Creek State Recreation Site, Oregon Coast

Life on the road is not all ocean views and campfires when your paycheck depends on strong Wi-Fi and private office space. In this episode, we share the real story of working remotely from an RV, juggling connectivity issues, building flexible office spaces, and living full-time in a small moving home.

You’ll learn:

Working remotely from an RV requires creativity, planning, and a willingness to troubleshoot often, but the rewards are incredible. If you are dreaming about taking your career on the road, listen in for real-world advice that will help you build a sustainable mobile life.

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

Becky:
We’re here again for another episode of Just in Case You’re Wondering, and today we’re coming to you live-ish from Lost Creek State Recreation Site, which is just south of Newport, OR, not too far from where we’ve been staying. It’s not a sunny day today. It is a more stereotypical Oregon Coast day. Gray skies, a little foggy. You can certainly probably hear the ocean in the background. We’ve got the windows down and we’re sitting in the car doing our thing.

Brad:
Yeah. We’re in the car again. Some of these times, well, my dog is licking my ear, some of these times we’ll be outside when there’s not wind or anything, so it doesn’t get in the mic. But today is another day podcasting from the car, looking at the ocean and just loving where we live and how easy the access is. We’re leaving Newport soon and I won’t see the ocean again for quite a few months, so that always makes us a little bit sad. But it’s always here waiting for us.

Becky:
Yep. So we try to soak it in as much as we can while we’re here before we take off.

Brad:
Alright. So our overarching question today, since we’re really focused on what it’s like, not just full-time RVing but working from the road, is what does full-time RV life really look like when you’re working from the road? That’s our overarching question that we’re going to unpack in a few other questions. So let’s start with one of them. It’s a big one. Every time we move, how does working from your RV affect the parks you choose to stay at and the campsites you choose once you get to those parks? Do you want to start with that one?

Becky:
Sure. Well for us, it definitely does affect where we go. Like we said, we do a combination of state parks and the Thousand Trails membership, which is what we bought into and that’s pretty much where we go. We do some other stuff. We’ve done some county parks and other things off and on. But for the most part, it really does. We’re looking for as clear an overhead sky as possible or a good Wi-Fi signal, like AT&T or Verizon or something like that. We have a multi-layered approach to the Internet because of that very thing. Some places we go, there’s no Verizon signal. Some places we go, there’s no AT&T signal. Some places we go, there’s no satellite signal. So we have to be prepared for a lot of different things.

Brad:
Yeah. I don’t think you have any idea how much time I actually spend researching Internet availability at parks. Before we even decide we’re going to a park, I spend some time on Google Maps and Google Earth looking at it from above, seeing how much tree coverage is there, and can I see campers from Google Earth? If so, they can probably see the sky. Especially up here in the northwest, it is so heavily forested that it can be a real problem. Oh, and I should say, Starlink is our primary Internet service right now, which is why we’re always so concerned about seeing the sky. I don’t know how they can have this amazing multibillion-dollar technology and a leaf can get in the way of it, but that’s the way it seems to work. It will not shoot through a leaf.

Becky:
Not quite smart enough to go through trees and leaves, but you know, hey.

Brad:
Yeah. But it can go all the way to space in like a millisecond.

Becky:
Yeah. But you know. That’s what it is. We would love to see more options for people on the road with RV life. Whether you’re like us and you live and work on the road full-time in an RV or a fifth wheel, or even over-the-road truckers and things like that. I’m sure they encounter some of the same issues.

Brad:
Yeah.

Becky:
When you’ve got to be connected and have that happen. I would love to see more companies.

Brad:
Yeah, for sure.

Becky:
Do something to make this more affordable and accessible, because that’s probably one of the things we spend the most on monthly in our expenses. Aside from combining our truck and trailer payment, our Internet service definitely comes in as probably our second highest expense.

Brad:
Yeah. It almost offsets the money we’re saving by living this way. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it is a lot because we cannot travel with just one thing. But we’re going to get into Wi-Fi specifics here in just a little bit.

Becky:
We’re being a little facetious there, yeah.

Brad:
Yeah, but because of what we do, we both have to be connected. We cannot do it without a connection. We have to be able to connect.

Becky:
Yeah. And it’s got to be more than just being able to send an email. It has to support basically two Zoom calls that cannot drop. If Becky’s in the middle of a therapy session, she cannot just drop that. If I’m in the middle of teaching classes, the teacher cannot just suddenly disappear. So it’s a huge deal for us.

Brad:
But we’ve made it work and that’s been the really good thing. There are ways to do it, but you have to get creative.

Becky:
Yeah. And you have to dig a little bit if you’re looking for a park to go to and you absolutely 100 percent have to have good Internet. Not only do I do the Google Earth and Google Maps stuff, but I will look at Facebook groups. There are some great Facebook groups, especially for things like Thousand Trails, where people have talked about staying in a park before and what kind of Wi-Fi they got, what kind of cell signal, and even sometimes what space they were in or what spaces are better there. That’s great. You can even just Google it and go to websites like Campendium.

Becky:
Campendium, I think, has it. There are a couple of them out there where people who visit the campgrounds will leave information about the Wi-Fi signal, what’s available, and what kind of speeds they got sometimes, which is great. Obviously with the changes at Thousand Trails, we cannot pick our site anymore. We’re not fans of that.

Brad:
Yeah.

Becky:
For the most part, that’s again a reason we have multi-layered Internet services because you just never know.

Brad:
So that’s how we choose parks. There’s one park here in Oregon, it’s a beautiful park, we love it. It’s Pacific City that literally has nothing if you can’t get Starlink. So we’re sadly going to have to just start not going there, I think, since we can no longer pick our site.

Becky:
Which stinks, because we really love that park. It’s gorgeous. If you don’t need Wi-Fi, go visit. It’s beautiful.

Brad:
Yeah, if you want to get off the grid or not off the grid, but away from anybody texting you, go there because nobody will be able to get ahold of you.

Brad:
So let’s talk about the specific campsites that we choose. It’s not just Internet. It’s also, like right now, we can’t choose our site unless we’re in a State Park. So if we’re in a State Park or before in Thousand Trails when you could pick your site, we often also looked for as much space as we could get around us because we’re in Zoom meetings all the time. We don’t want that noise coming through or, you know, we want to have the ability to open the windows when it’s warm and it’s summer and not have either our voices getting out where people can hear us too much, or other voices getting into those Zoom sessions. It’s not the major factor that we look for, but we do enjoy it when we’ve got a little elbow room and a little more privacy than some parks have.

Becky:
Yeah. And that is one thing that I will say the Oregon parks in particular and Thousand Trails for the most part because there’s so many trees, it’s pretty easy to get a little elbow room. Not always, but a little bit and that’s nice when we can get it for sure.

Brad:
Yeah. There’s a few parks that feel more like parking lots than parks, and Washington’s the same way. Most of those, you get some elbow room and you feel like you’re actually camping. That’s one of the things we love about Thousand Trails that turn some people off. They pull in and they want paved roads and level paved sites and lots of amenities.

Becky:
And there are those, don’t misunderstand. There are parks that have those for sure.

Brad:
Yeah. But we, at least I, really prefer feeling like we’re camping. I don’t mind dirt roads and potholes. I can slow down and go through them, and I don’t mind overgrown trees and things like that because it feels like you’re in the woods.

Becky:
It’s nature. Yeah, that’s the part of it that does feel like camping. Yeah, I agree.

Brad:
Yeah, that’s the way I want it to feel.

Becky:
Like that part of it, as long as those big trees aren’t hanging right over the top of our trailer.

Brad:
Yes. One of the big fears are, they call them widow makers, those dead standing trees that you can’t tell are going to come down because they make widows when they come down. That’s a little unnerving, especially in some of our wild wind storms over here on the coast.

Brad:
So would you say that Wi-Fi is our biggest challenge in full-time RV life? Or is there something else that you would think of as our biggest challenge?

Becky:
I think it was one of our biggest challenges to start with. Especially going on the road because being stationary, we could work that out a little easier. But as we decided we were going to go on the road, yeah, it was definitely more of a challenge.

Brad:
Yeah.

Becky:
As many years as we’ve been into it now, I don’t feel like it’s as much of a challenge anymore. We kind of know where we’re going. We know what things are like. We’ve gotten better at it. Brad’s gotten really great at pointing that satellite dish just right so we get through those trees. For the most part, unless there’s something unexpected, which we cannot plan for, and we have had those, it is not as big a challenge as it used to be.

Brad:
Yeah.

Becky:
I don’t feel like it’s as big a challenge as it used to be.

Brad:
OK. Yeah. I would agree. And part of that is because we have every option we can have with us so that something will work. We are always feeling great if we have two things that are solid, because then if one of them kind of goes away, we have another option.

Becky:
Right. Yep, got a primary and a backup.

Brad:
We are not going to do a full review here of everything we’ve tried, but I do want to mention all of the things we have tried and maybe some quick pros and cons for them, just so you can see what the process is like for getting to the point where you feel comfortable being on the road.

Becky:
And this really depends too on where you are in the country and where you’re going to be. There are some services we could choose that would absolutely not work out here. We do not get coverage for them. It is very rural. You have to look at that too. What is going to work in the places you plan to travel. So by no means is this comprehensive.

Brad:
Yeah.

Brad:
When we first moved to the stationary park that we were in, we didn’t get great signal. We got enough cell signal to kind of fake it and when it got it, you know, hotspots so we could get online. But we quickly realized we needed something more stable and we started out with ViaSat, which was the satellite Internet before Starlink came along. The huge downside to that is that it has to be pointed exactly the right position in the sky and then it can’t move.

Becky:
And it’s expensive.

Brad:
Yeah, and not very good. But at the time…

Becky:
It had data caps and it was slow. Thankfully we weren’t working from home at that point either. That was just the home Internet. That was pre-pandemic.

Brad:
Oh, that’s true. Yeah, that was just our home Internet. That was pre-pandemic before we went online. So if you’re thinking about ViaSat or HughesNet kind of stuff and you’re going to move ever, not a great option. We didn’t have that too long before we went on to something else. I think the next thing we tried was something called Nomad Internet, and there’s a ton of these out there like that. They promise unlimited service and high speeds and guaranteed uptime, and it’s all kind of nonsense for a better word.

Becky:
You get a little bit of it. There are moments, but it doesn’t last.

Brad:
Yeah. When it is good, it’s just a matter of a few days to a few weeks, maybe a few months before it suddenly turns off and you have to wait to get a new SIM card sent out. Now this was a while ago, so maybe they’ve upgraded what they’re doing and maybe it’s a whole new deal right now, but any of those that are reselling cell plans are at the mercy of those cell providers who turn them off all the time with no notice. We are really gun shy about anything that looks or feels like Nomad Internet service or anything that’s selling you a Wi-Fi plan.

Becky:
Yeah, and again, we’re not here to badmouth or bash any of these companies. These are just our experiences with them, so just kind of making sure that’s out there.

Brad:
Yeah, in case we get sued. Don’t sue us.

Becky:
We don’t have anything for you to sue us for anyway.

Brad:
Yeah. Something we bought early on was the Verizon hotspot and the AT&T hotspot, and we still travel with both of those active all the time. You just never know when one of them is going to get a better signal than the other. We have one park where the only one that works is AT&T. In fact, it’s the park we’re in right now in Newport. So we have to have our AT&T. We also have phone data. I do a lot of work from my car just to get out of the house and go see the country, so I’m always using my phone data for that. Most of the places, at least here along the coast, and certainly in other states we’ve ventured into, have been good enough that you can generally get service.

Brad:
What about park Wi-Fi? How do we feel about park Wi-Fi?

Becky:
Survey says… yeah. We’ve touched on it a few times. We’ve had parks where the Wi-Fi is up. Sometimes you pay for it, sometimes you can use it for free. It’s typically unreliable, very low speed. It would be great if it was better. Maybe that’s a plan down the road, who knows. Plus the fact that it’s not a secure Wi-Fi, that’s something to think about too. If you’re doing banking or those kinds of things online, you probably don’t want to use a public Wi-Fi like that. You want something you can secure. So for us, those are very much a no. They’re there if you need them in an emergency, but we don’t really use them.

Brad:
Yeah. I would never rely on that as our work Wi-Fi. Even when it’s up and running fast and great, it might just be down the next 10 minutes and not be on for the rest of the day.

Becky:
Yeah, there’s no consistency.

Brad:
I’m sure there are parks where the Wi-Fi is amazing and the service is good. If there are, tell us where they are because we haven’t run into any yet where we’ve been able to use the park Wi-Fi for much of anything. My last backup we’ve used sometimes is McDonald’s when everything else fails. We’ve both sat in McDonald’s parking lots.

Becky:
No, I’ve never used McDonald’s Wi-Fi for work. I’ve used it just to get online, but I don’t use it for work.

Brad:
Oh, right. We’ve used our hotspots. What I’m trying to say is when everything else goes down and you need to connect, even just to say, “Hey, everything’s down and I can’t get to work today,” sometimes a coffee shop or something like that is your only option.

Becky:
Yeah. If you need to connect, you make it work.

Brad:
One thing I appreciate, and if anybody I work with ever listens to this, don’t give away the game, but you’re probably the same… one thing I appreciate is that it gives me another legitimate excuse when I need some time off work. I rarely use it, but sometimes it’s there if I need it. My Wi-Fi is down, can’t do anything.

Becky:
I don’t do that, just so you know. I don’t do that.

Brad:
Yeah, her stakes are a lot higher than mine. But I’m mostly joking. Not 100 percent joking, but mostly joking.

Brad:
One thing I didn’t mention about our Wi-Fi is we went and bought the WeBoost Destination RV, which is this giant cell booster that’s attached to the back of our RV. It cranks up about 30 feet and then I point it toward the nearest cell tower. On the very occasional times when I can actually get it pointed exactly where it’s supposed to be, and if I can get it to not give feedback — and this is all getting very tech — but what I’m trying to say is when it works, it’s worth all the money I paid for it. But the times that it’s worked have been very few and far between. It is another one of those emergency “oh crap, we can’t get anything” tools, and when we need it, I can crank that antenna up and try to dial it in and get a pretty good boost. It’s very fussy though. I don’t think I’d buy that again. I’d buy a different version of something like that.

Brad:
So that leads me to the question. If we were starting over today with all of today’s technology, what would we invest in for our Wi-Fi?

Becky:
Right now, it’s what we have right now. The three that give us the coverage we need. Verizon and AT&T are both major carriers. We can get those pretty much anywhere, one or the other. I don’t love Starlink, but it works and it’s what we have right now. Like I said before, I’d love to see more options. Other than that, there’s a few things we’ve been talking about changing and upgrading to make things a little more reliable or combine speeds and things like that. But as far as our actual setup, probably just what we’ve got. Maybe not the phone booster thing because it’s really fussy.

Brad:
Yeah, the tower thing, the cell booster. For sure.

Becky:
It was a lot of money for something that’s really picky.

Brad:
Yeah. We’re really hoping that Starlink has some competitors that are going to come up soon. I know they’re out there. Unfortunately, they’re also owned by billionaires who don’t really care about the little guy trying to connect to work, but I think there’s more competition coming for that kind of connection. You see Starlinks everywhere now. On so many RVs out there if you start looking through parks. It’s kind of the go-to right now for most people.

Becky:
Oh yeah. There’s not a lot of options.

Brad:
Yeah. The only thing that I would have bought differently if we were starting now is I would have started with what’s called a Pepwave router, which we’re talking about right now upgrading to. I’m not going to say too much about it since we don’t have experience with it yet, but if you’re just getting started on the road or you’re thinking of revamping your setup, look into something like a Pepwave router. It has some amazing features that really help you stay connected. If we pick that up, we’ll definitely talk about it down the road and let you know what we think of it. But I think that’s the one thing I would buy differently than what we have now.

Becky:
I’ll reserve judgment till when and if we actually buy the thing and try it out. We’ve done enough experimenting already.

Brad:
Yes, because I’ve bought things and tried them out that didn’t work so great.

Becky:
That’s part of it. Sometimes you try something and it works great and you’re like woo, and other times it’s like oh, that was not so great.

Brad:
Yeah, absolutely. OK, I think we’ve covered Wi-Fi. Let’s quit talking about it.

Brad:
Let’s talk about the RV as an office, or in our case, the RV as two separate offices. Where do we actually work from inside or sometimes outside of the RV? Do you want to start?

Becky:
Sure. I work solely in the RV because of privacy concerns and things like that. I have to have a quiet, dedicated space where I can make sure that conversations are confidential and private. We have two options that we switch between. We’ve converted it so that we can transform our bedroom into an office with a backdrop that pulls down. All of my setup goes there and I can take it down and put it away when I’m not working, so it becomes a bedroom again. It’s quiet and it’s on the opposite end from where Brad works if he’s working in the house. A lot of times, like he said, he goes out and works somewhere else. He has more flexibility that way. The other space we have is in what would typically be the dining room area. Because it’s just the two of us, we don’t need a dining room, so we converted that. Right after we started RVing, we took the dining room table out fairly quickly and put in a desk. That was our desk section when we were both working from home during the pandemic, because I wasn’t doing therapy at that point. I could work. We could sit at the same desk and work. It wasn’t a privacy thing or anything like that.

Brad:
Yeah. We bought basically one big oversized desk so we could both work side by side and do a lot of elbow banging as we were working. It was really kind of fun to work that way.

Becky:
It was. We’ve not had that experience for a long time, to work in the same place.

Brad:
Yeah. And I should say, we were lucky enough to have a free-standing dining room table and chairs. We didn’t have a dinette built in.

Becky:
Yeah. It wasn’t the banquet thing that a lot of RVs come with. Ours was just table and chairs.

Brad:
So it was easy to take it out. If and when we upgrade to a new RV, I’m either going to find one that doesn’t have the dinette again, or I’m going to tear out what’s in there because it just seems like a massive waste of space.

Becky:
I’m going to put a plug in for Keystone Montana, the one with the front office. I would love that one.

Brad:
Yeah. The new one. There’s some amazing work-from-your-RV options out there now.

Becky:
There’s some new workspaces. It’s really cool to see that being recognized as a need for folks who actually live full-time like us.

Brad:
Absolutely. I think we have a pretty unique setup in a couple of ways for when we’re working. One is that neither of us really wants to look like we’re working from an RV. So what we’ve done is we bought backdrops on Amazon. You can buy one that’s already out there — they have some that are OK — but we actually found a place where you can upload your own image to have printed on the backdrop, and it’s only like 20 or 30 bucks to get one made. You can have one that looks like a classroom or a bookcase or anything. We’ve trained some other ones over the years. We bought two identical ones, so they’re both the same exact bookcase. I basically put them on dowels that hang from the ceiling, so we can roll them up and roll them down. They just unroll right down behind us and they’re really realistic looking. It always surprises my students or my fellow teachers when they realize.

Becky:
Yeah, I’ve had people ask me the same thing. They think it’s a real bookcase. Then I tap it and they see it wave and realize it’s a picture, but it looks pretty realistic, which looks nice.

Brad:
Yeah. You could do the Zoom background thing where it just blurs out the background, but it always looks weird and if somebody walks behind you, it looks even stranger.

Becky:
I was in a meeting once and someone was walking around with a weird green pillow and it just looked odd. I don’t like those so well.

Brad:
It doesn’t look professional, but a lot of people use them and they’re fine. The problem is if someone needs to walk behind you, they kind of appear and disappear, and it’s very weird and distracting.

Becky:
Yeah, it doesn’t work for us. This setup is something we take really seriously because of the work we both do. Again, like I said, I have to have that quiet space, and it’s nice having it at the opposite end. People think, well, you can hear everything in an RV, but you actually don’t. It’s not like we’re screaming at each other. It’s a door and a hallway and some space between us. We’re literally at opposite ends of the trailer.

Brad:
Yeah. There’s a door between us. I can hear that she’s talking up there, but I could never make out any of the words or the other voice or anything like that. It’s very private.

Becky:
Sometimes I’ll turn a fan on too if I think I need even more privacy. I’ve thought about getting a little white noise machine, but so far it hasn’t been an issue.

Brad:
No, not at all. It’s worked really well. The reason we bought the exact same backdrop is because Becky bounces between the two work areas. If I’m out for the day and she wants to work downstairs — it’s literally just three stairs up to the bedroom — she can pull down the same backdrop and it looks the same to her clients.

Becky:
It’s like I’m sitting in the same place.

Brad:
The other challenge was trying to figure out how to make an office space in an RV bedroom because as you know, there’s not a lot of space in there. We have a slide-out in ours, so we get maybe two and a half to three feet between the end of the bed and the dresser. It’s not enough to set up a desk. What we realized is we could buy a folding table, put one side of the legs down, and rest the other side on the bed, then sit sideways. It’s hard to describe. Maybe we can get a picture of it to put up on the website.

Becky:
I think I’ve got a picture of it that we can use.

Brad:
When you’re desperate, desperate times call for desperate measures. It actually works out pretty well.

Becky:
It works really well. I don’t even notice anything different. It’s just where I work. I have my laptop and a portable flat screen monitor that I set up, so I have two screens. The best part is that at the end of the workday, I can literally put it all away. My work life doesn’t continue in the same space as my home life. When the workday is done, I can close it up.

Brad:
Yeah, that’s huge.

Becky:
It’s a really good transition too.

Brad:
We’ll definitely try to get a picture of both of our work areas up there just so you can see how we laid them out, especially the bedroom one because it’s really hard to describe. But basically the bed is two of the legs and two legs are on the floor, and it actually gives quite a bit of desk space up there.

Becky:
It is hard to describe, but it works really well. It’s a decent-sized table, so it’s not like I’m working on a tiny TV tray or anything.

Brad:
Yeah, for sure.

Brad:
I’ve got an answer for this one. I don’t know if you do. What’s the weirdest place you’ve had to work from on the road?

Becky:
On the road, the weirdest place… I mean, I’ve had to take phone calls from the car. We had an instance where the Wi-Fi went down and I had to use our mobile hotspot and do some work that way in the car. That was not fun.

Brad:
That was like for three days. The tower went down and it was our only option.

Becky:
Yeah. The only option was to come into town and sit in the car and use Wi-Fi.

Brad:
Not great.

Becky:
Not great, but is it worth the sacrifice for this life?

Brad:
Oh, sure.

Becky:
You reschedule things, you move things around, you make it work.

Brad:
Every once in a while. My weirdest one, and I’m going to cheat because it’s not an on-the-road RV thing, but we were living in the RV. I once went out on my kayak in the middle of the day. I had a light schedule that day, so I was out on the kayak. I took my tablet computer out there with me in a little zip-up watertight bag, and I took some meetings out there, fishing in my kayak.

Becky:
I had no idea you did this.

Brad:
Yeah. It was amazing. I want to work permanently from my kayak. I’ve told my boss this and she thought it was hilarious and she wanted to try it too.

Becky:
You know there is walk-and-talk therapy. I wonder if I could do… no, I don’t want to be in a kayak, but boat-and-talk therapy, that would be interesting.

Brad:
It was amazing. I sat out there and took my meetings, did some emails, did my thing all with the fishing line in the water. I didn’t catch anything, but it was worth a try.

Becky:
At least you kept your tablet.

Brad:
Do we pack up our entire office space when we move?

Becky:
I do, but that’s because I pack up my office space at the end of every day anyway.

Brad:
Yeah. She’s got the system down for packing it up.

Becky:
I have a little portable setup. I actually bought it as sort of the first experiment, seeing what’s going to work and what’s not. We can put a link to it because it’s a great little setup. It’s a little portable lap desk kind of thing that’s set up for mobile office work. It doesn’t give me quite enough space, but it makes a great place for me to put everything. If for some reason I did have to go somewhere, I could just take everything with me and I’d have a setup with lights and charging cables and all the things. For me, unless I’m going to work downstairs more than one day in a row, which sometimes happens, I pack everything up at the end of every day.

Brad:
You should tell them about your first — our first — attempt for having you work upstairs. What that looked like.

Becky:
Ohh.

Brad:
Do you remember?

Becky:
Yeah. I had bought one of those pillows that has the armrest and the backrest and it folded up like a little chair thing. I was going to use that with a backdrop or something behind me. I don’t even remember what we had behind me. Then I was going to have a little lap desk on top of that. Yeah, that didn’t work.

Brad:
Yeah. She did it for a couple of days, sitting on the bed with a table kind of over her legs and that backrest chair thing.

Becky:
I did it for a couple of days. Thankfully, that was when I was doing training for my job, so I wasn’t actually seeing anybody at that time. But yeah, it was not a long-term solution.

Brad:
So much of this life is try it and maybe it works, but probably it doesn’t, and then try something else. Eventually you figure it out.

Becky:
Yeah. The setup we have now, I think, works really well.

Brad:
I think it does too. I don’t pack up my entire office space. My goal with everything in the RV is, as much as possible, make it movable. We’ll talk more about how I’ve done that with pictures and things like that. But with the office, I’ve literally bolted my display monitors to the desk. They move around a little bit, but they’re not going to fall over or anything. I don’t have to take monitors down. I’ve got a desktop computer that I use, so it just sits underneath the desk and doesn’t have a problem. The little stuff we have to move like the mouse and keyboard, but it’s not a big deal at all for us to pack up the office.

Becky:
No, it doesn’t take very long at all.

Brad:
Yeah. Nothing, knock on wood, has gotten broken with that setup.

Brad:
Have we ever had to skip fun things because of work? I feel like everybody has to miss fun things because of work. Can you think of anything, like being on the road, that’s limited what we’ve wanted to do?

Becky:
Not really. I mean, I suppose there probably is, but the thing is, my work schedule, I work four days a week. So I have three days off at a time. I just try to schedule things on those days off, which also coincide with the weekend, so that makes it nice. I don’t feel like we’ve missed a lot because of work. There have been times when it felt like we should be on vacation, like maybe we’ve gone someplace that we don’t normally go to or we’re visiting family or something like that, and it feels like, well, I shouldn’t have to be working. So I might not be able to do all the things I want to do. But I don’t think so. What about you?

Brad:
You know, I have two thoughts related to that. One is that we don’t miss a lot of things because we’re on the road, but I feel like we know about a lot of things that we can’t do because we’re on the road. Like you’ll be in a town and you’ll see a sign for a play that’s going to be there next month, and you’re like, oh, that would be amazing to see. And then you think, we’re going to be 300 miles away from here by the time that comes around. So there’s a little bit of that. But that’s not so much being on the road, that’s just knowing about stuff you aren’t going to be around for.

More than that, and we haven’t run into this much because we don’t travel as much as some people do, but it definitely is harder when it’s time to take a vacation, like to get on a plane and go somewhere. It’s another level of complication to figure out. We’ve got our house — where are we going to put our house while we’re gone, and is it going to be safe there? That’s something we haven’t come up against yet, but I’m sure that day is coming where we’ll have to figure it out.

Becky:
And you don’t just lock the doors and walk away.

Brad:
Right. Yeah, we could just leave everything there before when we were stationary.

Becky:
We did, but we were stationary at the time, so it wasn’t a big deal. You could just leave, lock things up, and secure things, and then you’re good. But yeah, now that we’re on the road, I don’t know what that looks like.

Brad:
Most parks have rules against not occupying your trailer while you’re there. So it’s not like you can just say, oh, well, let’s rent an RV spot for a week and just leave the RV there without being there.

Becky:
I mean, some have storage spaces and stuff. We just haven’t encountered it yet. I’m sure it will be something we talk about at some point when we actually have to do it.

Brad:
Yeah, for sure. It’s not nearly as easy as, “Honey, did you lock the front door?” and heading out for three days.

Becky:
Right. Or stop the mail for a few days, or whatever.

Brad:
Yeah. You’ve got to find a home for your house while you’re gone and a safe place for it to be.

Brad:
So in more general terms, what are the best parts of working from the road?

Becky:
The ever-changing view. That’s probably the thing I like the most. Even though we spend a huge chunk of our time on the coast, the seasons change, the weather changes, the view changes. Sometimes we get ocean views out of our front window and sometimes we get trees and sometimes we get mountains and sometimes we get other RVs. It’s always changing. The other thing is the absolute flexibility. One of the things that can be tough in what I do is when you are stationary or when you live in the town that you work in, it can be tough, especially if that town happens to be small. You run into clients, you run into people, and so the space is good for everybody, I think.

Brad:
Yeah, for sure. I wouldn’t have thought about that one, but you’re right. There is something nice about going places where you don’t know people. I’m sure a lot of people would miss that, and there are times that we miss being close to family and things like that. We’ll talk about that another time, how we stay connected that way. I think for me, and I’m going to get a little weird and abstract here, it’s actually something that I talk about in my writing classes that I teach. It’s a thing called defamiliarization. The idea of it is that we become familiar with things we see, hear, or experience all the time. Think about the day you moved into your current house, that first drive to work. You noticed everything along the way. You noticed the color of that house, or how bright the trees looked, or little details. But the more you make that drive, the more familiar it becomes, and you stop noticing.

When we lived in Newport, there’s one of the most beautiful stretches of highway along the coast there, and I’d drive it so much that there were times I’d drive that road and not even look out there anymore because it just became background. It’s become familiar and it’s not new every time. I love the ability to stay awake to the details of the world around me by mixing things up every few weeks. Every time I drive out of a new park, not only do I not know where I’m going half the time, but I see everything because none of it has become familiar to the point where I just tune it out. The ocean is always amazing, the trees are always amazing, the colors are always amazing.

Becky:
Right. It’s not just background.

Brad:
It’s such a great way to stay connected to the world, to be moving around in it.

Becky:
Yeah. I like that. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah. Other than you randomly ending up in completely the opposite town you’re supposed to be in.

Brad:
Yeah. The little town of Reedsport for some reason is like a magnet for me. We don’t even stay there, but somehow whenever I get lost, I end up heading toward Reedsport. I don’t know why. Maybe we need to spend some time there.

Brad:
Alright, so what are the downsides of working from the road that nobody talks about?

Becky:
I think as much as I like the transition of being able to close up and put everything away, I do sometimes miss having a dedicated office space. I have books and reference materials that I don’t access anymore or I’ve had to find alternative ways to access them, like electronic versions. There’s something about having that traditional office space that I miss a little. But would I trade it? No. That’s probably the only thing, and even that is not a big deal. I don’t really miss it because I like that I don’t have to go to an office every day. I like that when I close up my stuff at the end of the day, I’m done. I don’t have a big commute ahead of me. I don’t have to fight traffic. If I want a cup of coffee in the middle of my day, I walk downstairs between appointments and get a cup of coffee. I can switch the laundry between appointments. Whatever. Even though I say I kind of miss a dedicated office, I don’t think I really do.

Brad:
Yeah. It’s all about tradeoffs. The good things come from sacrifice, and that’s why we sacrifice. I think for me, it’s just the literal work of moving so often. It would be less in certain situations, and if we had a Class A motorhome, it might be less work. But our fifth wheel takes more effort. The physical moving days can take a toll and be really hard sometimes, especially if we’re moving in a horrible rain and windstorm, which we’ve definitely done. Those are not great days. They’re a challenge, but at the end of it is a new place we’re going to live for a while.

Becky:
And new adventures. We’ll probably still have days like that for sure.

Brad:
Do we ever miss the stability of coworkers and office life?

Becky:
No. And that sounds terrible because I do have coworkers now. We just don’t hang out in person. I’ve gone to some events and meetings where I’ve been in the same physical place as some of my coworkers. If I need to talk to somebody, I just get online and say, hey, who’s out there, and we connect. But no, because I’m not a huge fan of office politics and office drama and all that kind of stuff. My officemate downstairs pretty much does his own thing. Occasionally my dog is under the desk and will snore like a freight train, but she’s cute. So no, I don’t miss it.

Brad:
Yeah. My office life, if you want to call it that, came with a bunch of students. My day was spent with students, teaching them one-on-one, and there are definitely aspects of that that I miss. But I’m the same way. You sacrifice for the life that you want. There are some good things that you have to leave behind. I still get to work one-on-one with students, it’s just in a different way. It’s not thirty or forty students at a time now; it’s usually more one-on-one work, which has its benefits too.

Brad:
This one isn’t so much about work, but since we’re talking about connection… what do we do to stay connected with friends and family while we’re on the road?

Becky:
I think it’s the same thing people do in brick and mortar houses. You call, you talk on the phone, you text, you email, you get together when you can, you travel to see each other. All the same things. I don’t actually think it’s that different. In some ways, it’s actually kept us more connected, especially with our kids, than we might have been otherwise. Now we can be within a few hours of at least one of them when we want to. I think you just have to be mindful of it and make an effort to stay in touch.

Brad:
Yeah, I think so too. I was thinking back to when we lived really close to my parents — literally in the same small town — and how rarely we saw them because we could see them anytime. They were right there, so we never went. Not never, but rarely. Then when we moved farther away, we actually talked to them a lot more because we had to be intentional about it.

Becky:
That’s the thing. It’s intentional with whoever you’re choosing to stay connected with, whether it’s friends, family, whoever. It doesn’t really matter if you’re living in a house or living on the road. You have to make the effort.

Brad:
Yeah. We’ve found technology that works great for that. We use an app called Marco Polo — you might want to check that out if you haven’t. It’s a great app for keeping in touch with people. We use it a lot with our kids. We’ve also started doing basically a monthly Zoom meeting, although it’s hit and miss sometimes, where we invite the larger family in from all over the country just to hang out for an hour and catch up. It’s been great.

Becky:
It is funny because that started not even because of us being on the road, but because of the pandemic. That’s where a lot of families, I think, got creative, and some of those things have stuck around. It certainly has for us. So yeah, I think you just have to be intentional.

Brad:
Is there anything you wish we’d known before jumping into working on the road that we didn’t?

Becky:
I don’t think so. I feel like we had both owned our own businesses before and worked independently before, so not going into an office wasn’t something that was unfamiliar to either of us. We knew what that would look like.

Brad:
Yeah.

Becky:
I can’t think of anything big. Maybe if we’d known ahead of time exactly what our work life was going to look like, we might have chosen a different style of RV. Maybe something with a bunkhouse or something we could have converted into a separate space. I don’t know.

Brad:
Oh, right. Yeah.

Becky:
Something like that, maybe. But overall, not really.

Brad:
I think mine isn’t necessarily connected to working, it’s more about RV life in general. I wish I’d known how complicated some things would be that seem like they should be simple — like getting your mail, establishing care with a doctor if you’re moving all the time, even proving residency. How do you prove you’re a resident of a state when you don’t have a permanent address? Or how do you get a car loan when the bank wants to know where they can find you? That kind of stuff gets really tricky. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, there are answers to all those things, but I wish I’d researched those parts a little more ahead of time.

Becky:
There are answers to those things, yeah, but they don’t really affect work so much.

Brad:
Right. We’ll talk more about all of that in future episodes, I’m sure.

Brad:
Let’s end with the question I think we ended with last time. What advice would you give somebody considering right now whether they should take an online job, hit the road, and work from an RV?

Becky:
Do your homework. Make sure you’re a self-starter because that’s the other thing. If you’re a person who can’t keep yourself on a schedule or can’t stay motivated, maybe that flexibility isn’t a good thing for you. Maybe you need the nine-to-five, clock-in, clock-out structure. If that’s the case, then maybe this isn’t for you. But if you’re somebody who’s owned your own business before or you’re already doing work that lends itself to this kind of lifestyle, just get curious. Jump in. You’ll figure it out. And if it’s not for you, then you go back to brick and mortar and do something different. It’s not a sentence. It’s just a choice. I would say do your homework, but then go for it.

Brad:
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. The thing I would add is don’t assume you’re going to save a ton of money without any tradeoffs. You probably will save money compared to living in a traditional house, but there are expenses you don’t think about. One of the big ones is Wi-Fi. Be prepared to spend a lot more on getting cell signal and Internet than you expect, because you’re probably going to need multiple options. It costs money to stay in parks, it costs money to keep everything running, it costs money to buy propane and things like that. So it’s not like you’re going to live rent-free and never have a bill again.

Becky:
That’s important. It’s something people should know. A lot of people say, “I’m doing this to save money,” or, “It’s going to be so much cheaper,” but there are a lot of hidden costs. You can’t just jump into it and assume it will all work itself out. That’s probably a whole other episode we could do, honestly. We still have expenses. We still have all the same things other people have, we just happen to take them with us in a fifth wheel everywhere we go.

Brad:
Right. Just being fully honest here — we have a loan on our RV, a loan on our truck, and we’re paying off our Thousand Trails membership. All of that combined is still nowhere near what we’d pay for even a small two-bedroom apartment right now, but when you start throwing in Internet and everything else, it starts creeping up. It’s still cheaper, but it’s not free. You have to be realistic about that.

Becky:
Exactly. It’s a different way of living, not necessarily a cheaper one in every way.

Brad:
Alright, folks, I think that’s going to wrap it up for us. We’ve got one more week here in Newport and then we’ll be headed somewhere new. I’m not going to tell you where yet, but you’ll find out when we get there. Our goal is to drop an episode every Monday. We’d love to hear from you if you’re out there listening. Shoot us an email — it’s [email protected] or [email protected].

Becky:
Yeah, shoot us a message. Your thoughts and opinions are welcome, no matter what.

Brad:
Even if you disagree with us. Maybe you’re a huge Nomad Internet fan and you want to tell us why we’re wrong. We’d love to hear about it.

Becky:
Or if you’ve got something you think we should check out. One of the great things about the RV community is that people share information back and forth. We’ve learned so much from others, so we’d love to keep doing that.

Brad:
Absolutely. Also, check out the website — I just added a bunch of pictures to the first episode. On each episode page, you’ll find a little synopsis of what we talked about, a full transcript, and some extra links or pictures that go along with the conversation. You can find all that at jicyw.com. We’ve also set up a discussion board there where you can comment and connect with us without having to email. We’d love to hear how you’re working in your RV or what your plans are.

Becky:
Yeah.

Brad:
Alright. Thanks for wandering with us, and we’ll see you…

Becky:
We’ll see you next time.

Do you have a question or comment about this episode? Join the community discussion here!

• How Did You Start RVing Full-Time?
• What Do People Get Wrong About Full Time RVing?
• What Surprised Us Most About Full-Time RV Living?

Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
This page may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We only recommend products we’ve personally used and love.

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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