Our first videocast is out!

We’re so excited. Our first videocast is out!

We’ve been wanting to do a podcast and video since we started the RV lifestyle, but it’s been tricky to pull it all together – what with traveling so much, dealing with winter challenges, and figuring out what formats we wanted to use. We finally decided to just go for it. At 37 minutes, our first vid is a bit long, but we needed to catch everyone up on our first 7 1/2 months.

Going forward, they’ll mostly be short, quick hits, and we’ll show you all kinds of cool stuff – like how the rig is decorated, how we handle various RV chores, what our campground experiences are like, product reviews and more.

So, please take a few moments to watch us and share, share, share!  Thank you!

Warrior RV Park (Tulsa, Oklahoma)

Mike was working at Myers-Duren Harley-Davidson, so our next stop after Waco was Tulsa. We chose Warrior RV Park because it was fairly close to the dealership, had good reviews, and was reasonably priced. $28 a day included a pull-through site with full hook-ups and a grassy strip with a picnic table.

Warrior RV Park has 38 pull-throughs with 30- or 50-amp service and concrete pads that are 8 feet by 15 feet. There are also 17 back-in spots with 30-amp service.  There’s a dumpster on the back side for trash along with a larger grassy area for walking the dogs.  The highway runs next to the park, so it can be loud.  Our rig’s insulation kept the road noise to minimum when we were inside. A bathroom/laundry building is roughly in the center of the park.  The park has decent free Wi-Fi and a ridiculously large selection of free cable channels.  We especially appreciated the propane tank on property because we wanted to have plenty of propane as we headed out to Milwaukee.

My memories of our stay in Tulsa will always be bittersweet. We had to say goodbye to our Charlie kitty while we were there.  He developed a saddle thrombus in the afternoon on January 14th that cut off the blood supply to his legs.  Mike was able to leave work early, bringing the Jeep with him, and we took Charlie to a vet Mike’s students had recommended.  The vet and his assistant were very kind, but there was nothing they could do to save our boy.  Since Charlie was 23 years old, we knew his time was going to come soon.  It still broke our hearts, though, to have to let him go.  He was with me for half my life, and he’s irreplaceable.

When I learned that the wife of the couple that owns the park rescues cats, I gave her Charlie’s leftover food and made sure to buy a chocolate bar that she sells for fundraising.  I rescued Charlie all those years ago, and it made me feel good to help someone else trying to do the same.

6 months on the road!

The whole fam on a rainy morning at Riverview Campground in Waco, Texas, on our six-month anniversary of full-time RVing

Today is our six-month anniversary of full-timing.  Woohoo!  We bought the rig on May 21st, spent several VERY hot weeks clearing out our rental home and rehabbing the rig, and ultimately left Vegas on July 8th.  It’s been a quite an adventure ever since.

Highlights:

• Cheapest campground (with full hook-ups): $16 a day at Main Street Station (would be $14 but they charge $1 per dog)
• Most expensive campground (with full hook-ups): approximately $70 a day (can’t remember which one exactly; gotta keep better records of that)
• Average stay in one spot: 1 week
• Longest time spent in one spot so far: Milwaukee for five weeks
• Miles driven: 13,467
• States: 28
• Most epic commute: driving over 2000 miles in 3 days from Milwaukee to Vegas in late December through snow, sleet and ice storms
• Easiest commute: driving from Brookline, New Hampshire, to Stowe, Vermont, in late November under clear skies and light traffic
• Sweetest moment: There have been so many sweet moments!  But if we had to choose, it’s been seeing all three of Mike’s daughters in the same year.  (That hadn’t happened since our wedding in 2009!)
• Toughest moment: Leaving Vegas for the second time after visiting over Christmas

Work

Mike’s business as a technical trainer was already going well before we left Vegas.  The constant travel involved was what prompted us to hit the road in the RV in the first place.  Transitioning to the RV lifestyle has opened up other work opportunities for him.  This summer, during his normally slow period, he had the chance to work as a mechanic on Harley-Davidson’s demo fleet.  And now there’s a brand new, very exciting gig he’ll be doing for Harley, starting in a couple of weeks.  Those two opportunities would not have happened if we hadn’t been mobile.  And there’s the prospect of more cool stuff on the horizon.

I gave up my job as Deputy Administrator for the State of Nevada’s Housing Division to do freelance work on the road.  It’s been hard for me emotionally to shift from my identity as an accomplished professional.  Although this change is allowing me to nurture a creative career, it’s been discouraging to make a quarter of what I made before.

Freelancing is fickle and challenging, as I’m learning firsthand.  I’ve been sussing out my niche, and I think I’m on to something with Coffice Girl.  I frequently work in coffee shops and teahouses that offer free Wi-Fi, and I’ve started to profile those workspaces that I call “coffices” (cafe + office = coffice).  Over the next year, I will continue to develop Coffice Girl into my brand – focusing on my freelance writing, social media and illustration and celebrating the freelance lifestyle as well as small, local coffee and tea shops.  I am lucky in that I have consistent paying work (social media posting and strategy, writing, web design, virtual book marketing) and have had interesting, unexpected gigs (like working Harley’s 110th) come my way.  And, if we lived at Main Street Station (or someplace equally as cheap), I could even cover my own living expenses without Mike’s salary.  Still, staying positive about my new career is sometimes a struggle.

Friends & Community

When we got back to Vegas, after 5 1/2 months away, my friend Kimberly asked me, over dinner, if I’d been lonely.  I thought about it for a moment and realized that I had not been lonely, which struck me as odd initially.  I think, though, that it was because we’d seen so many people on our travels up to that point.  We saw all three of Mike’s daughters within a couple of months.  While we were on the east coast, we saw my mum and dad and their significant others, and I saw a girlfriend I hadn’t seen for seven years.  We saw my aunt and uncle while we were in North Carolina.  In Viriginia Beach, Mike was reunited with a cousin he hadn’t seen for over 20 years.  Mike’s brothers visited us in DC a few months after we left Vegas.  Then, we were back in Vegas to see all of our friends for Christmas.  I Skyped with one girlfriend a couple of times and kept up with everyone else through Facebook, e-mail, text messages and phone calls, which helped me feel connected.

Returning to Vegas and then leaving again was heartbreaking.   Being back in the nice weather, getting to see all the people I love and love to laugh with, seeing how my cherished city is blossoming was so wonderful, and I just wanted to stay.  Even Mike, who hadn’t been missing home as much as me during our first six months, felt it.  He has especially missed his North Las Vegas airport community and being able to fly regularly.

Milwaukee is as close as we come to a home base, since Mike teaches there one week a month from October through March, and thankfully, we have great friends there.  So, there is a community for us in Milwaukee, especially for Mike because he’s been working there for several years.

Health

One benefit we anticipated from moving into the RV was that Mike would get healthier.  In some ways, he has, and in some ways, he hasn’t.  The RV lifestyle is more physical than sticks-and-bricks living, so Mike’s moving more than he was.  But, he’s not eating as healthfully as we’d hoped for two reasons: 1) the tendency to nosh while driving and 2) eating out more than cooking in.

I am in my 12th year of a lifestyle change in which I lost over 100 pounds.  One of my biggest fears, going on the road, was that boredom and depression over leaving my friends and work would lead to overeating.  I am about 20 pounds heavier than I want to be right now, but I am maintaining my weight, just like I had been in Vegas over the last couple of years.  With the bad weather we’ve encountered on the road, I’ve had to change up my exercise routine.  I’ve found great workouts I can easily do in the rig (JessicaSmithTV.com), and I exercise about six days a week.  Mike bought me a FitBit Flex for Christmas, so I’m back to logging my food intake, as I did in the beginning.  Controlling my eating will always be difficult for me, but at least it hasn’t been made worse by RVing.

I am an avid obstacle racer, and traveling has both helped and hindered that.  It’s been hard to have a consistent OCR schedule because we’re not in one place.  Conversely, I’ve had the chance to do races in differenct locales that I normally never would.  It’s been easier to find running races at the last minute, so I’ve done more of those than obstacle events.  Mike has started coming along so that we “wog” (walk-jog) them together!

Expenses

We figured that Mike’s salary and the money he previously spent on airfare, rental cars and hotels would more than cover our living in the RV.  We figured right.

I used my retirement money from the State to pay for the rig in full, so we have no mortgage or rig payment.  We have no other debt, and we saved as much as we could before we hit the road to cover emergencies and lean times in Mike’s work.  We’ve had a few things go wrong mechanically like the air conditioner’s compressor seizing and snapping the fan belt and water issues, but with Mike’s ingenuity, we’ve kept moving without too much of a hit to our savings. So far, it’s all worked out beautifully.  We have money to cover our expenses and still have funds left over for dinners out and entertainment.

Our focus now is building our retirement fund and figuring out our insurance through Obamacare.

Another challenge has been reducing our Internet costs.  We currently spend $450 a month for two smart phones and 40GB of data.  About $200 of that is the data that we use for Netflix and Amazon as well as web.  We are continuing to investigate options to bring that cost down.  Thankfully, we can afford it right now, but we’d like to be as lean as possible going forward.

Pets

Traveling with two dogs and a 23-year-old cat has been, um, interesting.

Charlie, our cat, is marvelously adaptable, and it’s a delight to see him stretched out on the dash, soaking up the sun as we motor down the highway.  However, dealing with his litter has been a nightmare.  With almost no carpet and only 300 square feet of space, the crystals get EVERYWHERE.  I’m continuously appalled by where it turns up!  I simply can’t vacuum or wipe or sweep enough!  And, to put it bluntly, his stinky poops overwhelm the senses in such a small environment.  When Charlie moves on to the great cathouse in the sky, we will not get another cat.

The biggest issue we have with Meeko and Sadie, our Rat Terrier and Boston Terrier, is the lack of a doggie door.  In our house in Vegas, we had a doggie door and an enclosed back yard. So, the bark babies could dash outside to potty or sunbathe whenever they wanted to – whether we were there or not.  Now, one of us has to be up between 6 and 6:30 in the morning to take them out to do their business.  And someone has to take them out around 10 at night for their last potty of the day.  In the nice weather, it’s not that big a deal, but when it’s 5 degrees out, windy and snowing in Milwaukee, it kinda sucks.

Small Space Living

Living in 300 square feet hasn’t bothered us.  Ironically, that’s almost been the easiest thing to deal with!  We downsized a ton before we moved into the rig, and we’ve downsized even more along the way.  We’ve learned the most effective organizing techniques for our stuff.  Some things we thought would work (like silicone baking pans) haven’t, and some ideas have worked exactly as we expected.  We have a general policy that if something comes in, something else goes out.  Keeping the rooms tidy and putting items away is fairly easy – once you’ve figured out where and how to put ’em away.  And, it feels spacious when our one living room slide is out.

Decorating has been harder than anything because of the movement and things not sticking to the textured walls.

Other than that, we don’t feel cramped in our  hallway on wheels, and it’s starting to feel like home – with reflections of us and what we love scattered about.

Summing it up…

Overall, our first six months on the road have been extraordinarily wonderful.  We’ve gotten to spend every day together, a first in our seven-year relationship.  Sharing all the triumphs, the hardships and the ordinary moments has strengthened us as a couple and brought us even closer than we were before – which hard to believe since we’ve been super close from the beginning!  We’ve already seen so much of this amazing country, and we’ve done all kinds of fabulous stuff like ziplining, flying in small planes to historic places, ropes courses, shooting competitions, paddle boating, cooking classes, scenic bicycling, and much more.  We’ve visited far-flung family and friends.  We’ve explored new communities and checked out the fun and funky small businesses that give those communities their unique flavor.

When we started, we committed to a year.  I’m excited to see what the next six months brings.

Backseat driver

In an RV, it’s important to know how to handle those pesky backseat drivers.

Road puppy

Our Boston Terrier Sadie (also known as the Pupkin, Crumb Cake, and Goose) loves to snuggled next to me in the passenger seat as we motor down the road in the rig.

She’s the co-pilot’s co-pilot!

Gearing up for winter

Our dogs are desert dogs, not familiar with – or built for – cold weather.  But, they’ve been troopers, particularly Sadie, our little Boston Terrier.  She’s a bit of a princess, but we’ve discovered that she loves to romp in the snow.  She’s also a no-nonsense girl.  While Meeko will sniff and hunt for the perfect spot to relieve himself, Sadie gets down to business right away so she can return to her warm blanket by the propane heater.

We’re doing our best to make sure our bark babies are appropriately outfitted for the freezing temperatures, but not everything works well.  We worry most about the extreme cold damaging their paws, so we’ve tried booties.  They just don’t stay on.  We got Meeko a snowsuit with legs, but he hobbled awkwardly around, giving us a plaintive look, big brown eyes pleading to have the miserable thing taken off of him.  We obliged and try to make it quick when it gets into the single digits or lower.  Sadie likes her quilted jacket, but it doesn’t offer much more than torso protection.

I guess we’ll get better at gearing the dogs up for winter just like we will with managing the rig in the cold.  It’ll take time, practice and patience – on all our parts.

Snuggled in

It’s gonna get below zero tonight in Milwaukee. Sadie is snuggled into the afghan her grandma knitted for me years ago. At least one of us is prepared for the dropping temperatures!

Normandy Farms Family Camping Resort (Foxboro, MA)

Normandy Farms is huge.  It’s probably the largest campground we’ve stayed at except for Cherry Hill just outside of D.C.  There’s so much to do at Normandy Farms, but we didn’t have much time to partake.  We spent most of our time traveling to Boston to visit with my dad and his lady love Sindy.

The rates vary depending on the season and how many services you’re looking for.  They break it out nicely on their website so it was pretty clear to us.  They do give a discount if you’re a member of one of the big clubs.  The office is open late and well-stocked with RV supplies, gift items, and small groceries.  The roaring fire made me want to camp out on the sofa there instead of at our site!  Did I mention that it was 20 degrees during our visit?!

Surprisingly, we had a lot of company during our stay over Veterans Day weekend.   The place was overrun with kids dashing between playgrounds, families walking their dogs, and couples riding bicycles on the nature paths.  We took the bark babies to the dog park, the brisk air quickening our steps and theirs.  The dogs enthusiastically darted around, sniffing and plowing through the dead leaves.  The dog park is really cool – with a dog wash area, a separate enclosed run for small dogs, an agility course, and fenced-in “cabins” where you can leave your dog for a time.  The “cabins” and dog walking services are available for a fee.

Normandy Farms closes for the season on November 30th.  They kept the water on through the long holiday weekend and then shut it off that Tuesday morning.  They advised us of that when we made our reservation and again when we checked in, so we were prepared.  It was obvious that most of our fellow campers were there just for the holiday because the place emptied out pretty quickly on Monday.

Normandy Farms is the first “resort” RV park we’ve stayed at, and it lived up to its description.  There’s swimming, a recreation lodge, a creative arts enter, and business & information center, a fitness center, playgrounds, the dog park, a bike park and disc golf.  While we were there, they were hosting movie night and candy bar bingo.  That’s all in addition to plenty of pull-through, full hook-up sites with grassy strips and picnic tables.  This would be an awesome place for families, and we would’ve loved to stay when we could do all the nifty stuff they have to offer.  My dad wasn’t really up to making the 45-minute trek from Boston to hang out with us, so we were away almost more than we were there.

I loved the doggie welcome bags that we received upon check-in.  There was a biscuit for each bark baby along with poop bags and notes on the rules and amenities for dogs.  My favorite part was the personalized tag for each dog that had their names on one side and our campsite on the other.  This is a b-i-g park.  How to smart to make sure that, if they got away, whomever found them would know who they were and where to return them.

 

A country vet visit

Tiny little drops of red on the white tile.  We thought he was eating something he shouldn’t until we saw the blood.  Meeko was licking his paw, trying to soothe a torn dewclaw that was hanging precariously off his foot.

Some quick Googling and a short phone call revealed that Stowe Veterinary Clinic was close by and open.  We followed a hunched elderly woman with pink sneakers – and her equally elderly sausage dog – into the building.  She told the receptionist that her husband didn’t like her to be out after dark.  The receptionist assured her that Fido would be ready for pick-up well before sundown.  We were next after Grandma Pink Sneakers, and Dr. Goodson took us into an exam room within minutes.  It had to be some kind of speed record because we’d never been seen that fast in Vegas or in Milwaukee where the last pet emergency had occurred.

It also turned out to be the cheapest vet visit ever.  Pulling Meeko’s bad claw, applying ointment and a bandage, and giving us a rainbow-striped leash and excellent advice about how to handle Meeko’s situational aggressiveness set us back a mere $47.  Part of it was that Meeko was thoughtful enough to hurt himself on a weekday.  Charlie’s raging ear infection, as evidenced by him repeatedly stumbling and restlessly roaming the RV while yowling continuously, came to a head on a  Sunday.  So we had emergency fees to pay along with extensive testing (could the oddly dilated pupils be a brain tumor?) and antibiotics.  Several hundred dollars later, Charlie was a new cat, and our bank account was wiped out.

No vet visit is complete without recovery treats.  We found some at the Cabot Annex Store in Waterbury.  Strange – considering it’s a cheese place, and these nibbles were entirely fromage-free.  They were just too cute to pass up, and of course, we had to get one for Sadie, too.  While Meeko was the patient, Sadie was suffering at home, worrying for her brother.  Or, at least, that’s what we told ourselves.  Treats were given out, heads were patted, bark babies were cooed over, and all was well with the world after our first visit to a country vet.

Note:  We all know that an emergency fund for rig issues is important.  But if you have pets, it’s a good idea to set aside some extra money for emergencies for them, too.  Pet insurance may also be a good option, although I don’t know if it’s accepted everywhere and in every circumstance.

Talking about Living the RV Life

We’re famous!

Well, not really.  

But we are very honored that we got to tell our story to Bobby & Sue of the Living the RV Life podcast and share it with all of their listeners.

It was such a treat, chatting with them about their plans to head out on the road, dishing on our experiences over the first four months of our motorhoming escapade.  Thanks, Bobby & Sue!

You can listen here:  http://livingthervlife.com/interview-with-adventures-in-a-hallway/

And be sure to subscribe to their podcast to get all the latest info about living the RV life.