This is a blog about two baby boomers who are retired and living full time in their Class A motorhome. We stay mostly at Thousand Trails campgrounds. We use a drone to film our adventures and share the video on the blog
My wife drives our 42 ft Class A motorhome, I fly the Drone and we are having a blast in our new liftstyle.
Today we sat down to discuss some of the major concerns we feel many folks may have concerning the decision to live full time in an RV. We are staying at Tropic Winds campground which is located on the Gulf of Mexico in South Texas. While there are definitely constant Tropical Winds blowing, we have had considerable rain over the last few days. I feel it should be called TROPIC RAIN campground.
We didn't close several of the windows and we had rain coming inside the camper from several windows and vents but we were too focused on our discussion in making the video, that we didn't notice the rain pouring in right behind us. I doubt you will be as focused on the discussion as we obviously were, but maybe you will get a chuckle out it or the crazy rain storm. One of our neighbors said their rain gauge showed 5 inches in just over an hour.
Stay tuned for the ending, or just skip to the ending if you get bored to see what happens when Pearl leaves early in the car to secure our next campsite,about 20 miles away, leaving me to finish packing up and drive the RV to meet up with her. Obviously I was a little late in meeting her.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the video and hopefully everyone is nice and dry as you are watching.
As many of you know, we are trying to maintain a healthy diet (most of the time). Yesterday, Pearl asked for suggestions for dinner and I requested a Pizza (it was my birthday). In her effort to keep it a more healthy choice, Pearl looked up a Califlower Pizza Crust pizza recipe and found one.
She was going to make it a vegetable pizza but since it was my birthday I asked for a little meat on it (its a guy thing). Anyway, to make a long story short. It was Great and we will be doing it again, I am sure.
The only issue, and it was a minor one, was the Califlower had a little too much moisture left in it and the pizza slices were hard to pick up. We ate the first bite off the point of each pizza slice with a fork then were able to pick up the rest.
A viewer from our YouTube channel gave us her solution to the recipe which is almost identical to the one she uses. (wrap the Califlower rice in a paper towel and squeeze out any excess moisture prior to mixing into batter)
The pizza is super healthy (vegetarian version) and very good, if you are courageous enough to try it, I am sure you will like it. If you do try it, please give your comments below to let us know how you liked it and if the paper towel suggestion worked.
We are down in the Rio Grande Valley now and the weather is nice. It has been windy, but I think that is normal down here. It hasn't hit freezing yet but has gone into the 30's a couple of times at night. We often use the heater in the morning and the air conditioner just a couple of hours later. The saying here is that this is the only place where you can get Frost Bite and Sun Burn in the same week. That pretty much covers the winter weather situation in just a couple of words.
That being said, overall the weather has been great. We get to walk the dog everyday and usually in shorts and t-shirt. The only downside for me is the RV Parks are all pretty much asphalt, cement and a little grass. Unfortunately there are not situated on lakes, forest or anything like that, which would be much more to our liking. We do get to meet lots of friendly people and there plenty of activities going on in each park, but we have to venture out of the park a lot more to keep entertained, as shuffleboard, pickleball, dances and pot-luck dinners are nice but not exactly what we enjoy doing a lot of.
Luckily, we have found quite a few places to go to and things to do, so it has worked out pretty well. We briefly showcased a couple of the places we have visited in this video and as we find more and varied interesting things to do, we will probably be able to add some fun and color to the our activity videos.
We will be in the Rio Grande Valley until the middle of March, when we head back North. We have our route and schedule planned out from here up to North Eastern Missouri arriving there in late May for the Escapees RV Rally which we like to go to (usually in Tucson AZ). From there, we are hoping to meet up with Robert and Esme in Indianapolis, checking out Niagara Falls, New England, several Civil War sites and Canada before heading down toward Florida for next winter.
Without much more adieu, I give you our next video as it paints a much better picture of where we're at and what we have been up to. Hope you enjoy and hopefully the weather stays nice and we get to do lots of fun stuff which we will definitely try to get some pictures/video to post. Thanks for watching and Stay Warm, where ever you at.
It's really hard to comprehend that we have been living full time in the RV for 7 months now. Traveling up and down the Pacific Coast seems so long ago now and we are a little sad that it will be more than a year before we get back into the western part of the USA to visit the kids and grand-kids again. We definitely enjoyed all the family time we had up and down the coast visiting everyone and hot-rodding Ronnie's Camero was a blast. Thanks to all and look forward to seeing everyone in 2019.
Special thanks to all of our friends and family that read, comment and follow our adventure here on the blog. We very much enjoy it when someone leaves a question or comment so don't hesitate to say hi so what ever is on your mind, down in the comments section below if your so inclined.
Currently we are down in Weslaco Texas bouncing between a couple of different parks, staying 3 weeks at each one then moving. We spent the day at Padre Island a few days ago and it is pretty nice, as Steve and Lance will vouch for as we spent a month on Padre Island in our 24' motorhome back in 1978 that we all really enjoyed.
There is a beach RV parking area that Pearl and I are thinking about staying at for a few days but haven't decided for sure yet. When we parked on the Beach in California for a week last spring, it really covered everything in salt and was a pain to get clean again.
The campsites are all fairly standard in the Thousand Trails, Encore Parks here and while there is plenty of room and lots of activities, I don't really enjoy them all that much, as I much prefer being nearer the ocean, lake, forest or river. It's fine for spending the winter I guess, but we will definitely be ready to get back on the road this spring and explore new and different campsites.
We are scheduled to get to Branson Missouri this Spring then go to a RV rally in upper Missouri later in the month before heading across to Indianapolis to visit Robert and Family. We will head up to Niagara Falls and the New England area during the summer and head down to Florida for the winter. I am sure I will way too soon be sitting in Florida writing the same thing that it is hard to believe that 2018 went by so fast.
I plan to do a short video or two showing a little bit of the Medina Lake campground where we were camped at in late November/December and where we will stop back at in the Spring, along with some drone footage I shot here at Country Sunshine where we are at currently.
There are lots of RV'ers here now, the drone footage shows the park fairly empty 2 weeks ago, but our neighbors said just wait until after Christmas and all the Canadians will start showing up and they have showed up in droves. It is really filling up fast as I write this the first week in January.
Our most viewed videos seem be the ones that show or discuss finances, so even though I was thinking about ending the expense videos fairly soon, I have received numerous request to continue them over on YouTube. I see they are constantly the top viewed videos even here on the blog so here is the latest spreadsheet on what it cost actually us to live full time in the RV for December 2017
At the end of the video, I added a section where I back out all of the expenses that are not absolutely mandatory and leave room for some personal adjusting up or down depending your personal situation. According to those numbers, a couple could possibly live this lifestyle on $25,000 a year assuming they were debt free and didn't spend a lot of money on extras (really no money on extras)
Hopefully, we will have a video of us and the more recent campgrounds we have stayed at pretty soon, but for now here is the December Expense Spreadsheet for those that haven't seen it already on YouTube.
