Is the Nomadic RV Lifestyle Conducive to Making Lasting Friendships?

Pearl and I were making a video today about our time in New England and while editing it, I noticed we were spending much more time talking about the people we had met instead of the things we had seen and done.

It caused me to ponder about the importance of friendships and how hard it was to nourish and maintain these nomadic friendships. It seems that we no sooner get to meet and know someone and then one or the other  of us is moving out to their next destination, potentially never to be seen again.

We have developed a couple of friendships that have withstood the distance of the nomadic lifestyle but they are few and far between. The first couple we met while RV'ing that we were able to overcome the nomadic distance with our friendship was a couple from Kingman Arizona (Pete & Debbie) . We met Debbie when she was walking their two dogs (CoCo & Buddy) and stopped in our camp to met our puppy Tinker, while we were camping in Watchman Campground in Zion National Park back in 2015 shortly after we had retired.

We got to know Pete & Debbie pretty well and although they were 20 years younger than us, and lived 100 miles away, we kept in contact and met at a couple of different campgrounds with them over the years and even stopped by their home in Kingman  AZ. a couple of times, where they have an RV Pad at their home and they let us park and spend the night when going through their area.

I think these friendships are fairly common within the RV community, but they don't happen by accident and take a lot of nourishment to keep them from evaporating into thin air once the two couples move on down the road. We have not duplicated this type of friendship with any other RVing couples we have met, but part of that is because we are constantly moving and haven't returned to the same area to revisit friends that have a fixed home to be able to meet up at.

Most of the couples we have met are also traveling and since we generally don't come back into contact with them in person, we have to keep the friendship alive and well through email and videos. This simply does not work as well as getting to see each other regularly by meeting at campgrounds or in hometowns.

So, with all of that said, here is a short update of our time in New England and most of the people we met while in this part of the country and with a little work and good luck we will get to met them all again in the not too distant future when and if our paths cross again.

Taking Advantage of the RV Lifestyle

We spent a week in New York to meet up with some RV Friends (Jeff & Laurie) at Rondout Valley RV Campground. We had a couple of our Youtube followers (Chuck & Cheryl) contact us that wanted to meet up somewhere and we decided Rondout Valley would be a great place to get together.We all got to get together a couple of times and shared lots of RV stories and laughs together.

Chuck and Cheryl have retired and plan to live full time in their RV starting in the spring of 2019, but have been traveling around the North East for several years. They love climbing the highest mountains and exploring deep down into old mines and caves just as much, as well as numerous other outdoor adventures.

They have videoed and posted all their adventures and you can watch them by clicking the link below
  Chuck & Cheryl's Adventures on Youtube

They are have also started a new channel documenting their transition into the RV Lifestyle
Chuck and Cheryl's transition to the RV Lifestyle

Once Pearl and I watch their videos, we knew we would want to do a video interview with them so we could share their adventures with all of you. We enjoyed spending several days with them and plan to see them again next year once they start their Full Time RV Adventures.

We think you will enjoy the interview with Chuck and Cheryl and maybe even more so, we are sure you will enjoy watching some of their adventure videos.

Visiting Maine and all of it's Beauty

We left Rondout Valley RV Campground September 9th and spent a month traveling up to Bar Harbor in Maine. This has been such a fun trip that we are even thinking about coming back in 2019 or 2020 depending on just how far away we stray to this summer.

We enjoyed Cape Cod and the Boston Freedom Trail for a couple of days before getting to Maine and found Cape Cod to be a great area with beautiful beaches, but unfortunately there was a very sad shark attack on a surfer the day after we left. We did not see any of the seals that apparently are living  in the area and have become  a food source for the sharks but we did not go back to the beach at Cape Cod after hearing of that attack.

Our original plans was to  travel up to and stay at Moody Beach RV Campground located in southern Maine, but we soon learned that much of the real beauty of Maine was further north, so we headed up to Bar Harbor and Arcadia National Park. That was a great decision and we would highly recommend the area to anyone wanting to see the beauty associated with New England.

With our Thousand Trails membership we can stay for Free at the Moody Beach and Narrows Too campgrounds but when we arrived in the Bar Harbor area, we found that the Narrows Too campground free sites were full so we had to rent a spot. We decided to step up and rent one of the sites right on the ocean so we could watch the tides come in and out and enjoy all that scenery. The site cost $107 per day (minus a 20% TT discount) so we only stayed in the site 4 days until we could get into one of the Free sites, but it was money well spent.

We got to eat lobster dinners and a variety of seafood and enjoyed most all of it, although not many items compared to Pearl's home cooking which is always awesome and usually pretty healthy.

Well it is now October 9th and the last month has flown by and we are back in Rondout Valley Campground meeting up with some friends and looking forward to meeting some new ones. The couple that does the youtube channel "Get Gone With Us" are planning to come to Rondout Valley campground this Sunday for a meet up. They have a great channel and provide a lot of useful information to their viewers so we are anxious to get to meet them. Check out their channel here.Get Gone With Us

Finishing up in Beautiful Pennsylvania and headed into New York

We had a great August spending most of it in Pennsylvania at several Thousand Trails Campgrounds. We have meet up with lots of our viewers in Pennsylvania and it is easy to understand why so many couples living in Pennsylvaina are watching our videos and considering the Full Time RV Lifestyle as there are so many great places to RV around here.

We have driven the RV over 40,000 miles since we purchased it almost 5 years ago and Pearl has driven over 35,000 of them and now I have to admit she does a much better job of driving it than I could. I am so proud of her and all the responsibility she takes care of in our Adventure. As they say it Takes Two To Tango and in my opinion it Takes Two to live and enjoy this Full Time RV Lifestyle to its fullest. We highly recommend it and are so glad we have had the opportunity to see this great country of ours in our slow and leisurely manner.


 Here is our video for August we hope you enjoy it.

Leaving Indiana for Pennsylvania and MUCH MORE

We left Indiana after spending a couple of weeks visiting with family, as well as a couple of different subscribers to the Youtube channel. July and August have been really good months but it wasn't all fun as we had several mechanincal issues pop up that need attention. But that is what the RV lifestyle is all about.

We headed to Pennsylvania  after couple of days at Niagara Falls. We enjoyed Niagara Falls every bit as much as we hoped we would. The falls are Majestic especially from the Canadian side. We took several tours including the boat ride right up to the falls on the Maid of the Mist tour boat. That was a dramatic although pretty wet boat ride. If you get the opportunity to view Niagara Falls in person, we would definately reccomend it.

We then headed down to Gettysburg Farms campground and spent several days in the area visiting Civil War battfields and enjoyed the area and all it had to offer.The Thousand Trails Campground "Gettysburg Farms" is on an actual working farm with lots of animals and CORN FIELDS everywhere. We had several big rain days here and luckily we moved from our first campsite right on the river to a very nice site but further back from the river. The folks that did not move had to be towed out, as the river overflowed during the night and put many of the lower campsited under a foot of water. The river went down within a day and no one was ever in any danger, other than mud.

We headed over to Hershey Pennsylanvia to see some of the sights and found more rain but we had several sunny days also. While on one of our walks in the park, a couple in a 45' class A motorhome pulled over and called out to us by name. We didn't know what was going on at first, but they follow our youtube channel and reconized us and wanted to visit a bit. That was a very fun experiance and has happened a couple of times in the last several months. We decided to do a video on their RV experiance that I think you will enjoy watching.

We have been communicating with several couples that live in Pennsylavinia that have been planning to transition into the full time rv lifestyle. One of the coupls drove over from Philadelphia to meet up with us and do an interview to discuss their RV plans. Tom and Christina are a very interesting couple and they definately have the right attitude to live a fun and exciting RV Life Style.

We asked our Youtube viewers to answer about 10 RV related questions and posted the results in a Video Poll that I think many of you will enjoy watcing. There were about 300 respnses to each question and I think the answers and analysis are right on.

We have been communicating with Tom and Lorie from New York for several months via email as they are subscribers to our youtube channel and just recently purchased their RV and moved into it. We decided to meet up in Timothy Lakes campground and do a Video on their story on just why they are living the RV Lifestyle even though they are still working. We have now met up with them at a couple of campgrounds and plan to meet up with them again in October. I think you will enjoy hearing their story as we certainly did.

Well that catches us up through September and we have moved up to Cape Cod for a week and now are just outside of Boston for several days and will soon head up to Maine to meet up with a couple from Texas. We have met these folks a couple of times and missed them by just a day or two at other campgrounds. They are retired law enforcement officers that just started their RV Lifestyle. We would love to interview them, but like many of the people we have met, they are not interested in going on camera at all, so you just have to take my word on it, they have a very interesting story.

See you Next Month, and we hope to have lots of beautiful pictures from the Fall Foilage Colors up in the New England Area.

Is The Full Time RV Lifestyle For You?

We have met a lot of couples both online and in the RV Campgrounds that are interested in the Full Time RV Lifestyle. Most of them do not really understand why we would sell our home and live in our 42' Class A Motorhome. 

This lifestyle is not for most folks, I think we probably all agree on that, but Todd and Nancy just might be one of the exceptions. They drove over from their home in Akron Ohio to our campsite to meet us and agreed to tell their story in front of the camera. We had such a fun day with them and I wish we could have put it all into the video but it just simply would not all fit.

Here is a 20 minute video of their story and the process they went through to make their decision. I hope you enjoy meeting them and watching their story. 

Follow Todd & Nancy on their blog

Todd & Nancy’s Blog

Headed toward New England

It seems that winter is over and we have been dealing with record hot weather  & Humidity in Texas and Missouri for the last couple of months, but now that we have hit Indiana, the weather has settled down into the 70's and lower humidity. We purchased a large dehumidifier before we left Texas and that has helped tremendously. I have heard about them but never needed one but am a believer now. We dump about a gallon of water out each morning, so it is definitely doing something.

Here are a couple of the videos we took at the different campgrounds leaving Texas

We are in Indiana because it is as good of a route to Niagara Falls as any and our Nephew "Robert Caddel", his lovely wife Esme and their family live in Indiana and Robert offered to BBQ a nice dinner with cold beverages at his home if we come through his neck of the woods, so here we are. We will definitely get some video of the event. Robert will have to work pretty hard to beat his dads BBQ ribs that we had back in Nevada last summer, but he indicates he is pretty good on the Grill.

On the route, we stopped for a week in Branson Missouri just to see what it was all about, and it was definitely worth the stop. Here is a quick little video of our stay in Branson. The photo shows us getting stuck but that was later in Sedalia Missouri at the Escapees Rally. Below is video of the Rally and some of the seminars we were able to attend plus some folks that follow our Youtube channel and decided to also attend the rally.

So now we are about 100 miles West of Indianapolis Indiana at Horseshoe RV Campground. It is pretty nice and nestled into a forested area and several small lakes around the campground.. We will be here for a week and Robert said he may bring his girls to the campground to do some fishing. I don't think Robert is much more of a fisherman than I am and sure wish Roberts dad (Steve) was here as he is the fisherman in the family (other than our Brother-in-Law Britt who is a REAL fisherman) but I would bet that Steve would love teaching his granddaughters how to fish. I don't know why he never taught his son or brother though. I guess granddaughters are just a little sweeter than sons and brothers.

So now you are all caught up on where we are and what we have been up to. We are meeting up with a couple from our Youtube channel here at Horseshoe Lakes in a couple of days then heading over a little closer to Robert & Family before going up to Jefferson Ohio where we are meeting up with several couples and  one of them says they have a very interesting story to share with us and want to make a video about it for our Youtube Channel.They aren't giving us any clues so I don't know if it is a interesting story or not but we are very curious to find out. Stay Tuned and we will all find out together when they come to visit and tell their story.

For those that may be interested. We finished our First Year of Full Time RVing and keep a good record of all our expenses and put it out each month. Here is the latest with our 12 months included.