How We Ended Up Living In An RV… For Real!

The Catalyst

2018, I get wrongfully fired from my job. WHAT!? Blindsided us. We had wanted to move out of the desert in southern CA for a long time but were too comfortable in our home town. Chris and I had both been working at our jobs for 7+ years and all of our friends lived close to us. We didn’t have any fire underneath our butts to make a change even though we felt the pull deep within our hearts. Chris and I decided to take me getting fired as an opportunity to move!

We decided to move to central California in order to be close to some of my family. Both of us still didn’t have the courage to break out completely on our own, we needed familiarity, or so we thought, and wanted to have an already established community. After a year of living there we knew it wasn’t our forever. It wasn’t what our heart’s were searching for but we knew we were on the right track. Also, after moving for the first time and experiencing how doable it really is, our confidence and courage started to grow! However, we had no idea where to go or what we wanted to do.

The Seed and The Move

I had brought the idea up to Chris to live in an RV full-time and homeschool our boys on the road. This idea was a hard no for Chris at the time, and just something neither of us wanted to fight over. So we kept brainstorming. I however, still felt very strongly about living in an RV and gave that desire to God and asked Him to change Chris’ heart if it was meant to be. Our biggest drive of wanting to get out of southern California in the first place was wanting to be able to be outside more as a family away from the heat and the crowds. With that still the biggest desire we felt, we started researching places that have the opportunities to be outside often.

Chris’ parents had just recently moved to South Lake Tahoe, CA and my grandparents had lived in Truckee, CA throughout my childhood. We knew that area and that it would be a big contender to continue our journey. We also had a good friend in Flagstaff, AZ we were looking at possibly re-locating to. I applied to jobs in both areas and received multiple opportunities in both. The offer that paid the best and was in the best housing market (at the time) was in South Lake Tahoe, CA. We put our house on the market in central CA and I had a start date for my new job in place.

The Details

We needed to sell our current home in order to buy another one. So, when my start date approached with no offers on the table yet, I took off for the Tahoe region while Chris stayed at our current home with our boys. Chris had just become a stay at home dad 3 months earlier and it seemed like a perfect and doable situation.

The reasoning behind this decision, was that we wouldn’t have enough money to pay our current mortgage on top of paying for a rental in the Tahoe region to stay together. The irony is that I ended up living in Chris’s parents 42ft Class A RV at the base of the mountain in Gardnerville, NV. It wasn’t even a thought for us all to live in that together while we were trying to sell our house. *Shakes head in disappointment and laughter to our past selves* But if you believe in purpose for your life, and that everything is always falling into alignment for your greater good, then you know that this is just what needed to happen for our family in this part of our journey.

The Change We NEEDED

I commuted from Gardnerville, NV to South Lake Tahoe 4 days a week while Chris and the boys continued with “regular” life in central CA. This went on for 3 months and took more of a toll on our family than we even realized at the time. It put a strain on our marriage and a strain on our children not seeing their mom everyday. We got to see each other almost every weekend, but that still wasn’t enough. Casey started pulling his hair out to deal with his anxiety. The discovery of Casey pulling his hair out and the breakout of COVID, was what catapulted our plan into just biting the bullet and finding a rental to stay in together. A month after moving into a rental, we finally got an offer on our house!

We accepted the offer and immediately placed an offer on a home to buy in South Lake Tahoe the same day. Escrow closed about 28 days later on our home in central CA and 7 days later escrow closed on our new home! We moved in about a week later and immediately fell in love with it. All of us fell in love with South Lake Tahoe and all of our outdoor family adventure dreams came true.

Paradise, right?

We were riding mountain bikes, hiking, swimming, snowboarding, paddle boarding, riding jet skis and so much more! We lived close enough to the beach that we could ride our bikes there for sunset every night in the summer. Close enough to a hill we could walk to and snowboard on in the winter. I had the best job I had had in my nursing career that allowed for a lot of flexibility. This was great for the work/life balance we had been searching for, or so we’d thought.

Our Main Goal

Let’s pause for a moment here and rewind back to when Chris and I first met each other. I was a single mom at the time. Casey was only 11 months old and the moment Chris met Casey we INSTANTLY became a family of three. The goal was clear for Chris and I, to be together all of the time. Every decision we have ever made together has had that one goal as its focus. Now that we had been able to move closer to that goal by living in Tahoe, being outside more, and me having a more flexible job kept the gears turning. Did you think we would settle for that? Sure, Tahoe is magical and a flexible job is great but, we couldn’t help but wonder… can we be together even MORE?

The Seed Had Grown

The move into the Tahoe home occurred in June of 2020 and in late spring of 2021, Chris approached me with an idea. The idea was to live in an RV full-time, homeschool the boys and travel the country as a 5- year plan to work towards. I was in school to become a Nurse Practitioner at the time and completion of that program was taken into consideration when Chris approached me with the idea and the time frame. I was over the moon with the suggestion, considering I had held onto this vision since 2019 when the idea first appeared in my heart. The plan was set in motion. We wanted to have as much prep time as possible so we decided to start down-sizing right away. Chris also really wanted to start working on our future home as soon as possible.

We purchased a 2015 Ford Transit that summer and began the conversion on it right away. Dreaming of our five year plan while working on our van and taking camping trips to Oregon kept the fuel to the fire going. We started discussing the idea of the 5 year plan happening sooner. God was working on our hearts to make us take action on this plan sooner rather than later so we decided to just go with the flow and we put our home on the market.

Unexpected

Then, two weeks later, the Caldor fire happened.

Living under a cloud of smoke and then being evacuated was the icing on the cake for us. I was also forced to continue working during the duration of our entire evacuation. We knew life needed to change. Life in South Lake Tahoe was great but at what cost? The cost of most of my time, the cost of our family still having to be apart for the majority of our week each week, a stationary home that has a high chance of being threatened by a fire again and a lot of other things our beliefs didn’t align with that started to bubble up.

We were being confirmed left and right in our decision to speed up the plan and got several offers on our house WHILE we were evacuated AND accepted one of them! Once we got the all clear to return home, we started selling our big items, having garage sales and continuing our purge. I put in my notice at work, enrolled in a travel agency, and we started to look for temporary living options for us while we continued to work on our van and continue our next steps.

More Decisions

At this time, Chris’ parents had moved to Mississippi and were caring for Chris’ grandmother. My mom had also just recently started caring for my grandmother, so going to one of our parents homes was off the table due to the already full houses. Luckily, I had a friend who lived in Missouri and had plenty of room for our family to take us in while we got our next step figured out.

The plan on arrival was to stay with my friend and her family for 3 months while I worked a travel nursing assignment. Chris would finish the van build and at the end of my assignment, we would take off for full-time RV living! But if you have been following along, I’m sure you could probably guess more changes happened than what we originally set out to do. So, what actually ended up happening, was that we only stayed with my friend and her family for one month.

Must Make More Changes

During that month, we decided against van life. We listed the van for sale after Chris finished the build and started shopping around for a small class C. We found a 2014 Coachmen Freelander, a 32 ft. class C that we pulled the trigger on. Chris and I did some renovations and gave it a new paint job. I accepted a travel assignment that started a week after we finished painting our class C in St. Louis, MO. We moved in and set off for South Dakota to become residents. It was a quick turn around trip but were able to land in Eureka, MO at our campsite the day before I started my assignment.

So there it is! There’s the story of how our family ended up living in an RV full-time! But wait….we don’t live in a class C anymore, do we? No, we don’t! And yes, you probably guessed right, we made more changes! Alright, so let’s keep going.

Another Change

We arrived in Eureka, MO, got our home set-up, and everything felt good. We were in the mindset to start looking for a small car to tow behind our rig. I was still driving our 4-Runner to and from work and we were dreaming about all the places we were going to get to see once my assignment was over. We had very minimal experience in the RV world prior to RV living.

We had tent camped a lot and had purchased a small travel trailer while we lived in Tahoe with the sole purpose of renting it out and only did that for one summer. To say we really didn’t know what we were doing or what options were really out there is an understatement. Even by doing all of the research, you can’t attach research to experience. The thought of a truck and a fifth wheel was immediately shut down and never entertained because it sounded too scary. Not believing that we could do it was the reason why we initially settled on finding a class c.

Keep Changing

As weeks went by, being immersed at a campground and watching all of the people come and go, Chris started to notice the fifth wheels. He really felt pulled towards the fifth wheel. We were also able to see first hand how quickly and easily people were able to pull into a campground, disconnect and set up with them.

Chris started seriously considering the idea of switching to a fifth wheel. Initially, I felt resistant because well, we had JUST got done painting our class c and JUST started living in it full time. Interestingly, there was an RV dealership LITERALLY down the street from our campground, and so, to appease Chris, I went to just “look” at a few fifth wheel options. We left the dealership feeling like, YES. A fifth wheel is the way to go for us. I was convinced. So was Chris. A few weeks later we were in the parking lot of that RV dealership moving out of our class c and into our fifth wheel. YEP! We really did transfer all of our stuff into the fifth wheel in the parking lot of the RV dealership.

Fast forward to 6 months later, at the time of this writing, and we are still living in that same fifth wheel. It’s become our home. Sure, there are still a few things we are finding that we would like to have or wish our rig didn’t have. But we’ve driven across the country and BACK in this rig, grown together in this rig, learned a ton in this rig and are currently excited for the next place this rig will take us!

Our Mission

What we hope anyone reading this takes away from this post is that, you can make things happen. You can make big changes and then change them and then change them again. We feel like this world communicates that if you don’t commit to one thing forever, or don’t stick with an original decision that you’ve failed somehow. Well, we completely disagree. We believe that this life we have been gifted is really special. We believe that each individual person has a specific purpose and sometimes, finding your way to that purpose requires a lot of changes a long the way.

Our hope is that our story can give you some courage and confidence. Courage and confidence that you don’t have to have every piece of the puzzle figured out before you start making moves and changes to get to your desired goal. We hope that you know that that desired goal can change too, and that’s ok.

We are choosing to be the change we are seeking in this world and want to give you courage to do the same, whatever that looks like. Change doesn’t equal failure and different doesn’t equal wrong! Be the change!

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We appreciate you!!