Full-Time Travel -- Should We or Shouldn't We?

A lot of thought went into our decision. Long story short – after we made a list of all of the pros and cons, we decided to do it because we could visualize it working for us and allow us the freedom to travel and see the country.

We are not new to RV-ing, and, in the past 30 plus years, have been gone from home for as many as six months at a time. Even though we are interested in lots of things, we really love traveling, square dancing, and music. Making the decision to live full-time and travel full-time in an RV has been a big step, because this time we are doing it without a home base.

Prior to even thinking about full-time travel, I had already started getting rid of personal collections. These included 200+ sets of salt and pepper shakers, 100+ music boxes, 50+ bells, and a huge variety of other stuff, just stuff…Stuff I had collected over the years to occupy my time after I could retire. All of a sudden this stuff was no longer of any interest to me because what would I do with the projects when they were completed, and who would want any of it.

Friends and acquaintances ask if it was hard to get rid of things I had collected for so many years. The way I look at it is: 1) As one gets older, we never know when something may happen that requires us to go in to a nursing home and give up everything we have. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to sort and sift through my stuff and make decisions on what to keep and what and how to get rid of things. 2) At this stage in life, the new adventures we experience are often few or at least limited.  The time is now, as long as we have our health, let’s go for it!

Many items were perfect for selling on Ebay; some things sold at summer garage sales; other selective specialty type items sold well on Facebook local area yard sale sites, and some things were donated to local groups who could use them. All of this activity was time-intensive and required proper research if we were to maximize the value. Maximizing the value of things we sold offset some of the expenses on the trailer.

The trailer, by the way, is our 6’ x 12’ toy-hauler-type Haulmark cargo trailer with a side door and a ramp door in the back, towed by our existing hi-top Chevy van. We spent the better part of two years custom designing the trailer layout and then custom building it to specifically suit our needs.

We are just getting started and there will be more posts and pictures to come, so if you would like to follow our adventures and be notified of new posts, you can subscribe by email or one of three other methods.  Your comments are welcome.