the pros & cons of living full-time in an rv - a 2 1\/2 year recap

In this blog post, I'm going to be sharing with you my top Pros and Cons for living full-time in my 22' motor home named Bessie as a solo female traveler and entrepreneur. I'm going to share with you some of the things that I love about this lifestyle and some of the drawbacks or things that I wish I had known before I got started two and a half years ago.

Since the beginning of my journey about two and a half years ago, I've helped dozens and dozens of empty nest women make the transition from their sticks and bricks home to a full-time life on the road with ease. And now I want to share that information with you!

Let's start with the Cons first.

The first con is DRIVING one of these rigs can be exhausting. Now, Bessie's a really small 22 foot motor home. She's fairly easy to drive compared to the big motor homes or travel trailers, but it's still, it's exhausting and there's a lot more to think about than when you're just driving a car. So I've gotta worry about the height, the width, make sure she can fit in places. I'm worried about the semi-trucks going by and kind of blowing us off track a little bit. Going up steep hills is stressful for Bessie. She, she slows down really, quite considerably. So that can be stressful, although I've definitely learned to not worry about what's going on behind me and just we just truck along.

Going down steep hills can be stressful too. You're definitely concerned about the brakes and things like that. Plus going into gas stations or even finding places to park in parking lots, there's always more to consider than when you're just driving a car, which, you know, can go pretty much anywhere. So my mind is always going and my body's always tense, you know how they teach you in driving school to drive with your hands at 10 and 2, and as soon as we leave driving school, we tend to forget it. Well, I have reestablished, the 10 and 2. I drive my hands 10 and 2 pretty much all the time. It just makes me feel definitely more in control. So that's con number one. Driving can definitely be exhausting.

Gas mileage. So on the highway, Bessie gets about 10 miles to the gallon, and in the city, probably between seven and eight. So when I want to go somewhere that's far away, I always kind of weigh that, is it worth filling up a tank full of gas to go to this place, you know, and come back to where I'm at? So again, it's just something that I never had to consider my car before I had Bessie got like 36 miles to the gallon, so that wasn't an issue. But definitely gas mileage and watching the gas gauge go down really, really quickly is is very stressful. And it's definitely a con something that I hadn't really considered beforehand.

Parking. Parking is a con because Bessie takes up about a parking space and a half. So not only only is she 22' long, but then I've got an extension and a bike rack on the back of her. So she's probably about 25-26 feet. She needs two parking spaces front to back or to be able to back into a parking space and then hangover the grassy area or whatever's behind. So when I'm going places that I know are going to be busy or have a smaller parking lot, I tend to get there really early to find myself a spot. She can only take up one spot. So I'm not taking up a lot of space in this parking lot. I just want to make sure that there's an ideal spot for us. I can't back up into a space that has a tree or a street sign or a fence right behind it. So again, that's another thing that I hadn't even thought about. But definitely something to consider.

Another con is that every time I move, I have to secure everything around me. I tend to boondock most of the time, which means that I camp in a Walmart parking lot, a Cracker Barrel, in the desert sometimes or along the shore if there's spots along the beaches and things like that. But every time I have to move and sometimes it's every single day, I've gotta secure all of my belongings and as good as I've gotten at it, there's still some days that I forget something and hear the inevitable crash. So having to pack up secure everything every time I move is definitely a con.

One of my biggest cons about living this lifestyle is those middle of night knocks on the doors. It's the worst! Getting woke up from a sound sleep by somebody pounding on your door and you know exactly what they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you you need to move. So you got to answer the door in your jammies and be told you need to leave, and then you need to find someplace else to go, and you need to drive there.

So that happened to me at a Walmart. And I went to the Walmart because the police in the town told me to go there, that it was a good place for me. So I felt secure sleeping there and then got that knock on the door and then had to find another place that was safe. So it doesn't happen often. When it does, it's stressful and you talk about it two years later. But if you're camping in campgrounds, obviously this isn't an issue, but if you're boondocking like I do, it can happen. It's not a lot of fun. We all dread those midnight knocks on the door and try to avoid them at all cost.