October, 2020
I am, as my grandmother would have said, nobody's fool. I caught on pretty quickly that the work involved in setting up and packing up the trailer is not worth doing for only a 24-hour stay. I did spend one night in a WalMart parking lot early on, but that was just a proof of concept — I did it to know that I could. Other than that, I'm not unhitching for less than two nights.
That said, this trip is about travel, not about standing still. There are few sadder sights than an RV sitting beside a house or in a storage lot, slowly going to seed and with grass growing tall beneath it. When I see one like that I hear it cry out, "Take me somewhere. This is not what I was made for!" Well, whenever we approach two weeks in one location, my trailer starts getting antsy. "Let's go," it says. "Time to hit the road!"
Our first stay was a full month in Tampa. I decided to hang close to the dealer from which the trailer was purchased just in case any problems developed. Thankfully none did, but I still think it was a smart move and I enjoyed the Tampa area. But that was one very long month. After only two weeks the trailer and I were both ready to go.
I never thought I had wanderlust. It's no secret to those who know me that I have a fear of flying (or more accurately, a fear of crashing) and I'm not crazy about hotels. These two facts have long made travel a chore, something to be avoided. But the RV lifestyle began to grow on me as soon as I started researching it many years ago. Now, after twenty years of dreaming and more than six months on the road, I find that it's everything I had hoped it would be and more.
The advantages of RVing over other types of travel include: 1.) you have a different view through your windows at every stop, 2.) no matter where you go, you get to sleep your own bed at night, and 3.) if the engine suddenly quits, it's highly unlikely that your vehicle will fall to the ground in a fiery inferno killing everyone aboard.
(Yes I know, that one of those last points reveals an odd contradiction in my personality — wanting to see new vistas yet still sleep at home. It's actually one of many and if that were the strangest of my idiosyncrasies, I might be nearly normal. But fortunately, I made friends with my quirks a long time ago. Close friends. I learned, not just to be unashamed of them, but to revel in them. I went so far as to design a life that made them work for me instead of against. But that's a whole other blog post. Or possibly a book. ...I digress.)
I'm sure that one day I'll be ready to settle down again in a "stick or brick" home, but at this moment I can't imagine wanting that. This nomadic life, being able to pick up and go anywhere on a whim, is just too much fun.
If that last sentence lit up something inside you, maybe you should try it too.