I would love to say I can’t remember what it was like to live a ‘normal’ life and take vacations with the family in an effort to spend quality time together. I would love to say I can’t remember what coming back to reality was like, when everyone begged for just ‘one more day’, but the truth is I remember it like it was yesterday! The memory of putting up with misery of taking a week or sometimes even less to enjoy ourselves is far too fresh in my mind.
It was just 4 short years ago we decided to hit the road and travel fulltime in an RV. We wanted a life full of experiences and to be honest sticks and bricks just weren’t hittin’ the spot! We packed it all up and stuffed it into a tiny RV of just 21 feet and drove off into the sunset, yeah right! It wasn’t all sunsets and roses but for the most part, we had a wonderful time. So much so, we decided to not look back and only to continue forward!
Everyone’s Different
There will always be different strokes for different folks, and you’ll know exactly what I mean once you take a look at the diverse group of families, young couples, retirees and other adventurous people who have taken to the open roads and now call it home!
Some people travel in large Class A Motorhomes with more luxuries than one can count. Others travel in less than picture perfect setups where bonds are made and family time is never in short supply. You choose what works for you, and if your anything like us, you’ll have several RVs over the course of your adventure and each one will work better than the last.
Choosing the style of travel that suits your crew is probably the most important thing. Trying to fit your family into the shoes of another will likely prove to be far too uncomfortable to continue the journey. So here’s my advice…
Just do you!
Our Travel Style
For instance we travel slowly across the country for the most part, because we when we first started traveling we needed to Workamp to keep income flowing! We’re not retired and we’re not living the life of the rich and famous. Bills have to be paid and mouths have to be fed. Workamping let us earn a decent income to cover our expenses and we got our housing for FREE! We supplemented that income with writing gigs and other small business projects.
Now we travel slowly because we’ve found it’s our comfort zone. We enjoy setting up shop for about 1-3 weeks in locations we choose to visit. This amount of time gives us a chance to get comfortable with school routines, explore locally, and get the laundry washed and the camper organized before the next travel day! Occasionally when we want to speed up our flow to get to a destination where we really want to be, we’ll do a few shorter trips where we only stay 1-3 nights. These days are pretty stressed, so we tend to not book more than 3 back to back… We have way to much crap to set up and pack up to keep doing it daily. Really- you can fit a lot of junk in 26ft!
And honestly, travel days still give me anxiety even after 4 years. Fear of the unknown still sets in and I can sit on the edge of my seat for hours just praying we make it safely to our next destination. (I guess that makes me a worry wart.) So most of our travel days are set to cover 175 miles or less and sometimes that actually seems too long. 175 miles might take anywhere from 3-5 hours, depending on how many restroom breaks we have to take if we get stuck in traffic, if we have to drive 35mph through a small town… There are so many variables that could take a seemingly ‘quick’ trip and turn it into an all-day affair, that we just play it safe and keep our daily miles as low as possible.
However, you chose to take to the road- know that you are not alone. Many families have done it, will do it and are doing it right now! Take a look att his awesome resource we created to shine a light on some of our fellow travel families!
70 Additional Family Travel Blogs You Need to Know!
Traveling as a family has many perks that we did not intend or maybe we just didn’t take a moment to really think about all the greatness that was in store for us- either way the pros have far outweighed the cons and from what the scales are saying why would we choose anything else?
