Do your kids think you’re having a midlife crisis?
I’m not sure my family ever really thought I was having a midlife crisis when we hit the road, because I have had the adventurous spirit since I was 13. It was expected, rather than something out of the norm.
More about that in a minute.
For you, though, it may be different. You may have worked at a job for 20-30 years, built a house, raised children, and bowled in the weekly league. But now you are telling everyone that you are selling the house and buying an RV.
Of course, they think you’re having a midlife crisis.
But there are things they may not understand.
We get bored with doing the same things decade after decade. We did the things we were taught, such as getting a mortgage, securing a good job, and raising a family.
But now the family is off on their own journey.
It is now your job to teach those who think you have lost your mind why you want to hit the road and explore.
You’re not running away from life; you’re running toward it. This new vision is all about living intentionally, not escaping.
Do you relate?
The reality is that you will see them more often, especially if they live in different zip codes. You can now park near them for weeks instead of rushing in for holiday visits.
This is your chance to model courage – showing them it’s never too late to pursue dreams and that security doesn’t always mean staying still.
Now back to my 13-year-old self…
I say that my family knew of my adventurous spirit because at 13, a friend and I hopped on a Greyhound Bus in St. Louis and took it all the way to Daytona Beach, Florida. I still don’t remember having any fear.
But my parents surely did!
They say our brains don’t fully develop until we are in our mid-20s, so you can imagine how many times I worried my parents over those years.
My telling them we were selling the house, buying a travel trailer, and moving to Alaska was no big surprise. And eventually, they moved up from Florida to share the big adventure with us.
I rubbed off on them.
There is no need to wait until midlife to live your dreams. Life is happening now all around you. Get out and embrace every moment.
3 Days to Costco
My name is Sandi, and I am addicted to Costco.
Wayne and I live and work in our motorhome, moving every two weeks. For the last three months, we have not been within two hours of Costco, and it was rough.
It’s not that I love to shop; in fact, the truth is that I avoid it as long as I can.
But Costco is different. It is my happy place.
Perhaps because I was one of their original employees, I served as the loading dock manager and helped open two of their first four stores. I know every inch of a store and how it operates.
Perhaps this is why I feel at home when I visit and why I miss it when I am away.
Some signs of addiction set in last Friday. We both started counting down, “3 days to Costco, 2 days to Costco, 1 day to Costco.”
Yes, we are weird that way.
But you and I know that we are not alone. I bet you feel the same way, or you have friends who are excited about a trip to Costco on the weekends when they can graze on tasty treats handed out by people wearing caps and gloves.
I don’t think most of the vendors are as happy to be there as we are.
On some days, Wayne and I can boast that everything we wear came from there – socks, underwear, t-shirts, shirts, and pants.
We often need to remind ourselves that size does matter and that we live in a small motorhome. We have no freezer in the garage or a large pantry for backups.
I remember back when we bought our first 19-foot travel trailer and brought home our first bag of tortilla chips. You know the one in the brown bag with a see-through window. It didn’t look so big in the store, but it took up two cubic feet and felt like someone had moved in with us!
Twenty-five years later, we know what we can buy, and if it doesn’t work, we know we can return it.
Monday was our first day back at the store after a three-month absence. We both walked in and took a big sigh of relief. Wayne first walked over to the TVs (ours is starting to fade), and I headed for the blenders.
We ended up spending more than our car payment, but think of what we saved. At least that is what “they” say.
I think we are safe for the rest of the year because we will be within an hour of a store at each location. Yes, we actually Google it to find out before we head to the new spots.
This is the life of a Costco addict. Thanks for listening.
Reading Between the Signs
Sometimes you learn the hard way.
Last weekend, we left the motorhome behind and stayed in a lodge within Custer State Park in South Dakota. The roads around the park are a bit challenging for some, especially if they don’t read the signs between the tunnels.
Much of the park features narrow roads and tunnels cut through granite, which makes you question whether a vehicle can navigate them.
Large pickup trucks must pull in their side mirrors to fit through, and I would question if the marks on the side were from a dually that swayed an inch too far in one direction.
At the tunnel near the lodge, we saw a young couple running into the tunnel in front of us, picking up large pieces of black plastic. We knew it was not a good sign. Vehicles were backed up on the other side as they collected the debris.
We went through the tunnel behind them and saw their trailer’s awning lying on the ground to one side.
Then we saw the trailer.
Then we saw the dealer tags were still on the back.
I felt so bad for them, but wondered what they were thinking? The signs are large and yellow, stating the height and width of the tunnel. If you miss the signs, there are minimal places to turn around.
That tunnel is 8.5 feet wide. Sure, trailers are typically less than that, but then there is the awning. Forgot about that one. Plus, who wants to thread a needle with your rig?
The car rental places do very well around here for that reason.
We all learn things the hard way, right?
Many years ago, we took our granddaughter on a long trip around the West after she graduated from high school. We visited Yellowstone, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Monterey, California, and drove up the coast to Oregon.
We rely heavily on GPS, which is not always the best approach when pulling a trailer.
Near Yosemite is the Old Priest Grade. It is about 3 miles shorter than the New Priest Grade, and of course, Google said to turn right. For some reason, Google thinks I want to get there fast instead of safely.
At the time, we had the travel trailer pulled with a Silverado 1500. Not the strongest motor.
The grade was approximately 9%, and if caught on the road with the trailer, a $1,000 fine would be imposed.
We made it up, but many people behind us were not happy! The truck was not pleased either.
It was a traumatic experience for me, and I’m sure our granddaughter remembers that drive very well. Who knew Grandma could say some of those words?
We all learn from these mistakes, and hopefully they don’t turn out to be costly. It serves as a reminder to remain vigilant and not rely solely on GPS or AI to ensure our safety.
I know you have a story. Let’s hear it!
Why Do We Sit Around a Campfire?
I must be reminded to sit around a campfire.
These reminders often originate from a solar event, such as the winter solstice or, more recently, the fall equinox. The campfire is a great place to release things you no longer want in your life, such as worry and stress.
We don’t have a fire all summer because the days are too long, and I am usually in bed before dark. Sad but true. Additionally, we endured temperatures of 100+ degrees for many weeks.
Who wants to sit around a campfire when you are already sweating?
About four weeks ago, we bought some pre-packaged firewood for convenience. However, we hauled it around to three more spots before setting it ablaze – on the fall equinox.
We had to because while in Keystone, SD, we drove past an epic wood carver who had a bin outside that said, “Free Fire Starter.” We loaded up our foldable box and then carried it around to the next stop.
I refused to haul both the bundle and the box to another location!
It’s all gone now, and we probably won’t have another fire until the Winter Solstice.
Last year, while in Texas, I started a new tradition of lighting luminaria around the woods while we sat by the campfire.
On December 21, the sun goes down before dinner time, which fits into our schedules just fine. The luminaria grew brighter as the sky darkened.
It was magical.
But around our recent campfire, I started to wonder why people like this tradition. It is obviously not convenient most of the time, especially for full-timers.
But there is something embedded in our DNA that draws us to fire. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on fire for survival – for warmth, protection from predators, and for cooking food.
The flames hypnotize us. The crackling sounds soothe our souls. The warmth makes us feel safe.
And as Wayne says, the smoke smell is my favorite aftershave on him.
So, you can say we have a primal connection with fire.
It is also a social equalizer.
When you sit with friends, and sometimes strangers, around a campfire, social hierarchies tend to dissolve. Strangers become friends and stories are shared without pretense.
Those stories are much more dramatic as flickering light casts shadows on the storyteller’s face. That light brings a serene feeling that light from a screen could never replace.
While working in Yosemite last summer, we invited campers to sit around a long, propane fireplace and sip wine. We would have 20 – 30 people each week sharing their crazy RV stories.
Just the two of us sat around our last campfire. It was a time to unwind and take in the night sky.
That’s okay too.
What are some memories you have of sitting around a campfire?
How I Transformed My RV Wall Into a Happy Space
One tiny improvement in my RV space makes me smile every time I see it.
For the past six years, I have looked at the wall clock positioned directly in front of me while working at the dinette table, seated on the bench. This area, which serves as my office, is part of an 18-inch slide, with the adjacent wall measuring only 16 inches.
It was a bare wall for years except for the clock. Not just a plain clock, either. I bought the fancy mirrored bling one at Target.
One day, I had an urge to look for bookshelves. I love books, even though I know my Kindle makes more sense. Can’t help it.
I found two perfectly sized shelves that hold 15 – 20 books each.
And yes, when I see it in front of me, I smile.
Books have been my downfall. I have them on the ledge behind the couch, on my nightstand, and in the cubby space under the sofa. There are cases of books in my storage shed back in Colorado, and those I have donated to bookstores around the country.
Not to mention leaving some in RV Park libraries and laundry rooms.
Independent bookstores are something I seek out when we land in a new location. Having this routine helps make me feel a little more settled. Libraries are also something to explore and say a lot about the local community.
This week, I am reading a book of essays by one of my favorite authors, Terry Tempest Williams. I picked it up at the Back and Beyond bookstore in Moab, Utah.
The essays are about the surrounding desert landscape of the Four Corners area.
Every new region we go to has local authors who can take you deeper into the landscape and the people who call it home.
Additionally, by purchasing from a local independent bookseller, you are helping to keep their doors open.
For years, I have had the mantra, “Read, Write, Walk.” These are things I can do wherever I am.
All three make me smile. What makes you smile?
Feeling Like a Tourist Again
Sometimes you need to get a room to feel like a tourist.
Even when you are staying in an RV park that has 25,000 check-ins per year because of its location in the Black Hills.
Wayne always says that his goal is to be a full-time tourist. What I think he means is that he likes exploring new places, eating new foods, and doing all the touristy stuff like walking through t-shirt shops and eating fudge.
But when we return to the motorhome each night, we become disconnected from that feeling of excitement. We sit on the same couch and turn on the same streaming service.
To be a proper tourist, the routine needs to change. All of it.
When we arrived at this site last week, the tree outside the window had a tint of yellow at the top. Now it is more yellow than green.
Fall is the season when my desire to be out of the same old routine becomes strongest. It is the fear of missing out on the beautiful display that nature provides.
There is a different vibe.
All summer weekend campers are home, and the heartier souls become leaf peepers, not afraid to go outside with a coat on.
We have been leaf peepers, “dam” tourists, and geyser gazers. That tree is reminding me to get outside!
By the door is a portable table. It doubles as many things, such as a dining table (because the booth dinette is now my office).
Today it is the staging area for a weekend getaway.
We are staying in a lodge tonight inside Custer State Park. It overlooks a small lake surrounded by spires of rock and serenity.
Since we don’t do this that often, I feel like I need to pack like we’re flying off to a beach in Hawaii. But I won’t even pull out the suitcase.
We will be bag people for the night.
As I go through my morning routine, the small table begins to fill with tea and stevia (because they never have it), filtered water (just because), vitamins, and medications. Our change of clothes will be on hangers, and the rest will be in a cloth grocery bag.
A cooler will have our juice and green shake that we drink every morning.
Some things have to remain the same, even on short getaways.
But it will feel different as we wake up to a late breakfast that someone else prepares for us. We will act like we are from far away and must see every little thing. We will stay up late to see the lighting of Mt. Rushmore and take pictures of the fall landscape.
Tomorrow we will be back at the RV, in the same place, but feel like we had a great adventure – and have the pictures to prove it.
Turn Off the GPS
Where does that road go?
That is my favorite question to answer.
It feels a bit like cheating these days to turn off the GPS for a while and make a turn that others are not. GPS should be there to turn back on when you need to find your way home.
Usually.
And I am talking about driving around in the tow vehicle, not the motorhome.
Can you remember the days before GPS and Google Maps? How did we get around?
I remember hitting a new town, and the first stop was to a pay phone. Local phone books were typically installed, and the front section of the phone book contained a map of the surrounding area.
That is, until I got there and ripped it out.
I also remember stopping at little stores and asking directions, which were always given without hesitation, and having a stack of folded-up state maps tucked in the door and glove box that we collected at every visitor center located near state lines.
Do those still exist?
I still have a large state atlas where I mark off all the highways and roads we travel. Maybe the grandkids will get a kick out of it when we are done.
Just the other day, we visited Keystone, SD, a touristy town with a two-block main street lined with souvenir shops. But at the crossroads, where most turned left or went straight, there was a right turn.
Where does that road go?
We made the turn and were not disappointed. It meandered through rock pinnacles and followed the old rail line, now home to the 1880 steam engine (we are going to ride it in a couple of weeks).
It was the “back way” to the next town.
Sometimes I take the route that is a block off Main to see what is lurking there. Go two blocks off Main, and you may find the best food and places to have afternoon picnics.
The best part about our RV lifestyle is that we get to explore and experience new roads every couple of weeks. It’s all by design.
Turn off the GPS and take a chance.
Making it a Journey Instead of a Trip
Did you pull that trailer with that truck?
We got asked that question at the gas pump, not once, but many times.
The truck was a 6-cylinder Toyota Tacoma back when they were smaller trucks, and we pulled a 19-foot travel trailer.
My first reaction was, “Duh, isn’t it obvious?”
The truck was small but mighty. It took us 275,000 miles around North America before we traded up to a larger truck after 13 years of service. A large portion of those miles was spent pulling the trailer.
So yes, we pulled that trailer with that truck, and all we replaced were tires and batteries.
Another question I remember being asked was in Alaska, after we had made the journey from Colorado to Anchorage.
“Where are all the wildlife they say are on the Al-Can Highway?”
This was asked for by another couple who had just made the same journey we had.
I answered by bragging about the pictures I took of 11 grizzlies and multiple moose we saw along the way. They claimed they saw zero.
Then we started talking about how long it took us to get there.
They boasted that they covered over 500 miles per day and completed the journey in less than a week.
We took 3 weeks, traveling 200 – 250 miles per day. The mornings were slow, and the evenings were long. This allowed us to enjoy the many quirky stops along the Al-Can.
Liard Hot Springs in British Columbia was so inviting that we stayed overnight, mixed martinis by the campfire, and soaked our travel pains away. Another stop lasted a week, exploring Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta.
The other travelers saw that as a detour. We saw it as part of the adventure.
For us, the journey is always the most essential part of the trip. How else will you see the biggest, smallest, oldest, tallest, deepest, or unusual things?
From Yard Sales to Alaska: How We Downsized for a 19-Foot Trailer Adventure
We were operating on adrenaline and caffeine.
It was hot in western Colorado that May, and our to-do list was so long that we had to put ‘shorten the to-do list’ on the to-do list!
Just a couple of months earlier, we decided to sell most of the belongings in our 3-bedroom house, including the bedrooms, because we were moving into our new 19-foot travel trailer and driving to Alaska.
Things move fast around here. (We got married 4 months after our first date.)
In those two months, we had five yard sales and sold all the furniture. We also had multiple goodbye parties and celebrated the last day at work.
Did you know that in the year 2000, it cost $1 per pound to send things on a moving truck?
We began to question what we valued. Was it this stuff that has been sitting in the closet for the past 5 years?
It’s incredible how much we got rid of.
We actually put things on the scale (which did not get shipped by the way) to see how much they weighed. Would it be cheaper to ship or buy new ones when we arrive?
I mean, a 19-foot travel trailer isn’t going to hold much more than a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
After you have a couple of yard sales, you start looking for more things you can sell. It was fun purging. The more we sold, the better and more excited I became. A new life was about to unfold in front of us.
Not that the current one was bad. But I do thrive on adventure. And boy was this an adventure.
We did not have time to worry about what family and friends thought about our significant change. I bet they were questioning selling our home and going so far away from family, where we knew no one.
It was now the end of May and Labor Day weekend. Friends drove over from Denver to say goodbye, but we had nowhere to go. We sold all the furniture. The house was empty. We had moved into the travel trailer that we could not plug into to turn on the air conditioner.
It didn’t matter. We were still high on adrenaline, and they were excited for us.
After all the yard sales and friendly goodbyes, it was just us, in the driveway, with the trailer hooked up to the truck.
We heard a faint noise coming from above.
When we looked up, we saw a flock of Sandhill Cranes circling about 2000 feet above us. They were also headed for Alaska.
This was a good sign for us, and it proved to be right. That 19-foot travel trailer set the stage for many stories after 20 years of service and 300,000 miles of adventures. And the adventure continues.
Working Remotely: Then and Now
I suppose I was a pioneer in the remote work community. I worked remotely since 1999.
Past essays have mentioned our first RV journey that took us from Colorado to Alaska, where we stayed for 12 years.
But I never explained my Why.
At the time, I was working for the county, providing training to municipalities in western Colorado. If you have ever been to that area, you are familiar with the remoteness of those small towns.
And the roads in winter caused my knuckles to turn white.
Video cameras were making their way into boardrooms so that people did not need to be in the same room to get something accomplished. But the setup was expensive, so smaller communities could not participate.
This was 1999 and early 2000. The internet was in its infancy compared to what we can do today.
But I must have had a vision.
I knew there had to be a way to teach and reach these small communities without risking my life on the roads. Ice was not the only issue. I counted 112 deer on one 50-mile drive.
Long story short, this is what prompted me to finish graduate school with a focus on online learning.
The challenge of online learning continued for a few more years – at least to today’s standards.
After graduating in 2002, I teamed up with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and Fish and Game to teach curriculum online to teachers in rural Alaska so they did not have to leave their classrooms.
If they did leave, they left the school empty. Many villages only have one teacher.
A trip to Anchorage for training meant a 3-4 day trip, if the weather held. And to be honest, those teachers wanted to go to the mall and eat out more than they wanted to sit in a classroom.
The online program proved to be a great success for many years. Teachers were learning in their own environment and using the curriculum with their students while still in the 6-week course.
We all know how going to live training can be. Excitement while you are there, but the content you learn goes on the shelf as soon as you go home. Life gets too busy to look at it again.
The classes filled up every quarter and were a great success. I made a lot of friends.
One year, I think about 2006, we took a road trip to the lower 48. I had a few conferences to present at, so we made a summer of it.
During that trip, I was still holding classes, which had a live session every week. This was before Zoom. I had to use methods that everyone could use. The lowest common denominator.
Each teacher received a prepaid phone card (yes, long distance was still charged by the minute) and an email with PowerPoint slides.
We got on the phone, and I told them when to change slides.
Boy, do we have it easy today, right?
The fun part was where I did this from.
I had an old flip phone and a laptop on board. One class was taught from a laundry room in northern Washington. Another from a library somewhere in the Yukon. Many calls were from a parking lot or pull-off where we had a signal.
One time, we were driving back from Anchorage to our house about 40 miles north, and I had to teach. The only connection I could grab was outside the gate of the women’s prison.
Surprisingly, no one came out to see why I had a laptop open in the passenger seat while talking on the phone.
I bet they would today.
The point is that it is now easier to earn a remote income than it was just a few short years ago.
You don’t need to worry much about how to do it. You just need your WHY.
