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Matt and Diana love the outdoors! In 2018, they quit their San Francisco Bay Area tech jobs to be able to travel and visit National Parks full-time. They thought the best way to do that would be by living in an RV. You can follow along on all of Matt and Diana's RV adventures by subscribing to their YouTube channel and by visiting their blog Adventurous Way.
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SUBSCRIBEBefore we quit our jobs, we’d taken several road trips around the US, and loved the freedom of the open road. We much prefer being out in nature to visiting cities, but it’s hard to find hotels in the middle of nowhere. That’s where the idea to get an RV came from - we can make our home anywhere we want! We’ve been living full-time in our RV for over two and a half years. We’re looking to buy land and start building our own house this year, but we also want to keep RVing - not full-time, but maybe several long trips each year.
For us, the big benefit is freedom. We can go almost anywhere we want, whenever we want, and not worry about finding (or paying for!) a hotel. Road trips without the RV were great fun, but we usually had to be a bit more deliberate about planning to find hotels.
We had never owned an RV, or even been RVing in the US before! We researched for almost 2 years before we finally bought our RV! As part of that, we rented 3 different RVs to help learn what we wanted and what would work for us. I’d highly recommend people rent an RV if they want to give it a go. There are pros and cons to buying new or used. For our needs, we decided that buying new would be best and we’ve been really happy with that decision, but we have plenty of friends who have used RVs and that works for them too.
We live in a 2018 Outdoors RV 21RBS. It’s a 25ft travel trailer and we love it! Our research led us to this brand as they had a reputation for building quality trailers. We’ve lived in ours for over two and a half years and love it. Even though we’ve seen hundreds of other RVs during our time on the road, if something happened to ours, we’d probably go and buy the same one again.
If you’re thinking that buying an RV is like buying a car, you’re going to be disappointed - there are a lot of lower-quality RVs out there designed for occasional weekend use. It pays to do your research, and I’d recommend renting a few different RVs before you buy.
Since we left our sticks-and-bricks house in California and hit the road with the RV, we’ve visited 22 states. Most of our travels have been out west, but we’re now up in New England exploring the area around here. The desert southwest is a fantastic place for RVers - lots of wide-open areas for free dry camping (boondocking) and some stunning National Parks!
I guess we’ve been on one long trip since July 2018 when we hit the road! Typically we stay in one place for no more than 2 weeks, but in the winter we settled in an RV park in Vermont, and we’re staying put for several months!
I think a lot of people expect to move into an RV and for all their expenses to disappear, but that’s usually not the case. We still have bills for insurance, mobile phones, etc, and obviously, we still have to pay for things like gas and groceries! RV parks can be really expensive, and as much as possible we tried to dry camp for free on public lands (known as boondocking) - not just to save money, but because we’d much rather be surrounded by nature than have another RV 10ft from our window!
One of the most obvious differences between living in an RV is you live in a tiny space. Our RV is less than 200 square feet, much smaller than the 4-bedroom 1,900 square foot house we used to live in! We’ve found that the secret is a focus. We like to say that we can have anything we want, we just can’t have everything. Pick the most important things to you - whether it’s food, hobbies, or gadgets, and you’ll be fine.
We very rarely stay in campgrounds, and when we do we very rarely use the facilities so it’s a little hard to say. However, the RV parks we’ve stayed at have always been clean, so no big red flags there! That said, one of the great advantages of a self-contained RV is that you don’t need to rely on shared facilities if you don’t want to!
There’s a lot of great information out there from full-time RVers who really know what they’re talking about. It really pays to do your research, but above all have fun! Everyone has their own way of RVing that works for them, so take your time and learn what works for you. A lot of people start by treating it like a vacation, but that’s not sustainable - relax and find a pace that you enjoy.
Other RV travel stories you might enjoy!
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