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In 2011 we took a 5 week long road trip and in 2013 we took a 4 week long road trip. We skipped our road trip in 2015 because I was too close to giving birth to Ocean. This year we’re back on the road for 5 weeks, and it’s been quite a different experience from our previous long road trips.
The first two trips we made with Sunshine and a travel trailer in tow, though I was also pregnant with River during our 2013 road trip. This trip we’re towing our car with an RV and have three kiddos along for the ride.
We have plans to travel full time in about three years, so this trip has been a good learning and preparatory experience. I’m a planner, so I thought we’d thought through everything and planned for contingencies, but it turns out we didn’t.
Some of the issues we had anticipated. For example, switching car seats back and forth between the RV and our toad is every bit as annoying as we thought it would be, especially since the bike trailer and Sunshine’s bike have to be moved from the toad to the RV at the same time.
But some of the issues that came up we hadn’t thought would be a problem. Before we bought our RV, we thought the layout was great. Living in it has shown that it’s not quite as convenient as we’d thought. We’ve had to do a lot of setting up and taking down of beds each evening and morning, which is not something we want to do while full-timing. This doesn’t bother some people, but we’re finding that it’s one more hassle we’d rather not deal with.
The big issue on this trip, however, was the interruption of our internet access.
We thought our cell plan had unlimited data, but it turns out it doesn’t have unlimited roaming data. So when we spent a week and a half in the more remote areas of Montana and Idaho we burned through our roaming data in a day and a half.
Oops.
We had a hard time looking for campsites and gas stations: we love the app Allstays (we have the Camp & RV app) and while it works ok without a cell signal, it runs a lot slower and with gaps in the info displayed. But I also wasn’t able to stay up on my blog posts and instagram posts, or the tasks I needed to be doing for my other businesses.
I knew I wouldn’t get a lot of work done while on our trip, but I had thought I’d be able to get more done than I’ve been able to do.
While it was nice to be unplugged and not worry about checking email, since we’ll be relying strictly on my online businesses for income when we’re traveling full time, reliable internet access is a must. It will be one thing that we plan for in the future, instead of just hoping for the best, like we did this time.
I know we can’t truly anticipate everything that might come up, but I do feel that this road trip, as well as our past road trips, have given us a good look at the realities of what full time traveling is really like. We try to do long road trips every other year, so we actually have one more chance (in 2019) to try things out before we hit the road full time.
I’ll do another post soon about the list of the things we’ll be changing and why.
Please feel free to share things that have or haven’t worked for you on your road trips!
