We’ve driven from Louisiana to Utah three times now, two with a camper and one without. I can’t say it’s an easy drive, but it’s definitely not the hardest one I’ve been on with the camper. Although driving through Dallas did give me a run for my money. Starting in the east, it’s fairly flat until you hit New Mexico where the altitude jumps significantly. Then you can enjoy the hills, rocks, mountains, and canyons as you drive over and up to Utah.
I took this trip to work on my goal to document our travels more throughout the year. Not only did I vlog about our travels and impromptu changing plans, but my husband set up our GoPro in the truck! Ever since he bought the GoPro last year I had wanted to use it for travel days, but we either kept forgetting to grab it from its resting place before travel day or we didn’t have any blank sd cards. Well, we bought some sd cards in Texas on our first stop – the overnight in the Walmart – and he set it up the next morning.
I thoroughly enjoyed editing the video with vlog elements and travel footage, and I can’t wait to do it again on our next trip planned in March! If you’d like to see how the trip from LA to UT went, how we survived the Walmart parking lot, learn out our off grid battery setup, or just to judge my editing skills, check it out below!
It’s very strange coming back to Utah after being gone for so long. I had been missing it since we left in June, but I didn’t expect to miss it even more once we were back.
Part of the reason we started RV life was to travel and see where we would like to settle down eventually. It’s not that we didn’t think Utah was that place, but we wanted to make sure we weren’t just trying to buy a house to check it off the list and end up realizing a year or two in that we wanted to be somewhere else. After full timing for almost a year and being in the east since June, we have definitely decided we missed the west. Well …. I don’t think we ever stopped missing the west. But we definitely were able to determine our forever home location would be in the west.
It’s weird though still wanting to travel but wanting to look for a house at the same time. So we’re focusing on paying down some debt first and casually looking in the area to see what we might be interested in. This definitely is not a goodbye RV life!!! Just a look into the next step. We’re in our mid-20s, and RV life was a nice way to get out of the apartment rent increase cycle. We definitely don’t regret RV life, but now I feel like it’s becoming more intentional. Travel slower, enjoy new places, check off more states. The timeline has become more finite.
Sometimes I do miss the apartment, but mainly for three reasons:
Bathtubs
Decorating
Lounging on the balcony
I’ve always loved baths, and I realize if I really want to take a bath I can book a hotel room. This was something I knowingly gave up and accepted, but I still miss it.
Decorating the camper was extremely intentional as I only have so much space to store seasonal decor and so much space to display things. Of course, I kept a few things from the apartment like pillows, blankets, and a few wall decor items that are out and about, but buying new decor is very uncommon. Especially new seasonal decor.
The balcony was a huge reason we got the apartment we did because it faced the mountains. We had lounge chairs, and I had a plant ladder with tons of plants. The plants oddly were a way I delt with anxiety. Caring for the plants felt like I was caring for myself. But I couldn’t take the plants with me into the camper. The pots were ceramic, we had no flat spots to put them, we had no where to keep them when we moved, and the cats could NOT eat them. I love sitting outside the camper in our camp chairs when the weather is nice or at night next to a fire, but there’s something about a balcony (or a porch I suppose) that I miss.
I cannot thank RV life enough for what it’s done, and I realize we never would have done what we did this year without it. I couldn’t imagine leaving the camper now, but somewhere in the future … It would be nice to have a house to come back to when we’re stationary.
Hey y’all! The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of weather-related travel plan changes. Originally, we were to leave Louisiana after visiting both of our families for the holidays, take about a week to head to Moab, UT, then hang out there a few nights to test our dry camping system before heading back to Provo, UT.
Well that certainly didn’t happen as planned. The snow coming from the west said “nope!”
Changing plans has been a touchy subject for me and other type A’s. However, this didn’t create too much extra anxiety for me as I thought it would. When we were just staying one extra day in New Mexico, it was nice. We were taking a break from driving and had already budgeted a flex day before we got to Moab in case we had an unplanned stop. When we got to Gallup, NM though, our Moab plans went out the window. First we were waiting for snow to clear in NM then heading to Moab, but the weather was freezing and cloudy in Moab. Then we were waiting for it to get a little sunnier in Moab, but it started snowing again in NM. It felt like a lose lose scenario. If we waited a few more days we’d be able to make it to Moab, but there was a high chance the mountain pass we had to take to Provo would be under 12 inches of snow and icy. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not be towing a camper over ice through a mountain pass.
So our plans morphed again, but this time we’d take the southern route into Utah through Arizona. Which is the way we went when we moved out here in 2021. That route stuck, and miraculously we made it to Provo on the day we planned to arrive at the campground originally. So no days lost!
Although it worked out in the end, it’s hard to make plans and see them change so quickly. Surprisingly though, I wasn’t too upset. Instead I was focusing on how hard I fought to leave the south and how miserable I was during the summer and how I’d happily accept being stuck in New Mexico. At least there was snow and rocks.
A lot of things didn’t go right last year compared to our original travel plans, and I want this year to be better. But if it’s going to be better, I also have to accept that plans can change. And that’s ok. We have tentative plans for where we want to be in a given month, but it’s not the end of the world if those plans change. Am I allowed to be disappointed? Yes. But I’m working towards finding the silver linings.
Have you ever ran around your camper the morning of a travel day trying to get things in order? Or are you researching the best way to prevent problems when prepping for travel days i.e. accidentally leaving the fridge unlocked and arriving to the destination with an empty fridge and floor full of food?
I have been both of those people. After our first few travel days, I wrote up a checklist to follow each time we move to make sure setting up and tearing down goes as smoothly as possible. Some of the items can be done the day before like taking out trash, moving loose items into cabinets, and clearing off countertops or tables. Other things are best done right before moving like checking the roof, putting up hoses, and checking travel conditions.
I’ve created a FREE PDF of my checklist which you can access here! I hope you can use it as is or to create your own checklist tailored to your floorplan and type of RV.
I’ve also learned the hard way that planning your route for the day should be done no later than the night before you travel. My personal preference is the evening before because I have a better idea of weather conditions. Weather is always changing which is totally annoying when you’re traveling, especially when random snow showers are popping up!
Our general rule for planning routes is travel less than 350 miles in a day, plan a stop for lunch, and plan gas stations with truck lanes every 100 miles. It’s a lot easier to work in the stops on Google maps beforehand than to be frantically looking for somewhere to stop. Especially traveling out west in reservation land or if you only stop at truck stops.
Hey y’all! It’s January, and in many parts of the country it’s cold and snowy. Currently, we’re camping an extra day in New Mexico due to yesterday’s winter storm warning in northwest NM and today’s snow and high winds east of Albuquerque. Today’s snow day has me reflecting on how we stay warm and cozy in freezing temperatures when we have full hookups and even when we don’t!
Winter camping with access to full hookups
Our preferred way to camp in freezing temperatures is with full hookups. Campsites with full hookups offer power, water, and sewer. Some places in the winter have heated water spigots so you can plug in a heated hose to ensure your water doesn’t freeze. If you don’t have a heated hose or a heated spigot, many campgrounds advise you to unhook your water connection by sundown to prevent freezing water and damage to your hose.
We have a heated water hose from Amazon that works well for our needs! The hose we bought is 25ft long. We haven’t had any more issues with freezing water after we started using a heated hose, so this is a must have in our eyes.
If we’re hooked up to power, we use our tank heaters to keep our tanks warm and safe! We also have a fully insulated and enclosed underbelly. Our floors are not immune to getting cold, so we sometimes run the propane heater to warm up the floors. We usually keep the propane heater thermostat set pretty low because my husband and I like the cold. We’d rather add on layers and blankets than be sweating!
Besides the propane heater, we also have an electric fireplace. This is our main source of heat when we’re hooked up to power. Just a few minutes with this thing on, and the whole camper is nice and toasty! Plus I really enjoy the flames. In the bedroom we have a small space heater that we turn on sometimes to take the chill out of the air when getting up in the morning.
(The towel is the Chonky boy’s towel. He liked to lay on the mat in front of the sink but would get mad if we stepped around him while cooking, so a sacrificial towel was placed by the fireplace. Now he sits there during the day)
Winter dry camping
We had our first dry camping experience in this rig earlier in the week! The outside temperatures were in the 20s, so cold but not below zero. We were camping in a Walmart parking lot in Texas, so we had room to push the slides out and run the generator if needed. Without power hookups, we set the propane heater to kick on if it got too cold and we didn’t use the fireplace. We kicked on the space heater for a few minutes to take the chill out of the air. Our power set up allows for us to kick on the space heater or fireplace, but both draw around 1200-1500 watts so we wouldn’t want to use them for too long.
As far as water went, we didn’t turn the tank heaters on because we didn’t want to deplete our house batteries during the night. Since our underbelly is fully enclosed, we determined it would be fine to leave the tank heaters off. And it was fine! No water issues. Had we been camping in sub-zero degree temperatures, we would have ran the tank heaters and used the generator to charge up the house batteries.
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