Tag: Travel

One Year of RV Life

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

Almost one year ago (technically February 19), we moved into our 35ft travel trailer with our two cats. We purchased our camper in November 2022, had it delivered December 2022, moved it to the KOA in January 2023, and moved out of our apartment in February 2023. In June 2023, we left the KOA to travel and just recently returned in January 2024 for ski season. We’ve learned a lot over the year, not all good things, but the big question stands – would we do another year?

Lets talk about some of the good things we’ve learned and experienced during our year of RV life.

Intentional purchasing

I wouldn’t say we were over consumers in the apartment, but moving out was full of decluttering and donating. We kept necessities, extras of items we use often (like towels, toilet paper, soaps, etc), and sentimental things we couldn’t part with. I did make myself condense all of my holiday decor into one medium sized box, which lives in the under bed storage. The decor in the camper came from the apartment, with the exception of the clock in the bathroom.

There have been tons of times living in the camper where I’d see something cute at target that I would have bought in the apartment, but I had to take a minute to think of it had a place in the camper. Most of the time, the answer was no. And honestly, that was ok. We grew tired of the clutter in our apartment, and in the camper we try our hardest not to have clutter on sitting areas, on the counters, or in places we’d have to move on travel days.

Not only does intentionally choosing what we bring into the camper save us money, but it saves us the headache of running out of space. A good rule we like to follow is one thing in, one thing out. I usually apply this rule to clothes. I have a ton of t shirts that I’ve had for quite some time, so if I buy a new shirt at a national park, I can easily find an old shirt to either donate or throw away (if it has holes and such). I will say, I don’t apply this rule to mugs….

Traveling more than PTO allows

Another huge plus side of RV life for us was the ability to travel more than 2 weeks out of the year. We had a few hiccups in the beginning, figuring out which days work best to travel around our work schedules, but we figured it out pretty quickly. Especially after we implemented our 350 mile max in a day rule. Looking back on this year, we wouldn’t have traveled to half of the places we went, gone to any of the concerts we saw, or seen most of the family we were able to visit.

Your home is with you always

There’s something to be said about having a long travel day and still being able to sleep in your bed every night. We were able to shove our mattress from the apartment into our RV bedroom, which was a phenomenal effort. We had to transfer it to the camper, get it through the door, and then squeeze it through the bedroom onto its platform. And it is TIGHT. Like we have to pull it out a few inches to get the sheet on, and it’s a two person job. Having the comfort of a nice mattress every night though was worth the effort. Especially if you’ve ever slept on a stock RV mattress. No thanks.

Also, all of your stuff is with you! There’s so fear of arriving to your destination to realize you forgot your earbuds, chargers, soap, skin care, or toothpaste. Or course some of these things you can buy at a nearby store, but not if you’re boondocking or in a more remote campground. Also, who wants to replace things they totally meant to pack?? RV life gave us the comfort of not having to remember the small things to pack for a camping trip.

Campground utilities

At our apartment, we were spending $60 minimum for water and trash plus $100 minimum for electricity. At campgrounds with monthly rates, they tend to build in utilities at a flat rate. For example, the KOA we stayed at had a $50 a month flat fee for electricity, water, and sewer. Imagine paying $50 a month for electricity when You’re running 2 ac units NON STOP. That’s nothing! Additionally, if you’re willing to look into local campgrounds for your nightly rates, they can be as low as $40 for full hookups! We’ve found cheaper, but mostly in Texas.

Campground showers are a hot topic. Are public showers ok to use? We say yes, if they’re clean and well kept. Our favorites are the ones where it’s individual cubicles basically. You have a full locking door with a shower, toilet, and sink inside. Completely private to you. We don’t mind clean showers with curtains, but I prefer to only use those if I’m the only person in the entire bathroom. If you’re looking for a nice long shower, campground showers are the way to go! Most of the time they’re free too.

Small space = less cleaning

I don’t mind cleaning, but I don’t care to clean a large space every day. It’s so much easier to keep up with cleaning in a 200 sq ft space. It literally takes 2 minutes to vacuum or mop. The countertops may be small, but it’s easy to wipe down in less than 5 minutes. It’s a very small thing, but it’s definitely a pro to RV life.

Thousand Trails

I’ll keep this one quick – our first stint in TT in Orlando, FL this summer/fall saved us over $4000 in campground fees. This video explains more about TT and the pass we have!

TT is what allowed us to stay in spots for longer than 5 nights without blowing the budget out of the water. TT is also what’s going to allow us to spend 3 1/2 months in the PNW this summer!

While there are many other good things about RV life, let’s move onto the not so good things we’ve encountered while living in our RV

No bathtub

Ok this one’s a little silly, but I miss my bathtub the most. Bathtubs are hard to come by in campers. I miss my bathtub because there was nothing better than ending a long day at work by coming home to a hot bath and some bubbles.

Constant moving

A pretty big downside to RV life is constant moving, unless you stay in the same campground for multiple months at a time. Typically, we stay in TT campgrounds where the max stay is 14-21 days depending on the campground. That’s why you’ll find a lot of people with TT memberships rotating between nearby campgrounds. This is especially easy in Florida, Arizona, and the coastal areas where there’s a high concentration of TTs.

However, the constant moving can be tiresome after a while. Towing a camper comes with more to look out for while driving, and travel days can take a lot out of anyone involved. If you’re having to move every few days it gets very tiresome. When we were able to stay in one place for 21 days at a time, it felt like forever. So being back at the KOA for a while is a nice break.

Snowbird season

Snowbird season is awful for booking campsites in most places people like to winter in RVs. Thankfully we prefer the snow and cold, so we go the opposite way of the snowbirds. However, we did overlap in Florida before Thanksgiving. Trying to find a campsite was very, very difficult as more and more people were flocking to Florida.

Of course, there are a few more annoyances to RV life that I haven’t mentioned here, just like there are more great things about RV life, but these are the ones that stood out most to us. What are your favorite or least favorite parts of RV life? Or if you’re not a full timer, what do you think would be the reasons you’d start or stop RV life?

And the big question – would we do another year? The short answer is yes, but we’d do it a little differently. Follow along to find out how in the coming months.

RV Life with Cats

Published on by Ashley Taylor2 Comments

If you’ve followed me on instagram or seen my YouTube videos, you’ve definite seen my two orange tabbies that call our camper home. The smaller one is Ducky, but she more commonly goes by Baby, Loaf, Dumdum, Cheeto Puff, and Spitty Baby. She’s 4 years old, and we adopted her in June 2021 after we moved to Utah. She loved to cuddle, sleep with her tongue out, and lay on your neck like a scarf. The bigger one is Mario, but he goes by Chonk, Chonky Boy, and Costco Rotisserie Chicken. He’s a little old man at the age of 7 and a half, and we adopted him in July 2022 after I went to buy food only and walked out with food and a cat.

Travel days

Chonk was a great adventure cat from the beginning. He liked car rides, exploring outside the camper, sitting in his cat tent, and even walking in the snow! For travel days, we put his harness on and carry him to the truck. Once we’re ready to move, the harness comes off so he can roam as he pleases. The Baby was a different story. She was NOT having it in the truck, but she has gotten much better! Here’s how we got her comfortable in the truck:

  1. Starting off slow: we first tried her harness on inside the camper for a few hours at a time before we ever took her outside. She’s a runner, so if your cat is like her, you want to make sure that harness is secure. I gave her some treats I like to call her “sleepy treats,” which are just some anxiety treats for pets. I got them from PetSmart after doing tons of research. I’d give her 30 minutes or so after eating the treats before putting her harness on. This definitely helped in the beginning when she was getting used to the harness going over her head.
  2. Introducing the truck: once her harness wasn’t scary anymore, we started taking her into the truck. For the first few times, we didn’t even turn it on. We placed her in the truck with us and sat there while she roamed. Then she graduated to sitting in the truck with it turned on but not moving. After that step, we’d drive around the block a few days a week with her to get her comfortable. We did all of this in the months before we started traveling full time.
  3. Treats: plenty of treats were used to coax her into the truck. We would (gently) toss her into the truck, but she got treats before, during, and after the excursion. And plenty of cuddles.
  4. Introducing the crate: we learned soon after introducing her to the truck in a harness that a crate may be better for her needs. I found a crate on Amazon for a small dog, so it’s quite roomy for a small cat. We started out with the crate open in the camper with her favorite blanket inside so she could explore as she pleased. Now, we put her in the crate to carry her to the truck as she seemed to fight less. I think it was because she knew she was contained and couldn’t fall, jump, etc. Once in the truck and ready to move, we open the door to the crate for her to roam freely. Sometimes she goes back in to lay on her blanket, and usually she goes back in when she knows we’ve stopped somewhere. We do close her in the crate whenever we need to open the truck doors because she is very fast and is a flight risk.

Our cats can handle up to 6 hour travel days (longest we’ve been with them so far), but we prefer to keep in under 5 hours and with a lunch break if it’s over 3 hours. We tend to stop in Walmart parking lots for lunch because we can push the slides out and toss the cats in to let them use the bathroom, eat, and hydrate. I’ve tried bringing food and water with us on travel days, but they don’t seem to want anything other than treats. They’ll eat the treats no problem though! If you’re worried about accidents, I’d recommend getting seat covers for the back seats and bringing a litter box with you. We don’t bring the litter box, but we do have the back seat covers, just in case.

Cat-friendly RV

Since we moved into the RV with cats, we were prepared to make a few modifications to accommodate litter boxes, feeders, and anything else they needed.

The biggest modification we made was adding cat doors to the bathroom door and the closet door where their litter box is housed. I found extra large cat doors on Amazon to make sure the Chonk would fit through them. I was going to buy a second one for the closet door, but we ended up using the back of the one I already had for the bathroom door instead.

The bathroom closet houses the litter box, extra food, and one of the two feeders. The cats access this area through the hole we cut in the door.

Their litter box pads, pellets, treats, and medicine (for Chonk’s allergies) lives in the towel closet. The rest of their stuff is scattered around the camper. The other feeder is in the living area closer to their water fountain. We bought a scratching pad to hopefully get Chonk to stop scratching the furniture (it worked), and we applied some sticky tape to the couch in the meantime to deter scratching (which also worked). Their extra toys, harnesses, and leashes live in the organizers we added to the fronts of our cabinet doors near the main door.

Conclusion

Is RV life with pets troublesome? I’d say no, personally. We have enough space for us and the cats to happily live in the camper, even if Chonk attacks your feet. Even if the Baby sneezes on me every chance she gets. I wouldn’t trade RV life with pets for the world. If you’re training your cats for travel, definitely go slow with it. I’m happy to answer any questions about the topic below in the comments!

From Louisiana to Utah

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

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!

To RV Life or Not to RV Life

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

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:

  1. Bathtubs
  2. Decorating
  3. 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.

RV Life and Changing Plans

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

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.

Travel Day Checklist

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

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.

travel-day-checklistDownload

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.

How do your travel days usually go?

Winter Camping: with and without hookups

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

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.

Welcome to Anxietyinacamper!

Published on by Ashley TaylorLeave a comment

Welcome to the blog!

My name is Ash and welcome to anxietyinacamper (the blog)! 

I created anxietyinacamper first on Instagram (@anxietyinacamper) as a way to express my travel anxiety and hopefully remedy it. That grew into documenting our travels and RV life as that adventure began. I then started a YouTube channel when we moved into our Flagstaff 29RBS travel trailer to document our travels, tips, tricks, and upgrades.

As 2023 progressed, I began playing with the idea of starting a blog. I enjoyed the idea of being able to share long form blurbs and how-to’s, or I could even start writing trip guides, campground recommendations, the sky’s the limit! It’s hard to do that on Instagram, and I don’t always need to make a video.

So here we are, the beginning of the blog! Follow along for content including:

  • Campsite reviews 
  • Thousand Trails experiences
  • Travel tips
  • RV full time tips
  • How we began full timing
  • RV upgrades
  • Truck upgrades
  • and more,

And check out the YouTube channel, especially my first video to learn more about what my channel is about!