Why We ALMOST Gave Up RV Living (And How We Kept Going)

More than seven years ago we left our home, our family, our friends to move into an RV and travel the country. We assumed the toughest part of RVing would be RVing. Finding campsites, travel planning, things breaking. The whole cabinet's falling off. So these top brackets are just broken. But in reality I think the most challenging part, which is what a lot of RVers encounter if they're on the road more than six months, is the loneliness. This is our story of how we almost gave up on RVing and ultimately how you can make memories and travel the country for years in an RV even when times get tough. Because they will. We had set off on this amazing adventure that we had planned for over a year and we were marking off some of our bucket list places. It was beautiful. We were making memories as a family. It was everything that we had imagined. But we were so lonely. There was something missing. I think what we didn't realize this first year as we left our home and the area we lived in our whole life was it's almost like we had this little voice on our shoulder. Not that our family and friends were 100% against us hitting the road, but they just didn't get it. There were some questions. Yeah, and you can't expect them to get it. You know, they're like, well, how are you going to make money? What's it going to do to your marriage and your family? RVs go down in value. You know that, right? So I think there's this natural separation the first year from the old mindset. And we needed to find people with the same kind of thinking on the road. And it was very difficult the first year. We just did not run into people. We thought just going to the places and seeing the things. We went to Rocky Mountain National Park. Man, that's my jam right there. We explored Texas and New Orleans and Washington, D.C. Like we saw some incredible places. It was pretty epic. I think for a while it distracts you from the fact that you've kind of left your old island and you're floating out to sea looking for a new island or just floating around. But after a while, it catches up to you. We are always lost. We should never, ever, ever sign up for the amazing race together. It ran into a barbed wire fence. I didn't know it was going to do that. Why did it run into the fence? Why does the trail just... And so even though we're seeing these really cool places, we still went through all the typical RV stuff of struggling to find places where our RV would fit, breakdowns, route planning, getting lost, all the usual things. All the things we expected. We did. We expected it. But I think what happens is over time, it really started to wear on us. We got to the point during this first year, probably about that six, eight month mark, we're like, hey, maybe this just isn't for us. So year two hit of us being on the road and we were kind of at a crossroads. We were having such an amazing time, but we were craving community. And we thought we would just run into people. We thought it would be easy. We got this message on social media from a couple named Trent and Siobhan and they had five boys and they're like, hey, we're in Florida. You're in Florida. Do you guys want to meet up at a playground and connect? And we were like, huh? Okay. I don't think we'd ever done a play date on the road. So we met them and we just really clicked and hit it off. And we're like, there are people out there that we can connect with. They're there. We happened to just stumble upon a full-time family event. I had seen that there was one in the area and then Trent and Siobhan that we had just met, they were like, hey, we're going to the full-time family rally. We're like, okay, well, I guess we'll go to this event. We didn't really know. Kind of like, what's a rally? Yeah. What's full-time families? What's a rally? What's an event? We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into. We'd literally been in the woods for a year and a half at this point. So it was a little intimidating. It was intimidating going to this event, putting ourselves out there. And there was a lot of, a lot of RVers, full-time RVers there. But there are 84 families, I believe here, which is the most they've ever had. Yeah, they said 84, which is the most they've ever had. I don't know what the next was, maybe around 50, maybe the biggest. So we had hit the jackpot essentially. But after that event, I think a light bulb went off. We were like, oh, this is it. This, this is what we've been missing. This is how you find community. And that's when, that's when it all kind of changed for us. So year two introduced us to community, but year three on the road was where we really started to see some community in action. We saw where community could really help. We'd had this class A for the first year, year and a half, and we wanted to change rigs. And we're in Tennessee at the time. And I found an Airstream in Texas. I was like, man, it's a long way to go. I don't really know too much about inspecting RVs. It's a 2008, so definitely not like a brand new RV. Again, community, we had ran into a couple, Scott and Rachel and Honor, still love them to this day. And they let us do a tour of their RV. And Scott had a pretty strong background in renovations. And Scott was a real man, basically. Scott was like, I'll go with you. I'm like, go with me to Texas? This isn't like down the road. So we did. I found this Airstream. It was a good deal. It was what we're looking for with the model. Scott went all the way to Texas with me. We looked at it together and thankfully he was there because all the tires were shot. We got to get them replaced ASAP because these are pretty rough. You got dry rot on the bottom where it's knotting out a little bit and just not safe. The treads are starting to separate. We limped this thing over. We got new tires. We got it back to Tennessee. You sweated it out. We sweated it out. It was so hot. That was the beginning, not just of a beautiful relationship with Scott and Rachel, but like, I think it was that another light bulb moment of, wow, like the things we can do together. Everybody has their own strengths. Everybody has their own weaknesses. And this first year and a half and we're on the road by ourselves, pretty much relying on ourselves. I mean, watching, we watch YouTube videos. We do research. We do all the things to learn, but you just can't possibly pick up all the slack and know everything you need to know without community. I remember later that same year, in year three, so we had this van Airstream combo, which Marissa, she was like, what are you doing? But this is great. We did this combo for years and we loved it. Three years. Three years in this van Airstream combo, but the van finally started to have some issues. In Yuma, Arizona, we're out in the desert, but thankfully there was an escapers slash escapee rally going on and they got under that van with me. We banged on a lot of stuff. We pulled out what we needed. I think it was the fuel pump, I think was out on this thing and went and got it replaced and fixed. And literally we could not have done that by ourselves. It was a beautiful thing to see. I think we had never really seen, you have a problem and this group comes over and helps. Yeah, not just one guy who feels sorry for you. A whole group of people. Yeah, it was very eye-opening of like, wow, this RVing community, this is a thing and they care for people and we're here for each other. It was just a beautiful thing to see. Year three was just the year where our eyes were opened to how much community can help accelerate the journey. Because it's not if the journey is going to get hard or if RVing is getting hard. It will get difficult. It's about what do you do when those times get tough. And if we did not have community as those times are getting tough and I'm carrying all that load on my back, it's almost like community just sort of takes some of that off. Says, hey, we got this, we got this together. Year four on the road got even more incredible when it comes to relationships. We had met friends along the way. We had even done a little bit of traveling with people. Year four really accelerated those relationships. We ended up making the trip to Alaska and that was an adventure on its own. Once we were in Alaska, we had a meetup and some people you may know came to that meetup, Corey and Jessie and their girls with Finding Our Sunday. And that's where we originally met them at this meetup. And then we ended up doing a little caravaning together. And I'm telling you something magical happened when you caravan with somebody and you are just spending all that time together. We've been doing the whole parallel thing where we park here and then Finding Our Sundays here. Making meals together. So we're handling the pancakes. And they're handling the sausage and coffee. They became some of our very closest friends. I even found out I was pregnant in Alaska. Well, we found out we were pregnant in Alaska. I eventually found out. Alaska's special to me in general because this is where I found out I was pregnant. You what? No, you didn't. Is that why you brought me over here? I don't know what we're gonna do. I'm just excited we're gonna have a baby so we'll figure everything else out. I told them around a campfire before I even told our families. Like that's how intense our relationship became with them. See ya! Bye Evan! Corey over here with Finding Our Sunday said it really well. He said this is like the best and worst part of RVing. The best part is the people you meet and the community you form quickly just in several nights here. Then the worst part is when you have to part ways. When you've got like this as a backdrop to form community, it makes it super easy. And I think these deeper relationships too can go beyond just trying to connect with RVers while you're out and about. Chris and Marianne, love you by the way, they let us stay in their driveway while we're in Anchorage. Fantastic family and we connected with them so much staying with them and spending time with them. There's just something about when you're staying in somebody's driveway or sitting around a campfire, it just really accelerates these relationships. If you've ever felt lonely or if you've ever felt disconnected, if you don't pay attention to community and you wait for community to come to you, it could be one of the most lonely experiences I think you'll ever have in your life honestly. We experienced that in that first year. But once we had this bulb go off in our head and we started putting ourselves out there more and we started trying to reconnect with people we connected with before, the value it brings and the ability to just have these deeper conversations, it was life-changing honestly in year four. So in year five we started to see something in our RV journey that we hadn't seen before and over time you'll start to see these connections. I'm going to call it like timeline friendships and what I'll define that as like these freaky connections that you didn't know were going to happen because that's an assumption too with RVing. It was like oh we'll meet somebody and we'll say goodbye. Well it's not really goodbye, it's almost always see you later because we started to see where we made these friendships and these relationships and they started just having these crazy connections all over the country over time. Stuart and Lindsay Thompson and their two kids, we initially met them in Maine and even how we met them and the circumstances around that were kind of freaky. We just happened to be playing at a playground in a campground and in Maine their daughter Audrey was like hey that's Hensley from the videos we watch and they're like yeah yeah because they said Audrey had always said like I'm going to meet Hensley and she's going to be my best friend and then they're like wow saw the pink boots and it really was Hensley. So we started chatting with them and we had dinner with them that night and we spent that night at the campground and the girls really hit it off and then you know it was time for both of us to to go our separate ways and we didn't really know what would come of that friendship or if we would see you know and cross paths again. Backstory two on Stuart and Lindsay at this point they really were dreaming of living in an RV but were still kind of tied down with the jobs and the home and they were just trying to figure this thing out. But year six and seven this is where the freaky relationships go a whole other level and things start to get tied together. So year six some of you may remember the video we knew what model we wanted to live in we had the open range fifth wheel we bought it's sort of like a test to see if we want to do a 40 foot fifth wheel because we came from the Airstream but we knew we wanted this layout and so I said Marissa I found one in New York the price is right it's got the features we want they said it's in fantastic shape it's a long haul it's during 2020 so a lot of stuff is shut down you know if you even got to use the bathroom it could be a weird situation trying to find somewhere along the way I said we need to go get this thing so we left Tennessee we drove toward New York and then we got a flat in what we thought was the middle of nowhere in the rain in the rain and nothing opened turns out add it to my list of ridiculous mistakes I've made I did not have another rim or another tire with me because I was thinking oh if we get the flat I'll just call Geico and they'll come and swap well they can't swap the tire or fix the tire if you don't even have a rim because I didn't have an extra rim in the truck we're sitting in the rain with nothing open and questioning our you can't get our decisions at this point and Nathan's like hey you know anybody in the area and I'm like well do you remember that couple that we ran into in Maine they were a part of team journey and I'm like I'm pretty sure this is where they live so maybe we should just reach out to them and see if they have any suggestions again some of you are listening us being like well that's really awkward to do that but this is this is the whole sometimes you got to reach out sometimes you got to take initiative sometimes you know could we've eventually figured this out on our own possibly the good news is we're parking in front of Chili's that at least would bring food to us bad news is yeah everything was closed for the night we knew Stuart knew his stuff when it came to these things we knew that him and Lindsay the same Thompson family we talked about with Audrey Hensley's friend we still couldn't get a rim that night but at least Stuart was like hey I'll give you a ride because again it's difficult to get rides it was difficult to do anything at this point it was like we'll give you a ride you can stay in our RV at our house because they were still dreaming of full time they had an RV but the RV was there at the house we stayed the night in the RV the next day I was like well Stuart let's get the truck fixed and I'll drive up and he says I'll just take you to go get it I think it was another one of the two hours I stayed with the truck to get fixed and you like we had to go get it by noon because the bank was closing so the truck was not going to be done in time and so Nathan and Stuart went on and I was going to drive up when the truck got fixed and meet you in New York to to tow it back yeah this is all connected this all connects I promise so soon we went up we inspected the RV the thing was not in the it was a 2021 I think or 2020 but it was it was not it was terrible if you're selling an RV and you honestly don't know about something and somebody finds it that's fine if you did know about the issue I guess I just hope they'd been honest up we both feel like he knew right oh yeah we feel pretty certain he knew oh yeah um like it was not in the condition it had been banged up it had they were hiding all kinds of things from us we quickly found out this RV is not going to work no RV we came all the way to New York did not get the RV but we renewed connections with Stuart and Lindsay and their family we thanked them so much for everything they'd done we loved the connections we'd made we said goodbye and we headed back to Tennessee thinking that was it but that was not it we actually let them know about a route we want to do in Michigan later that year with the open range they said hey let's do it too so this family that was dreaming of going full-time and still wasn't quite full-time we did what a month together I guess like an extended so they pulled it off where they could do and that's highly recommend that by the way yeah they did this month route with us through Michigan again we connected on a deeper level because we spent so much time together this is going well and it was such a win-win for everybody doing that together and then same deal we said goodbye we don't know if we'll see you later and we've seen Stuart and Lindsay multiple times since then and the coolest part of this whole story to me is with Stuart and Lindsay and the Thompson family they did eventually get to go the full time but guess how they did it Stuart went did that inspection with me with a solitude and about a year later he decided to start doing inspections and getting paid for doing inspections slash RV repair work to replace his income and quit his job it sparked his his idea I mean he said once I did that inspect once I did that inspection I saw there was a need I saw there was a need for people like you who could really use another set of eyes or could do RV work and so I think that that's just an amazing story that how it all ties together and another cool part is Hensley and Audrey just like Audrey predicted they are best friends so they FaceTime they play games together and then when they don't do that we still run into Stuart and Lindsay quite a bit they helped us the RV you're seeing behind us the remodel Stuart and Lindsay helped with that and all the other relationships we've talked about in this video have all come full circle as well Finding Our Someday we see them on a regular basis Chris and Marianne we mentioned them in Alaska we went back to Alaska well they don't offer the Moss family to come back if you don't mean it because they're like hey you should come back to Alaska and see it in the winter and we're like okay we're still close to Scott and Rachel we visited them multiple times in Jacksonville that might be the coolest thing about community is when you make these relationships on the road and you think oh man the country's so big I don't ever see somebody again I mean two things really first of all you don't know what kind of impact you're going to have on each other somebody could be living full-time on the road making a full-time income based on one trip you made to go inspect an RV you just don't know what kind of impact that's going to have and secondly you don't know when or how you're going to run into those people it could be because you're broken down in a Chili's it could be some random trip something some you have in common you might just run into each other at a rally the freaky connection relationships the timeline relationships that happen over time that you can't possibly see ahead of time when people ask us how have you lived in an RV we're in our eighth year now it's so mind-blowing it's because of community and it's because of these connections and it doesn't happen in a week it doesn't happen in a month but there are ways to accelerate community I would almost say community if you want to dream of having less junk more journey you can watch a video or you can do a repair or you can read a book or you can you can dream of it you can you can still maybe go six months 12 months and do your own thing like we did our first year but if you want to live a life of less junk more journey whether that's in an RV or it's in a home and use downsize whatever that looks like if you want to live a life of less junk more journey we believe that journey is accelerated with community it's like community is not just the fuel but it can be the jet fuel that that keeps all this together keeps your journey going instead of running out of gas and giving up and leaving the road or running out of gas and going back to what you did before that you didn't enjoy whether you're trying to learn something new whether you're trying to go somewhere new no matter what you're doing community is the fuel for that and again to live this life of less junk more journey we thought this journey was about us when we first hit the road but we've discovered over the years is that this journey is about the community it's about the people it's about the relationships and so this year we want to help facilitate those relationships for you guys we're doing that in two ways uh the first we've talked about team journey a lot on here but we are totally reworking team journey we're coming up with a dedicated platform for that and the goal of team journey is for everybody in that community to have that fuel to live a life of less junk more journey not just information and there'll be information in there not just q a's not just the things that we offer that are good benefits for the community but ultimately to help you create these connections so that you have the confidence to not just not just go on a road trip but but to go on a lot of road trips or go on an extended road trip or to do this long term so that when things go wrong like we did in year one you don't give up they say people tell you look you can do this you can do this we want this to be a community where life change happens that's thing number one that we're revamping that we're doing in year eight and thing number two is something we have dreamed of for years um marissa especially i was like marissa this is a lot of work um but we've really always wanted to do this um and that's an event so it has been on my heart for years and it is finally happening we are hosting our first less junk more journey event and we are beyond excited because i know events have been such a major part in our journey and our transformation we want this event to be a place for people to connect with each other and with us so we didn't want a large number of rvs so it's we're maxing this out at 50 rvs like that's it and we're calling it team journey huddle because we want you to not just sign up for the event anybody watching this right now can sign up for this event if they want to but we want you to at least try out and come in and be a part of team journey because we're going to have a group inside of our team journey community platform where you can go ahead before the event even starts you can start connecting with people that will be at the event so when you sign up you get a three-month trial of team journey which will be enough time for you to connect if you want to and be a part of this group to get more information if you want to learn more about the event it's teamjourneyhuddle.com it's the third through the sixth of november and it's in auburndale florida at the margaritaville part of the reason we did it there is because we've already been to this margaritaville we love it it is a great campground for connecting it is they built the campground to help people connect and it is going to be incredible i know it's scary like like i said we put ourselves out there for events and i know it can be a little intimidating but it's so rewarding again there's only 50 spots if our first ever event sounds like something you want to go to teamjourneyhuddle.com if the timing or the place doesn't work out for you just check out teamjourney.com we think that would be a great fit too and spoiler alert we do plan on having more events uh coming up soon as well well that's our journey for today and what a journey it's been over the last seven plus years i really hope if you're looking at living a life of less junk more journey don't leave out the fuel for the journey which is community until next time we'll catch you guys later