Category: FAQs

Typical Day

Typical Day

Hey Guys! There are a few questions we get asked more frequently than others. We get asked all the time what a typical day is like for us and honestly, it’s probably not all that different from what your typical day looks like. We actually have three kinds of days…the typical day, the move day, and then the adventure day. In this post I’ll take you through what one of our more typical days looks like.

This, we’ve found from numerous people, is what most people think we do all day. Camp. We don’t camp…not really. Now, we love to stay in state parks, but you won’t find us hanging out outside by the campfire every night. It’s rare that we have a campfire. So, what do we do all day?

Our day starts off like yours. Jerl gets up around 6’ish and I get up around 7’ish. Our cats would like us to get up about 4’ish and feed them. That doesn’t happen. Sadi (you can see her in the pic above) is my shadow all morning until she’s fed. She’s a foodie. She fits in well. The very first things we do are make the bed and get dressed.

And then I start on my chores. Laundry is done Tuesday through Friday. I’ll do a couple of loads a day. Our combo washer/dryer is smaller than your average residential unit so it takes me more loads to get done what most of you can do in just two or three loads. I don’t mind it. I’m glad I don’t have to use the RV park laundry facility or find a laundry mat.

By this time Sadi has had about all she can take of waiting and starts to passive aggressively demand food. The longer it takes for me to feed her…the more demanding she gets. Ha! I feed both of our little furry maniacs and clean the litter box.

I let the boys sleep until 8:30 am while I’m doing my morning routine and then I wake them up.

School starts by 10 am. They each start the morning at their own pace and as long as school is going by 10 am I let them do what they need to do to get the day going. The Alex and Nicholas like to do school on the big bed while Charles likes to sit on the couch to do it. We use a curriculum called Switched On Schoolhouse. It’s a computer based program that tells them what they need to get done each day. Each morning they network into my computer where everything is. That way I can keep track of who’s doing what and how they did that day. Now that they’re getting to the higher grades, SOS will kick any essay questions or math questions that require them to write out an answer for me to grade. Luckily, it also has the answer there and tells me exactly what to look for. We supplement SOS with Rosetta Stone for language classes, workbooks for logic, and Charles will have an online writing class this next school year. Jerl sits at the dinette to work and I’m just all over the place doing stuff that needs to be done.

Lunch is anytime between 11 am and 1 pm. We’ll each stop when we’re at a good spot and make our own lunch. Anytime this involves meat, Magnus assumes it’s for him. He usually gets a morsel or two.

When work and school are done for the day we either run some errands…

get in a quick hike…

or we start dinner. Sometimes it’s a combination of those things and sometimes it’s just one. It really depends on where we are and how big our “to see” list is. Dinner usually happens anywhere between 5 pm and 7 pm-ish.

Our evening activities vary as well. We’ll either play a family game,

or the boys will play a video game,

or we all go our own ways…into our separate spaces to do our own things. I like to read…Magnus likes to help me while demanding to be loved on.

So, there it is! Not too exciting is it? Y’all are probably reminded of your own daily schedules a bit. Ours is the same as most family’s…just in our home-on-wheels instead of a stick-n-bricks home. I hope I covered everything y’all were curious about. If not drop me a note, shoot me an email, or comment below and I’ll try to answer any questions in a future post!

Thanks for spending the day with us!

See y’all down the road!

FAQ- The How

FAQ- The How

This one makes me laugh every time. We’ve heard dozens of different variations of this question. Some people try to be discreet about their curiosity while others almost demand to know.

“So, you’re independently wealthy?”
“Wow! You must have won the lottery!”
“How is it you’re able to do this?”
“Must be nice to have so much money you don’t need to work.”
“You guys sure retired young!”

These are all quotes, guys. I swear I’m not making any of them up.

Everyone wants to know how we’re making the full-time RV lifestyle work when we’re not retired. Even though there is a growing number of families turning to the RV lifestyle, we’re still pretty rare to find so we expect some questions.

There are actually several ways you can make the RV lifestyle work for you. We’re fortunate that Jerl works for an amazing company (waves to all of our Weather Trends family) who doesn’t mind that he works remotely. Working remotely over the internet allows us the opportunity to move around every one to two weeks. We always have to make sure there will be a strong Verizon cell signal at the RV park we’ll be at. It’s worked really well for us so far, but we always try to check the signal strength on the Verizon website before we commit to an RV park. I can only think of two times that we’ve had to change our plans because Jerl couldn’t work. Once was in Haines, Alaska where every time a cruise ship came into port all two thousand people on board would jump on their phones and the internet would come to a screeching halt. We ended up leaving a day early there. Another time was in Arizona when we were planning on staying in a place for two weeks while we explored the Grand Canyon. When we pulled in Jerl checked his signal strength and it was a big fat zero. So, the RV park was nice enough to let us leave the RV there while we took the car to try and find something that would work for us.

You don’t really have to be tech savvy to make working remotely work for you. I can’t give you any tips. Jerl does all of that for us. There are some great resources out there to help you figure out what will work the best for you. Technomadia is a great resource for all things techy and they usually do a pretty good job at responding to any and all questions.

So, you don’t work over the internet, you’re not independently wealthy, and you haven’t won the lottery. There are other ways to transition to living in an RV and traveling. I’m not an expert on all of the different ways out there. I really only know what works for us. We recently met another full-time family who started out by finding workamper jobs.  Nope, I didn’t misspell that. Workamper is a word that describes someone who takes jobs in exchange for a spot to park their RV and sometimes they make money too. There’s a website… Workamper News that you can visit to find jobs if this interests you. Some families own their own business. Some families work in construction or on pipelines. There are really tons of options if you’re willing to get creative and maybe step outside your comfort bubble.

“BE BRAVE. Without bravery, you will never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, your life will remain small – far smaller than you probably wanted your life to be.”  ~Elizabeth Gilbert~

Have a question for us? Leave a comment here on the blog or email us at js@ourrvtrip.com!

See y’all down the road!

The Who, The Where, & The Why

The Who, The Where, & The Why

I thought I would start our FAQ series with a question we get asked every time someone finds out we’re a full-time RV family. But first, I should probably tell you who we are (for those of you who don’t know us).

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We are Jerl and Jennie. We grew up living about a mile or so away from each other. We went to the same schools from preschool on, but didn’t really know each other. We started dating in 1993 during my junior year in high school (his sophomore year). Yup…I snagged a younger man! We got married in 1997 and started a family in 2000. We were high school sweethearts…we ended up being best friends.

We have three amazingly cool boys.

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Mr. Man is our oldest. He’s your typical oldest child. He’s quiet, loves to write, and has a wicked sense of humor.

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The Dude is our middle child. He’s got the gift of gab, is always the first to volunteer to help, and he’s always up for an adventure.

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Littlest. What can I say? He’s my baby. He’s the family pizza connoisseur, he loves games, and he’s a huge music fan.

We rounded out our family with two big cats.

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Sadi is our pretty little fat girl. She’s a little OCD when it comes to food.

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Magnus is more like a dog than a cat. Seriously, he even pants like a dog.

Now for the where and the why. Where did we get the idea? I think people expect us to tell them this whole RV thing was Jerl’s idea, but it wasn’t. One morning I was watching the Today show and they were doing a segment on this family who sold everything, bought an RV, and spent the next 13 months traveling to all 50 states with their kids. That night after the boys went to bed, I mentioned the RV family to Jerl and we started chatting about how cool it would be to be able to show our boys all 50 states. One thing led to another and when we couldn’t find a legitimate reason why we shouldn’t make the move to the RV life…well…we jumped in with both feet. We broke the news to our family and then spent the next year and a half getting everything figured out and planned.

When people ask us why we do this crazy nomadic RV life…we always say “Why not?” Why wait? Tomorrow is not guaranteed…it’s not promised to us. Go out and live the life you want to live now.

I’m going to try to put up at least one FAQ post a month until we get through the list of questions.

Have a question for us? Leave a comment here on the blog or email us at js@ourrvtrip.com!

See y’all down the road!