This story all began when Joe came home one day from work, laid down on the floor and said, "You know I can work from ANYWHERE, right?" He'd been sending me links to $40,000 and under mountain cabins for weeks at this point and was wanting an escape.
We both love our lives, house, and friends here in Austin, but I could relate on the wanting to get away, experience a new kind of life, and really travel. We both wanted more than just a vacation.
And so the conversation began, after the kids were in bed, and several hours had past, we found ourselves decided. We would buy and RV and travel the U.S. for 6 months (Feb-July)! Just long enough to feel like we'd really "lived" somewhere else, the right term to lease our house out to someone, and back in time for Loralai to start Kindergarten in August.
So the planning began. We started getting the house into "leasing" condition and shopping for RV's. We started out looking for a drivable RV, but several month's into that changed our minds to a towable. It took us a while to figure out this was the more cost effective way to go! We've changed our minds on just about EVERYTHING over the past 6 months as we've planned for this trip actually! We bought our F350, Dully truck in January, and I actually really LOVE IT! Leather seats, nice and roomy, DVD player for the kids! I've even driven it a couple of times. :) We continue to look for a towable RV. I was wanting newer and needing minimal repair, but this weekend I found a blog on renovating RV's and now we're thinking cheap and ugly. ;) We'll see. The best place we've found to shop, with the most inventory is in Houston, so we've taken several trips there already and will probably continue to do so until we find what we are looking for. We are coming up on our original departure date (Feb4th) and obviously AREN'T going to meet that, so our new plan is to aim to leave around March 1st. We'd like to have the trailer soon, so we can take at least one practice trip to somewhere close, before heading out on the open road for 5-6months. We are still on the fence about weather or not to lease the house out. We've tossed around the idea of leasing it as a vacation rental or as corporate housing as well, since both of those would allow us to lease it furnished (less hassle). Lots still to do and to figure out, but it's all very exciting!!! We spend about 4 nights a week just reading RV blogs, looking at rigs, and planning our route. We'll post a map soon of all the places we plan on going. Loralai is excited and her only requirement at this point is that she has a "tall bunk bed" to sleep in. We'll make sure she gets it!
It's hard not to let the fear of the unknown get to us sometimes. Figuring out all the little things can get overwhelming! But we keep coming back to this... Life is Short! Live it to it's fullest! Experience things! Do it while we CAN! We are both really excited about spending the extra time with our girls too! I plan on "home schooling" Loralai while we're on the road to help prepare her for Kindergarten, and being a former teacher, I'm actually pretty stoked about it!!! Part of the reason I've started this blog is for another little PUSH to make sure we actually DO IT! So here we go, Full speed ahead!
