How It Got Started
During the lava eruption of Fissure 8 last year, May – Sep 2018, we realized that we could possibly lose our home, due to the ash plume, debris fallout, and gases. All during the eruption, geologists warned that the eruption could last as long, or longer, than the Pu’u O’o eruption, which was 35 years. 35 years?!?! But, just as we were preparing to evacuate, the eruption abruptly stopped. Within a month, our air quality returned to blissful clear.
Talking to our family during the eruption, especially with the little ones, we realized that our wonderful life in Hawai’i may be coming to an end, because we needed to start spending more time with our grandchildren. It was time to start planning to move back to the mainland.
One evening, while trying to figure out how to spend maximum time with our family, who are scattered all over the US, Jan “calmly” turned to me and said, “What do you think of becoming full-time RVers?” My quick and immediate reply was, “What? Are you nuts!!! Living in an RV has got to be very expensive, and we can’t afford that!“
Unknown to me, Jan had already been looking into the full-time RV lifestyle, and she had already discovered that RV vacationing and living in an RV full-time had completely different expenses. So, since I am the family “number cruncher” and keeper of the accounting, she laid out some podcasts, websites, blogs, and vlogs, that went into specific costs and details of the RV lifestyle.
I spent the next two weeks watching videos, listening to podcasts, and reading blogs. I slowly realized that, not only could we afford this new lifestyle, we would actually be spending less money doing it! I became a convert and enthusiast.
living in one location would put us close to one son & family, but we would have to travel to see the other son & family. To see the rest of our family and all of our close friends, more travel would be required. I have come to not like air travel, due to “strip searches” at TSA, luggage restrictions, waiting, increasing costs, car rental, and all the rest of the hassles associated with air travel. If we could avoid that most of the year, yet still see our family and friends frequently, well, I’m all for it!
When visiting, you either displace a child from their room, disrupting the regular family routines, and usually end up not staying very long, usually a week. We want to see our family much longer than that! And staying at AirBnB’s is okay, but still not totally satisfying.
Having an RV, and staying nearby, would allow us to bring our home with us, not be stressed by air travel, and we found fantastic places to stay close by that would be mini-vacations for the kids and grandkids, and great for us. I was really warming up to this RV thing!
Now that I decided that Jan wasn’t crazy, and that this could be a super good lifestyle choice for us, the real challenge became. . . . . choosing the right kind of RV that would make us happy. That became a new and fascinating journey all by itself! Choices. . . . . all kinds of choices!