Laura and Sasha's Excellent Adventure

Sasha and I have once again found ourselves on a most excellent adventure, this time as full timers (people who live in a RV, camper, trailer-movable vehicle all the time.) We have sold the house, the furniture, the extra stuff that we do not need nor want and have moved into a truck camper. We workcamp at a private campground in northern Virginia.

Why in the world did we do what we did: I originally posted this on a forum, but thought it explained, pretty well why we did what we did:

We sold our home May 2007. With the mortgage, the property taxes, utilities, lawn care, storage, newspaper, maid, insurance, HOA fees, and maintenance we were averaging about $3000 a month. We both worked full-time and many of our weekends were cleaning up or maintaining the home. We were feeling stifled by the home. We wanted OUT!

Most of the reason was that we found a new adventure, we became full-timers in an RV, in our case a Truck Camper. Much smaller than most RVs, it works for our purpose, because we are hardly in it, except to sleep and eat. Sasha works full-time, and I started the adventure volunteering at a National Park, but now at a private campground, so we do not have to pay for a living space, and our utilities are also paid for.

However, the house, for the first 8+ years we were in it, we absolutely loved it. We furnished it, we had a huge deck and hot tub, we liked the fact that it was in a HOA and that everyone had to keep their lawn looking good. We bought in 1998, and we had equity in the home. We were slowly paying off the mortgage. We bought in to the whole suburban living thing.

But my husband started to get dissatisfied with this life. Maybe he was going through the mid-life stuff, I don't know. But he wanted to go out and be more adventurous again. We had become couch potatoes. We ate in front of the TV at dinner, we did not exercise, and we were becoming quite heavy and flabby. Was the house the reason? When we first met, we kayaked, hiked, biked, white water rafted, skied, cross-country skied, and camped. We had done none of those things when we got the house. We had put all of our energies into the house and not into the fun things that had made us fall in love with each other.

He started looking into EarthRoamers, an expensive type of Truck Camper/RV. It was way too expensive for us - almost $100K. It was a pipe dream. But we could afford a truck camper and Ford F350 truck. He had gone to www.RV.net to research trucks and campers. He researched for almost a year. We got the truck in December of 2005 and the camper in spring of 2006. We took a long trip in 2006, 6 weeks, and fell in love again. We loved the adventure, and felt this was something that we needed to do.

From the time that he told me that he needed a change, to the time we sold the house, we started purging ourselves of stuff. I re-read Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) and got him to do the same. We went through all of the steps and continue to do so.

Having the house and being able to sell it with a profit, helped us get that much closer to financial independence then if we had been renting the entire time. Fortunately for us, we had bought the house at a low period, and sold, not at the peak but close enough, so that we got a profit. We ultimately got a profit, but we harmed ourselves in the process, as it is much harder to lose weight rather than to gain. And although YMOYL says no shame no blame, I could kick myself for all of the spending I did when we had the house. Oh well, what is done is done.

The Absolute Latest News: Starting in April 2008, we moved from the National Park to a Private Campground. We wanted to try our hand at workcamping, which means I work at a place and part of the work time goes to pay for the site, the rest is an hourly rate. It is working out well, it is in Northern VA and we hope to be here for a while. Check out April and May 2008.

Latest and Greatest News:  November through March: I still volunteer 32 hours (four days a week) which gets us a cabin at the park, with phone and all the amenities of a house, plus being in a different part of the park. I am now working as a Cabin Camp Host, working with different people that want to rent an entire cabin camp (Happyland - could not have picked a better name myself :)). We will be living here for the Winter: check out November, Thanksgiving in NC, December (scroll down on that page, I have written a poem about 2007 that I sent out as our newsletter), January, February, and March.

You can now see our Expenses per Quarter, it is kind of interesting to say the least, as the first quarter of 2007, we put the house on the market, second quarter, sold the house and moved to the park, third quarter, living fully in the park. Also finished the last quarter -where we lived in the camper for one month, then in the cabin for two months.

Latest News: We have moved from the visitor center, and we are now set up at the campground. I work as a Campground Host for September and October.  I  got a new camera for my birthday, so I will be putting up some new pictures soon. Also, check out the books we are reading on the right side of September and October. I thought this would be a great way to figure out what books we have read.

Also, the other months are up: June, July, and August, and I will be putting more information in soon!

The website is going to be like a blog, with the most recent entries at the top and the older ones at the bottom, and once the month is over, that will be its own page. So as May is  over, after you go to Fulltiming 2007, click on the May 2007 bar to see what we did in May. We will ultimately have the budget and expenses for those that would like to know, and what it is like to be full timing while still working, and volunteering, and having your own business.

But first, we wanted to explain why we did what we did and all of that.
Visitor Center Host Spot
Both Sasha and I loved our home and Cascades in general, but our 6 week trip last fall was a life changing event for both of us. It made us realize that life is short and that home ownership was largely preventing us from leading the kind of lives we really want to live. We don't have kids after all and want to travel extensively with our camper and toys in tow. Just as one example, having to stay home on weekends to stain the deck and mulch the landscaping beds crimps an actively traveling kind of lifestyle.

We are not leaving the area as Sasha is keeping his job. Our original plan was to rent a cheap place in the country side, maybe Clarke County, where we could keep our camper and trailer on site. Since then, I got an opportunity with the National Park Service and we live -for free, site and utilities- in our camper - at an amazing spot in Prince William Forest Park, a National Park. In return for the site, I volunteer in the visitor center for 32 hours a week.  Sasha still commutes to Sterling, admittedly not fun as he is used to an 8 mile commute. He looks at the situation on the positive side as an investment where we can travel regularly and work intermittently at National and State parks in the future. Also not having to pay for mortgage, taxes, upkeep etc will allow us to retire early and travel in this beautiful land of ours in maybe 3-5 years.