We have had a lot of people ask us about what led us to decide to start living the RV life. While there are many factors, we believe that our desire to travel was the biggest push. We love seeing new places and meeting new people. We have never been the type of people to put down roots, opting to pick up and make major moves every 3-5 years. This type of lifestyle has its pro’s and con’s but we wouldn’t want it any other way.
RV Life: The Conversation That Started It All
If we had to pick one thing as the starting point to this lifestyle, it would have been a conversation we had in early 2022. After all the moving around, was it finally time to stay put and buy a house. I’ll spare you the details of the conversation but it boiled down to do we want to settle down and focus more on our careers, or do we want to continue to travel and work jobs that allowed us the flexibility to do so. I hope I’m not spoiling the surprise, but we chose the latter!
Now that we made our decision, we had to figure out what we were going to do about it. We knew we did not want to stay in SC anymore. Neither of us really loved our jobs, and our rent was going to skyrocket if we renewed our lease. We also didn’t feel like picking up and starting over in a new place again. We’ve done that for over 20 years, but it isn’t as exciting in our forties as it was when we were younger. Luckily, Cassandra had another idea.
Bus Conversion:
For several years, Cassandra watched videos on school bus conversions. She brought it up every so often how she would like to give it a try. I never gave it much thought just because neither of us are really skilled in that area. Cassandra being an optimist never really gave up on her dream.
Cut to a few years later and we made this decision to focus on travel. She started showing me some of these pictures of finished conversions and I was amazed! I couldn’t believe what these buses looked like when they were finished. I’ll admit I was pretty hooked after that and we decided to give it a try.
Gutting “Rattle Trap”
Unfortunately, the rise in popularity of bus conversions made it extremely difficult to purchase one. After several attempts failed due to not being able to get to a bus before someone else bought it, we took a chance on an old shuttle bus in Kentucky. We knew going into it it was going to be a lot of work, but I had some co-workers and friends with a little knowledge that could help us along the way. Also we got it at a low enough price that if it didn’t work out we wouldn’t really be in the hole from it.
We got it back to SC and decided we were going to gut it over our 4 day Fourth of July weekend. I’ll spare you the details but 6 months later in another state, we finally finished!! Part of this was we realized we weren’t going to have time to finish it before our lease was up so we held off a few months to keep it travel ready. However, a big part was also the fact that ripping apart a 34 year old bus ain’t easy. Do you know how many stripped screws hold the interior of a bus together? We do…it’s a lot!!!
When all was said and done, what really halted the project was the fact that we needed to get some metal work done before we could start the conversion. The problem was it would have taken months before we could even get it in somewhere. We knew that wasn’t an option. It was time to think of a plan B fast!
RV Life And A Bit Of Luck:
After a year of struggles with searching, purchasing, and renovating the bus our transfer into the RV life happened in a matter of 2 weeks. We discussed a few options for what we planned on doing next, but the only option that allowed us to travel was buying an RV. Having absolutely no idea of what to look for, we began our search. After reaching out to a few people we were able to find one about 2 hours away so we went to check it out.
Again we were able to find an older model RV at a reasonable price so we took the plunge. Of course, this purchase brought with it a new set of problems. What were we going to do for work? When my parents retired, they spent 5 years work camping around the country. Although we weren’t familiar with how it worked we started looking into it. Luckily there are a ton of resources online (I’ll post links at the end of this post.)
Cassandra applied to several places online all up and down the East Coast focusing mainly on New England and Maine in particular. We managed to get a few interviews lined up over the next couple of days and luckily found a perfect fit for us in central Maine. It was finally at this point we were able to relax a bit. We took 2 weeks to revamp the inside of our RV and hit the road. If you’d like to read a bit more on this part of our RV life check out our post on road trips.
Work Camping And RV Living:
As I said above there really are a lot of resources available to those that want to dive into RV life. Jobs are listed all over the country. Many jobs are seasonal but you can find year round work camping jobs if you are looking for that. However, what is work camping? The quick answer is that you work a certain amount of hours for a free or discounted RV hookup. Some jobs only provide your site but some allow you to work additional hours for pay. This is why it’s such a popular option among retirees because they don’t need to pay for their RV site.
Don’t have an RV? There are also plenty of jobs available that include housing as well. From our limited research into this area, dorm housing is most common. However, we see a fair amount of private apartments or private sleeping quarters with a shared kitchen area. You really have so many options available to continue traveling while still be able to find work along the way.
There are many options for jobs as well but the most popular are:
-Food service
-Office work
-House keeping
-Lawn care/maintenance
-Front desk/gift shop
-Maintenance
-Camp host duties.
Another great aspect of work camping is that they are often happy to accept couples for jobs. If your skill sets aren’t similar where you could be working the same job, they almost always have you work the same shifts and have the same days off. This is not to say only couples get hired. There are just as many opportunities for single folks to find work as well.
Final Thoughts:
We really couldn’t be happier with our decision to dive into RV life. I won’t lie and say it’s been all sunshine and rainbows though. Issues arise along the way just like real life. However, we have met so many wonderful people along the way that are super supportive. We wouldn’t trade it for anything else!
If you like to hear more about this journey check out our podcast episode on this topic. We share a lot more details about our journey that would have turned this post into a novel! As always thanks for spending some time with us and take care!
Helpful Links:
–Working Couples – focuses on jobs for couples
–Cool Works – focuses on jobs with housing included
