What in the world did I get myself into?
Most people dream of owning an RV and being able to take occasional family road trips. An upgrade to camping or glamping as they call it. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong, like… kids constantly fighting and hearing it through paper-thin walls, cleaning out the poop tank praying there won’t be a nasty clog, and living with a spouse that you either get along with or want to divorce.
This is something I never envisioned signing up for. Ever.
Rewind to many months ago, October 2020 to be exact, when Covid was taking over the world. It seemed like the world had gone stale and nothing was normal. The sheer thought of adventure seemed more intriguing than ever.
Sitting at home during lockdown was starting to feel like I was in the looney bin. I had to do something drastic, so my kids and I took a road trip to St.Louis, MO to visit my parents. We technically weren’t suppose to leave town but the rebel in me had to do it. It was a different kind of road trip than usual because, for one, I haven’t seen them in months. And two, on the way back from St.Louis, I started noticing something I haven’t really noticed before.
It was RV’s.
Tons of RVs.
‘Hmm’, I thought, ‘how cool would it be to own an RV and just travel around in your own house from state to state?’.
Well, this was a new thought.
Ask me 5 years ago what I thought of the RV life, and I would have said ‘never in a million years’.
Being me, of course, I like stability and the predictability of forthcoming vacations. But what just happened? Did I just wish to have an RV? This was certainly something I never saw coming.
When I got home, which by the way, I always loved coming to my spacious, all-white, beautiful minimalistic home after a long stay elsewhere.
I walked into the kitchen where my husband, Mark was on the laptop and just as I saw him sitting at the kitchen table, word vomit came out.
“I want an RV.”
Whoa.
Mark looks at me, and I look at him. There was a moment of silence. The sides of his mouth started to form a smile. Now, this is ironic because my husband who thrives on adventure has been lowkey showing me youtube videos over the past 3 years of these, wait, cue the dramatic music… couples who sell all their belongings to go completely debt-free, off the grid, and live in a converted old school bus they now call home.
Not to mention live off their life savings. Do they have millions saved up somewhere to travel around lavishly like that?
And then I would lowkey roll my eyes as far as I could because that is something I would never imagine doing. It was one of those moments of never say never. And deep down inside I knew he got me good. Because I think I was falling for one of his “youtube traps”. You know… the ones when they start hinting subtly via youtube and slowly brainwashing you.
Anyways, as he continues on his laptop, he opens a tab up on Facebook marketplace and begins to type in the search bar. The page loads and immediately we see something that grabs our attention. An older RV with a reasonable price.
My thought was that I didn’t want to hash out tens of thousands of dollars on a motor home that would be sitting on our driveway the rest of our lives in case we didn’t like traveling in an RV, so of course, budget was a huge factor to us. We also didn’t mind anything that was old because we wanted to remodel it.
The process of renovation was quite familiar to us because, at that time, we were also flipping a 2000 square foot unit. It was a full gut with a ton of work laid out for us to do. And now adding an RV renovation?
What were we getting ourselves into? Well…
The next day my husband and I drove out to see the motorhome. The owner showed us the ins and outs of the RV, which neither I nor Mark knew anything about.
We asked lots of questions and really wanted to know what kind of maintenance or updates it needed. It had two slides, one in the back, and one in the front. As soon as it all expanded, boy, was there a lot of room. You could practically ride a scooter inside!
Long story short, we walked away. We didn’t make a deal, we didn’t say anything because we wanted to go home and think about this big purchase.
Literally, a big purchase.
We thanked the man and as we were walking away, Mark and I turned to each other, and both said “let’s make a deal”. We giggled like little girls, called out to the owner from afar, shook his hand, and made the deal.
What made it more exciting was that we didn’t even tell our kids about what was going on.
We picked them up from school, drove out to hand the check over, and in return received the keys to our very own RV!! The kids were beyond themselves, jumping and asking to ride in the big white bus. Ahh… the start of a new chapter, there’s nothing like it.
Did I ever think this day would happen? Never in a million years. But you know what, I figured it would ultimately be the day that skyrockets the trajectory in our life. A new start, a new adventure, a new life.
