Wright on Time Books » RV Families

RV Family — The Watkins Family from TX, USA

Lisa — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:11:49 +0000

Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Watkins Family: We are a family of five, Joe (42), Vicki (38), Jake (12), Jonas (10), and Jewel (8).

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Watkins Family: We’ve been a nomadic family for eleven years now. We started off with just one baby in 1998 and now in 2009 have three easy going life long travelers.

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Watkins Family: We’ve been to every state except Alaska and the southeast ones. We have yet to take the kids out of the country….well, except that time in Big Bend National Park when we crossed the Rio Grande River by small row boat to eat lunch in a tiny Mexican village. We hope to travel Australia and Europe with the kids before they venture out on their own.

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Watkins Family: We are most definitely full fledged life living unschoolers!

Wright on Time Books: How well does homeschooling work while living on the road? How do you get new resources (DVDs, books, audio books, etc.)? Are you able to use local libraries, or do you have to buy everything?

Watkins Family: I believe our traveling lifestyle has enriched our home learning tremendously! With Unschooling everything is a learning experience so curriculum and formal lessons aren’t required. We don’t waste money on textbooks and curriculums, and prefer to spend it on National and State Parks, Zoos and Museums, and gas to get us there.

We also use the Internet, TV, video games and people as learning resources, and have subscribed to dozens of fun magazines over the years, including Discovery, Nat Geo for Kids, Puzzlemania, Mathmania and Zoo Books, to name a few.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Watkins Family: We use my parent’s as our “home base” and since they live in TX we get the luxury of taking advantage of the lax homeschooling laws and no state income tax. For legal reasons you must have a state of residency, or else we wouldn’t even claim a state.

We have sold or given away almost everything. The only things we’ve kept have been personal and sentimental items, and those we store at my parent’s house. We’ve had a storage unit in the past but after two years learned it was a huge waste of money since there wasn’t hardly anything in there we even wanted after coming back to it two years later.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Watkins Family: When we first started out the Internet was nothing like it is today so there wasn’t the information out there like it is now. We never knew anyone who hit the road like we had planned, so we pretty much just forged our own path….and learned as we went.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Watkins Family: RV maintenance isn’t any harder than a home or a car, it’s pretty much a trade off. When we had an engine blow on our first RV we had to move out of it for a couple weeks while it got a new one, so we just hung out at Grama’s. When the power steering went out on the Bus (our current RV) we spent the day playing at the water park across the street from the repair shop. We try to make the best of difficult situations.

Joe handles pretty much everything RV related, filling water tanks, dumping waste tanks, fueling diesel, repairs, maintenance. Vicki handles the cooking, cleaning and shopping. Kids handle the video games.

Wright on Time Books: How large is your RV? What is it like? We want to know where everything goes and where everyone sleeps. In an ideal world, would you have wanted a bigger RV, smaller RV, or something the same size but with a different configuration?

Watkins Family: We have a 37 ft converted flatnose schoolbus. It was professionally converted by a Canadian company so it has wall to wall overhead cupboards, a large kitchen with floor to ceiling cabinets with large pull out drawers. Built in microwave, 4 burner stove, 10 cu. ft. refrigerator, double sinks, ample countertop space. Pullout couch for the oldest son to sleep on, with a cupboard for his bedding and one for his clothes. Four cupboards for books, art supplies, and games. Two for coats and hats. Built in TV. Dining table with 4 chairs. Computer desk, printer and chair, along with two cupboards with desk supplies. Small sitting area for kids to play video games. Bunk beds with shelves for the other two kids and their clothes and stuffed animals. Drawers under couch for toys and more games. Bathroom with tiny tub and medium shower, RV toilet, large mirrored medicine cabinet with sink and vanity. Floor to ceiling shelves for clothes in the master bedroom with more overhead cabinets to hold more clothes and old photo albums. Queen size bed with underneath storage. Lots of big RV windows. Two A/C’s. Three roof vents with exhaust fans.

We started off with a much smaller RV, and after three years in this one we’re ready to increase size again. However, I think my current configuration is perfect, just could be wider and taller, but I’d do the same set up over again.

Wright on Time Books: How often do you move to a new location? Do gas prices and campground costs affect this? Where do you usually stay the night? Do you have a regular route that you repeat, or do you continually seek out new places to visit?

Watkins Family: It’s never the same. We have no set agenda, and pretty much go with the flow. Gas and camping fees do affect our decisions but probably not as much as work, weather, mood and scenery does. We used to dry camp (overnights in rest areas and parking lots) a lot, but now we tend to hook up more often. We continually seek out new places to visit but unlike our old selves we’re finding ourselves visiting some of the same places over and over again. In the beginning you tend to move quickly and make mental notes to come back again when you can explore longer, so I guess we’re at that point now. We stay way longer in places than we ever used to.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Watkins Family: Joey does ALL the bus driving, while I drive his work truck. Back in the old days though I would drive the small motorhome almost as much as him. Now that we’re so big we are finding driving challenges, unlike in the 23 footer. We much prefer smaller for traveling but larger for living.

We do avoid cities, and prefer the smaller highways. Mountain roads don’t scare us, but the bus does tend to get overheated so we have to allow for plenty of cooling breaks.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Watkins Family: As stated earlier, we’ve been on the road for eleven years and really never plan to give up the lifestyle. We may get a house occasionally here and there, but we’ll forever be nomadic. We didn’t plan to live this way, but it has become our liking.

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Watkins Family: We shut the bathroom door and ask everyone to give us some privacy. That goes for adults as well as kids. Other than the restroom, there really isn’t a privacy issue at this point. Everyone has found their place that they can go to to chill or sulk.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Watkins Family: We keep in touch by cell phone, twitter, facebook and email. We visit family at least once a year, and friends whenever we’re in the area. Joey’s Dad just flew out and spent a week with us at a lake in NE, my parents have flown out for each birth, and one summer when we rented a farm in Iowa, but for the most part it’s us doing the visiting. Apparently it’s closer for us to drive. But if you ask our Mom’s it’s because they can’t pin us down!

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Watkins Family: Our kids can’t get homesick because this is the only life they’ve known. Besides, home is where we park it! As long as they have electricity, they’re happy.

Wright on Time Books: How do you pay for your living expenses? How do you make money while on the road? Do you work full-time/part-time? Do you work certain times of the year and travel other times? Have any of your children had paying jobs?

Watkins Family: Joe is a traveling pipeline welder, so we actually get paid to travel to new locations! He usually works four to six months a year and then either wander aimlessly the rest or visit with family for extended periods. We normally always worked winters and took summers off, but now it’s just whenever. The only paying jobs the kids have had was $5 if they’d jump in a cold pool. Their choice, not ours.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Watkins Family: We have had so many configurations! Started out with nothing but a motorhome, then added bikes with a pull trailer for the kid and groceries. Then we towed a boat for a while. Then we towed a work truck and a boat. Then we traded the boat for a 4×4 for me. So, now the bus drives solo while I drive the work truck towing the family car. Next I’d like to have the work truck towing a trailer towing my car……we’ll see.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Watkins Family: We started off with an English Bulldog that would get car sick so we eventually let my Grandmother take care of him. It was another eight yrs before we tried another pet, besides goldfish. We rescued a kitten at a campground in Michigan and had her for six months until we lost her in a campground in Nebraska. We now have a rat and he’s the perfect bus pet! Driving over the Rockies hurt his little ears but other than that he seems perfectly happy.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Watkins Family: Hawaii. Other favorites include Lake McConaughy in NE & Big Bend Nat. Park in TX

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Watkins Family: Vicki blogs at http://www.FuhKauiFamily.blogspot.com and twitters occasionally as Jakesmome.
Our next adventure is to find land in Hawaii and build us a small palapa on it. We’d like to give the kids a sense of community, and the ability to live off the land with water catchment, solar electricity, vegetable gardens and farm animals, but at the same time keep an RV on the mainland for work or for Island Fever.

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RV Family — The Wright Family (Nope, not that one!)

Lisa — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:08:59 +0000

Here’s another set of answers to “20 Questions for RV Families”. Shelley answered a couple of weeks ago, so presumably she and her family are on the road now! To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail your answers (along with a family photo) to info at wright on time books dot com.

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Shelley: We are a family of 4 with 3 dogs. Married in 2001 & first son born in 01, son #2 born in ’03. Husband is active duty USMC and I’m a stay at home mom. Well, I sub a bit here and there at the boys’ school, but I still consider myself a stay at home mom. We have 3 dogs, 2 large and 1 tiny. We’re active in church & sports & always seem busy.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Shelley: We begin moving in Wednesday!!! We are moving from Florida to California in December. We bought a house here in Florida & have a contract to close November 12th, thankfully!! And decided an rv would be nice for traveling back and forth from California to Texas where our family members live & it would be more enjoyable to visit with our own space, let’s be real, 3 dogs aren’t welcome pretty much anywhere We plan to live in the rv until we pay off the loan on that and the truck….I hope we will enjoy it so much we just continue!!

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Shelley: Well, not in rv travels yet, but we’re from Texas. We were stationed in North Carolina for 3 yrs. Danny was temporarily assigned to Maryland & we visited DC then. We spent 3 year in Okinawa & are finishing up a 3year tour in Florida. We have family in Oklahoma & we have spent a lot of time on road trips & I can tell you I am very much looking forward to a more relaxed rv traveling style versus hurry up in the car & trying to locate pet friendly hotels…NOT EASY!!

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Shelley: We are not homeschoolers. Our kids are enrolled in public school and will remain in public school unless anything drastic changes in the public school system. Although we did homeschool our oldest his first half of Kindergarten (does that even count..lol) while we were in Japan until we got back stateside because I did not like the school.

Shelley: Not applicable to us

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Shelley: Not really applicable to us…I don’t think.. We will have a home base in California, my husband is still active duty military

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Shelley: Atlas, maps & reviewing, reading reviews for great travel books with guides to camps & family friendly trips.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Shelley: ???We’ll soon find out!!! I hear it’s a great deal easier than a regular house, I guess just KNOWING what needs to happen is the main thing. We have a warranty on our rv for now but after that we will be researching any problems and become our own handyman at all times possible.

Shelley: We have a 35’8″ ’09 Dutchmen Denali 330xrv-5m. It has a master room with a full closet & dresser & a loft with a queen bed for the boys which includes 2 sets of cabinets and a trunk. Our rv is a toyhauler so it has a whole open back room which we use for many things but mostly “had to have it” because of our dogs. We have 3 slide outs & several outside storage bins & cabinets inside. In some ways I think , man it’d be nice to have a 40+footer, I could really put some stuff in that! And then I think, man if we had a super small rv we could really enjoy some awesome & exclusive campspots. In the end, our rv size was determined based on what our truck could tow, we got as big as it could tow & we could not be happier with the configuration, it will be an adjustment no matter what.

Shelley: Our plan is to fulltime in an rv park close to Danny’s duty station & on long weekends & vacations travel to different spots, mainly on the west coast but also to include at least a once yearly route back to Texas for family & hopefully for the family reunions.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Shelley: Danny says it’s all on him. We’ll see how long that will last. It’s not the driving that worries me, it’s the getting on the road and the exiting. We will avoid steep mountains due to our size, I’m just not sure we could make that. But other than something dangerous we’ll just hit whatever road we need to to get to our desired spot!

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Shelley: We started planning this move this past summer. We officially begin our move in Wednesday but will not be fully moved in until the end of the month. We plan to continue full time rv life until we have paid off our truck and rv but I hope we enjoy the lifestyle and continue past that point…maybe indefinitely!

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Shelley: Privacy…ha! I haven’t had privacy since I married & definitely no privacy with kids But as for marital privacy…the “master” bedroom has a sliding door that will be used & we’ll adjust accordingly, haha

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Shelley: cell phones, email, personal sites (blogging, facebook, myspace), trips back home. We’ll send cards & small gifts through the mail.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Shelley: We’ve been travelers from the beginning of our marriage, even though not rv lifestlye. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to have roots somewhere & live in a community that everyone knows each other. But maybe that is part of what draws me to the rv lifestyle. Friendly people & a sense of community in the rv parks everywhere.

Shelley: My husband is still active duty military, and when he retires he will receive retirement pay. I sub for fun. We’re not a full time traveling family, just a full time rv family

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Shelley: No, we tow the trailer with our ’08 Dodge Ram 2500 Diesel. We carry bicycles with us though.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Shelley: We have 3 dogs and while they don’t care for road trips they enjoy nature walks and new places

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Shelley: We really enjoyed our 3years in Okinawa Japan

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Shelley: Well, I have a blog that I keep up sometimes and I do facebook & such. www.semperfiwifey.blogspot.com & facebook.com/shelleywright0103

Thanks for asking it was fun filling out the questions!!

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RV Family — The Hale Family

Lisa — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:00:54 +0000

More great answers to “20 Questions for RV Families”. To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail your answers (along with a family photo) to info at wright on time books dot com.

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Chantee: We’re a family of 3. My husband and myself are in our 30′s and we have a 4 year old daughter. There’s also a 17 year old (step) daughter who lives with her mom, so doesn’t get to travel with us. About three years ago we got to a spot where we were done. We owned a house near the Skyline Drive, which we loved, and a hobby games store. I worked in a costume department and all should have been well. Which is to say, we had everything we wanted but time together – time for our family and we didn’t really feel fulfilled by the ‘status quo’. So we quit. We sold it all, bought an RV and left. It took almost two years from realizing that’s what we wanted and needed to do to the day we pulled it off, but we walked out.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Chantee: We’ve been on the road for a little over a year now, and are re-evaluating our set-up. What was enough space for a two year old is nothing for a four year old. When we were initially setting up we thought of us spending a lot of time outdoors – but forgot about rainy or too hot days – and also wanted something small enough to boondock in easily but didn’t think about playspace. Those are oversights we’ll have to remedy now, with some ‘down time’ off the road, but it’s not really a big deal. One real advantage about being a ‘road family’ is that you can just take it as it comes. Not being trapped in one place – in a mortgage and bills – gives you a lot of freedom. The problem becomes narrowing your choices so you can make one instead of finding a way to make it work!

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Chantee: From Maryland down the entire south coast and in a month we’ll be headed out westward through Texas.

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Chantee: Technically, my daughter’s not old enough for school. That being said she reads at a second grade level (Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons) and she does basic math in her head. We call it pre-school and have already looked into accredited options for her schooling. We’re not very religious and I’m a second gen homeschooler so I’m very picky. I don’t want the Bob Jones stuff I was raised on and I do want her to have less of the hassles I had (being ‘religiously exempt’ or unschooled) when I reached professional and college levels.

Chantee: I think homeschooling works great. We work around our schedule, keeping it going most of the year and taking breaks when we’re driving or just need it. I usually buy what I want, or get it online. Most things you can find there – except maybe really good reading supplies. I don’t think I’ve spent more than 100$ on her schooling this year. Libraries, which I love, are a bit of a loss once you’re on the road. You get it in one sitting because they often don’t allow ‘non-local’ users to check out material. I like things I can use again and again and for that I’m fond of Amazon’s buy it used feature.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Chantee: Well… a home base. I’ve been on the road before and my Mother is a queen among women, so she is mostly our home base. We’ve just picked up a Good Sam membership and mail service to try and take some of that responsibility off of her. I do all of our billing online and auto draft/deposit, which makes the lack of home base easier. As for schooling it’s a headache. If you want the local school system – which is absurd – you’ll have to be back for SOL’s and do all the paperwork. My answer to accreditation was K12. Also, if your kids are young like ours is they won’t even be in the system. Technically Jade doesn’t exist as far as the school processing goes. She’s never been and never will be part of the local census. My Mother is also kind enough to keep some of our stuff that we couldn’t part with (like my husband’s comic collection) at her place, otherwise we’d have a small storage unit. Everything that was truly worth something we sold – the house, the business, the vehicles. Everything else from the tv to the furniture we threw out. It’s not worth your time to sell it, believe me.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Chantee: We tried a couple of RV introductory books, we’d travelled before by car and converted van and had even lived in that van, when we were young for several years. I used RVT.com to help us find an inexpensive RV. We looked at a lot of floorplans and the style of life we thought we’d be living to help make that choice. I guess I was looking six months before I knew exactly what I wanted. We walked through a lot of used RV’s we saw on Craigslist or in the local paper. I refused to walk through new ones because I didn’t – and don’t – want something I can’t afford to own outright. Making payments that are unnecessary (outside of your insurance and phone bill for instance) will limit your life and your options. We didn’t want that. In the end, we still didn’t get it perfect, but life is a fluid thing, eh? We also got our RV about a year before we left our jobs, and lived in it while we stuck around, dry testing the idea.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Chantee: RV maintenance is… an issue… for us. My husband is not very technical so he can’t often do things around the house – auto maintenance and repair, and anything electrical outside of the lightbulbs being changed goes to a shop. We call around and price stuff. We are Camping World ‘members’ but that’s because we like their neat stuff for the house. Probably the two worst things that happened to us – because we’re in a class c (overhead bunk) we’ve had two mishaps. The first one was due to an altitude choke on the engine. Happens in Ford models, as we now know. Getting a tow truck into Allegheny National Forest in PA was difficult at best. The next time our alternator died. We were lucky enough to make it to a Wal-Mart parking lot but had to wait till Monday (two days) to get a tow to a garage. It always happens on Saturday afternoon. Just take it easy. We found joy in the Chick-Fil-A across the street and walking Wal-Mart for nothing better to do until we could get on the road again. Problems aren’t so bad as long as no-one feels it’s a ‘must’ to be going and everyone can just kick back and enjoy the day.

Chantee: We’ve a 27 ft. class C. Our daughter sleeps – and sometimes plays – in her own bedroom, which is the bunk/loft. Then we have our own bedroom in the back. I wouldn’t put a family in less space. Everyone needs their privacy now and then. Now I would do a travel trailer or a fifth wheel. I’d have a slide. Because two foot of walking/playing space makes a rainy day a chore. The vehicle would be nice too. It’s a pain to always pack up your house to go do something. It wasn’t too much of a problem at first but then we added a dog. There’s a lot you can’t do with a dog – like leave it in your car or RV, unless it’s back at the campground with the AC on.

Chantee: We move about every 4-6 months, and usually 800 or more miles at a go. Now, we take it slowly, only about 4 hours of driving – at most – a night and always about the kiddo’s bedtime. It’s easier on us and our vehicles that way, plus it gives us time to explore the town we stop in every night.
I’m a bit of a nomad. I don’t like repeats, and my family is pretty accommodating about that. With the exception of visiting family or friends I try to never go the same way, or do the same stops, twice. There are those rare occasions where we loved something so much, or the same road is just necessary, though. For driving days we usually stay at Wal-Mart parking lots, Flying J’s or other larger truck stops, or the occasional highway rest stop. We dreamed we’d boondock the national forests, but getting a 27 footer in and out of those fire service roads turned out to be a bigger chore than it’s worth. Plus the gas to go that far ‘out of the way’ on hopes of finding a good spot is excruciating. When we’re settled we’re usually volunteering in exchange for a site at a State or National Forest park. Some are great, some aren’t, it’s kind of hit-or-miss there. I refuse to work more than 30 hours a week (total for the family) in exchange for a site, though. After that it’s just not worth it, if you look at it as paying for something in cash with what you could have earned.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Chantee: Usually my husband drives and I navigate because I’m better with the maps but I’m just as comfortable on the open road. We do avoid downtown areas – hitting a one way or tight turn on a car-lined street just stinks in an RV. We also like to take it easy on our engine, and the altitude choke is a problem still so we avoid certain altitudes and try to take it extra slow on curvy and hilly roads. That really depends on your rig, though, and how long you want your engine to last.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Chantee: We’re pretty happy so far, at one year travelling, plus. We’re coming off the road for a couple of years for some extra cash – a new rig’s in the works for us and my husband wants to start a business venture. My daughter thinks it stinks to have to meet and leave so many people behind but she’s getting to be great with pen-pals. As far as meeting our needs for more family time it’s been exceptional. We’ve been able to stop working on meeting the bills and start putting our family first.

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Chantee: We generally have the ‘Say what you need’ policy. If someone needs space they say so, and then they retire to their room to get it. Or go outside. I haven’t found it to be a problem, except for the kiddo’s desire to be in the bathroom with me, which doesn’t work.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Chantee: We visit family and friends when we come by, sometimes going a couple of hundred miles out of our way to do so. We’ve been blessed with visits from some family too. If they know where we are in advance some of our friends and family will manage to take a vacation and camp out with us. I use Facebook to keep up with everyone, my husband uses MySpace, and then I usually send out mass emails every few months to keep in touch. We have a family plan so we call people a lot and we ended up with an air card too. WiFi was just too spotty, or too pricey as a lot of places want you to pay for the use. My daughter draws pictures and mails them along with the letters she writes her friends. She prefers to get ‘real’ correspondence but for the rest of us the phone and email seem to be working fine. My Mother and I are, obviously, very, very close so I was worried about that at first. Sometimes the distance makes me sad but a long chat on the phone will cure that, and she’s the best about taking a vacation to see us.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Chantee: Jade gets homesick the most. She misses her cousin, my brother’s daughter, who’s just 2 weeks apart from her, her sister, and her Grandmama. We do a lot of letters and phone calls and I even made her a travel map with pictures of all the amazing things she’s done. It doubles as a geography lesson and a memory book. She knows most kids don’t get what she does in terms of experiences, so it’s a mixed bag for her. A day at the playground will often cure those ‘missed friends’ blues. My husband is also very social, but he’s learning how to keep in touch long distance and that means a lot in terms of re-connecting with dear old friends he was barely in touch with before, plus he gets to add new people he meets to that list. I try to be sensitive to his needs and make sure that if he wants to go ‘out’ to be around others he can. As for myself I sometimes get homesick, and then I just start thinking of that large list of reasons I wanted out so bad. Keeping that list around is handy for those ‘blue’ days. Nathan and I do a lot of propping each other up when we question our choices. We try to stay real about the pros and the cons and evaluate it honestly, so when one is too far on one side of the fence we serve as good reminders for the other. I’m blessed, though, with a great relationship. My husband and I have always enjoyed each other’s company for inspiration and socialization.

Chantee: We have a small amount of savings, which dwindles with every trip. My husband is an excellent Barista, so he works part to full time to pay the few bills we have and put food on the table. I work the rest of the time in the campground, helping in visitor centers and cleaning toilets and ‘organically trashed’ campsites. We prefer to work hard, save up, then travel as we want to, but it’s not for everyone.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Chantee: We own a motorcycle, something we picked up after the Allegheny incident, for extra transport. It’s good for an emergency, and for Nathan’s drive to work. Now that we have a dog we’ve found that it’s absolutely necessary to have a second vehicle. We have to drive separately due to towing the Motorcycle already. We’re usually about 20+ miles to town so bicycles aren’t the easiest mode of transport but we do have them as well for fun.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Chantee: We have a dog. He was a tester dog from my sister in law. He’s good for the family, although not too bright and doesn’t much care what’s done to him (including being my daughter’s playground play mate) as long as he’s fed and loved. He’s also a very small dog (14 lbs). I couldn’t deal with bigger in the space we have.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Chantee: If we’d found perfect we might not be on the road anymore!
All together we agree on Assateague Island State Park on the Maryland coast. Hobe Sound, FL was a great place to stay the winter and learn to Kayak. Savannah, GA was a wonderful city to drive through, but we found we didn’t like staying there as much. And our daughter loved Myrtle Beach for it’s MagiQuest game.

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Chantee: Nathan and I are, separately, on Facebook and MySpace. We don’t blog or carry our own website although I do make them for friends on occassion, we’re kind of quiet in that respect. As for our next adventure we’re at the point where we’re enjoying turning our hobbies into our lives. My husband is finishing up a book he’s dreamed of writing for 14 years, and he’s decided that after that he’s going to turn his other passion – movies – into his job by starting a production company. I’m working on a novel and have several other things written. Writing has always been a passion for me, but before life always got in the way. One nice thing about stepping away from everyone and everything you knew is that you get to focus on what’s important. And that leaves a lot of time for self discovery.

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RV Family — The North Family (currently in SD)

Lisa — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:00:28 +0000

Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family. How long has your family lived in an RV? What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Kelly: We are a family with one 3 year old and two 90 lb dogs living full time in a 36′ motorhome. My husband is a helicopter pilot which takes him across the country to seasonal positions so we decided to sell it all and travel along with him to keep the family together. We’ve been on the road since last Oct. and we are currently in the Black Hills, SD and he is flying Mt. Rushmore/Badlands tours and this Fall we will be taking a month or so to travel and then be in the Smoky Mountains in TN for another touring job.

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?
Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Kelly: We don’t homeschool yet but we do lots of outside activities and take advantage of what each location has to offer (parks, museums, zoos). Our home address is my parents’ address in TN where we get our mail and our cars are registered. We had a 5 bedroom home in Atlanta and we liquidated all but keepsakes and those are in storage and the Mother In Law’s home. We have an article on our blog about liquidating that was featured in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Kelly: We read about RV life on the internet, RV Forum, Families on the Road and then just did it and learned by experience. We knew there were going to be several years of moving around for his career and we knew we wanted to be together. With two very large dogs apartments weren’t an option and some of his jobs may be two weeks on/two weeks off so an RV was the most feasible option for us.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Kelly: Once we hit the road we ran into some problems that mostly revolved around leaks…our home is an 01 so some seals and caulking were dried and cracked. We also did quite a bit of remodel on it over the year. We took out a lounge chair, installed a ceiling mounted curtain and put in a toddler bed for Caleb to sleep. He loves his “room” and we put underbed boxes under his bed for toys. We also got a storage ottoman to make the couch area more comfortable and it also stores toys. We took out the carpet and installed Pergo (much cleaner with the dogs and kid and looks great). We reupholstered the furniture for a more modern look, installed flat screen TVs, put vinyl sticky tiles on the kitchen backsplash and painted the whole place to get rid of the heinous wallpaper. We also removed the window boxes and added fabric valences. One of our favorite updates was laminating an antique map onto our kitchen table.

Kelly: Our home is 36′ with two slides. If we had to do it over again we might get one that has two slides in the rear bedroom because our dogs sleep on the floor back there and the floor gets pretty crowded. There is a door between the main living area and the back bathroom/bedroom and that provides privacy since our son sleeps in the front area. Also provides privacy if one of us wants to be alone in the back. Our office area is in the back also.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Kelly: Brian usually does the driving but I’ve done it some on the highways. Brian is an excellent driver and has little intimidation about driving cities as long as we take it slow. We do, however, try to avoid very small towns and small gas stations that may put us in a bind. We tow an Xterra with a bike rack behind that so it’s intimidating for me to pull in and out of gas stations.

If we are headed to a destination we stay in roadside/commercial campgrounds or Walmart/Flying J parking lots. We also enjoy State Parks and campgrounds that are kid friendly if we are staying a couple of days. Right now we are staying in the parking lot of where Brian works. When we aren’t stationary with a job we try to make our route around cities we haven’t seen, friends around the country and natural areas we’ve heard would be cool. We love being on the road and we get a little cranky after being stationary for too long. Our son loves the travel also and we tell him we are going to go find a new “yard”. He calls it our BigTruckNewHouse named by him when we first bought it and the name just stuck. The dogs don’t like the driving down the road part but they are getting accustomed. When we are in small campgrounds their life is a bit tougher because they are always leashed. Sometimes in the more rustic campgrounds we can find a field to let them run.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Kelly: We try to go “home” to TN every few months to visit the Grandpeople but this Fall we’ll be living in that area for a number of months. We use Verizon aircard for internet and Direct TV. Our mail comes to my Mom and she faxes it to me (www.myfax.com is an excellent resource for this). We have few bills but things like insurance and bank statements we get online. Health insurance is a bit of a problem because it is independent insurance with little to no coverage out of state. Knock on wood…we haven’t had health problems but would most likely use a walk-in clinic if needed. The dog vaccinations we can get at places like Petco as a walk-in.

Grocery stores are always an interesting part of our travel. We don’t use coupons like we used to but I can look up the local grocery store sale ad and still shop sales for food. We eat out only about once a week (three year olds don’t love sitting in restaurants!). We often park in a rest area and make a sandwich or even if we hit McDonald’s we’ll eat in the house.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Kelly: I miss my big kitchen in the old life, Brian misses his big TV. I miss having a zillion toys for Caleb and a large yard for a sandbox and pool. I did take a plastic storage tub and fill with playsand and we take that along with us for his sandbox. We also miss babysitters!! But the things we miss are minor compared to the life we have. We are blessed to have each other in such a close way and we get to experience the various cultures and beautiful land across the country that so many people don’t even know about. I often say…I hope Caleb remembers even just a little bit of this experience. And I reccomend liquidation to everyone!

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Kelly: You can read more about how we started and a little about our day to day life at www.bigtrucknewhouse.blogspot.com and I have a small blog that I’ve shared some things like traveling with toddlers and dogs and housekeeping/cooking in an RV at www.kellynorth.blogspot.com. I hope you can read a little and laugh with us.

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RV Family — The Swartz Family from PA, USA and South Africa

Lisa — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:00:33 +0000

Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Nathan: As our website claims, we’re a young family of three living in an RV. My wife, Olivia, is a South African who I met online while she was living in Brighton, England, where I went to visit her and we fell in love. I quickly imported her back to the USA, where my son and I lived in Erie, PA. He is almost 8 now and has been such a great kid to agree to come along on this trip with us. His personality has really begun to develop well with life on the road, as he’s very extroverted and seems to make friends with half the people in a park before we even get our rig set up.

Olivia and I are both web designers, which we do to pay our way as we travel around and also do a lot of non-profit stuff for companies we like. Olivia works with a bunch of overseas organizations helping in areas with medical aid and the like. I mostly do stuff for bicycling and transportation advocacy groups, as I like the idea of a “less cars” world. All three of us are into crafty, handmade, homemade, and other such simple things, as well.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Nathan: We’ve been rolling around in the Dutchess, our 29′ home improvement project on wheels, for a year and a couple of months now.

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Nathan: We’ve been around, but have spent the vast majority of our time in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Nice and hot and so much to explore just in those areas. I particularly love Texas, and as a bleeding heart, tree kissing liberal I never thought that would be the case. Texas is not all guns and pickup trucks, there is so much diversity there (especially in Austin, but West Texas too) and the Southwest in general is full of artists, loners, vagabonds, dreamers, from all walks of life, people who just seem to be drawn to the desert in search of simplicity, beauty, or a dry place to die.

We’ve also spent considerable time rolling around our home state of Pennsylvania, and Nevada and Oregon as well. This summer we parked our RV for a couple of months and rode trains, planes and automobiles all over the country, exploring some places we wanted to go but not necessarily drag the 7mpg RV across 10 states just to see.

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Nathan: I like the term roadschoolers, but homeschoolers is apt as well. Roadschooling invokes a swirling cacophony of terms like transient, gypsy and adventure and such things excite me. We spend relatively little actual dedicated time to teaching Tristan. That is, a typical day of “school” for him consists of reading some pages in a book and doing maybe one other activity, like drawing or knitting or working with clay. But the couple of hours a day he spends on that is more about having a little structure to the school day, because I’ve heard that’s important and he does seem to like knowing that he’s “in school.”

But the vast majority of lessons are learned in every day situations, often with his natural curiousity as an impetus to a lesson. He might mention something about how it’s cool that an animal has a particular feature, and that could lead into a discussion on evolution. If he sees some people working in a garden and asks what a tool is for, that could get us onto the topic of how humans came upon agriculture and how it’s changed over the centuries or the differences between my life growing up on a farm vs. his growing up largely in cities. It’s fun, because it often leads me to look up things on Wikipedia at night, I read through them, and the next day I can share what I’ve learned with him. So we both get a lot out of it. Not to mention just the value of building this father/son relationship which I think is really important.

Wright on Time Books: How well does homeschooling work while living on the road?

Nathan: Wonderfully. Being on the move quite often makes it very difficult to have a set schedule, which is something I love about it all, and homeschooling seems to work best when you take advantage of existing situations (like I mentioned above), not trying to force situations. Teaching Tristan when he’s in the mood to learn is getting 100% return on your little investment. Trying to force a kid to do math problems when he’s watching a dog run around outside with a frisbee isn’t, in my opinion, the best way to get him interested in the subject. As adults we have the freedom to learn when we want to, to play when we want to, (if only the normal adult life allowed us to work when we want to as well, I believe more people would be much happier). We develop interests and pursue those interests, we don’t say “I hate baseball but as an American I must like baseball, so I’m going to play baseball now.” We take up the hobbies we like. I’m just trying to get him to figure out what he likes and have the drive to try new things out.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Nathan: We don’t have a real house anywhere, no. We are thinking of moving to Austin for awhile and trying to get a more permanent RV spot there. Somewhere we can return and call home if only for the purposes of calling it home. I think we really all just want to take a few months to grow some roots, though, and Austin has been a very gracious host to us in the past.

When we first took off, we got rid of probably 90% of our stuff. We have a few things in storage in a friend’s basement in Pittsburgh. We will quite possibly never see those things again, other than to move them out of her basement and to a Good Will, though. I think if you can go a year without needing something, you probably don’t need it. But nostalgia prevented me from getting rid of every thing, I suppose.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Nathan: I’m sure we looked around the web, but we didn’t do a whole lot of research. Mostly we just tried to find an RV that met all of our needs and was within our budget. I was 100% confident in what we were doing and our ability to do it. Well, after both of my parents were behind the idea, I was 100% confident. At first I was worried that they’d think we were nuts, or doing wrong by our son, but when they accepted it – and they’re not exactly out of the box thinkers, having lived in small towns and farms in rural Pennsylvania all of their lives – I knew we were okay.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Nathan: Hah! That is the largest downside to this whole thing. 14 miles into our journey our transmission caught on fire and we had to have it replaced twice in a month. We’ve got a rubber roof, which the previous owner painted with normal paint, which is a big no-no, and we have problems with leaks when it rains hard (again, probably a reason we stick to the desert so much). The engine died on us in the middle of the desert, far from cell reception once. Every screw in the place has been shaken lose from driving and I feel like I’ve always got a list of 6 or 7 things that need to be done. I do a lot of the repair stuff, with what limited knowledge of such things as I have. Olivia has primarily taken on the roof-fixing responsibilities. Anything engine related though, we rely on the kindness of strangers and, more often, the town’s local mechanic.

The most reoccurring maintenance issue, actually, is dealing with our holding tanks. The places where our lives’ waste goes. Our sewage can get really stinky, and requires a lot of cleaning out and recleaning. But that has slowly gone from giant pain in the [rear] to just another part of life, annoying at times but a small price to pay for the rewards of travel.

Nathan: 29′ long, 9′ wide, much taller than any of our short little statures require. It’s about 15 years old but the interior is in pretty good shape, aside from drawers that fall out and doors that swing open randomly while moving. It’s the most awful combination of mauve and seashore green, and I was gung ho to redo the interior when we first got it but more and more I could care less about the look of our home and just that it’s functioning as it is intended: a small place to sleep and eat, the world is our playground and having a less-than-completely-comfortable home helps to get me out of it and exploring.

When you walk through our front door (um, only door) which is positioned about center in the layout, you are immediately in the very small kitchen. There’s enough space here to make small meals and Olivia works wonders, baking homemade bread and soups and cookies and kumbucha in a space that would fit into most homes’ pantry space. To the right is the lounge, which consists of a small pullout couch (where I’m typing this actually) with a window above it which is great for having a morning coffee or just browsing the web, looking up to watch the clouds go by or whatever mountain or skyscrapers might be kind enough to fill the view. Across from the couch is the kitchen table, which can comfortably seat four but we’ve usually only got three, so a large fruit basket that’s kept fairly well stocked takes up one seat. Lots of web designing, drawing and craft work is done at that table.

You can see right into the cockpit from there, Tristan rides at the kitchen table, I always drive, and Olivia is technically supposed to handle navigation, but seems to be more comfortable in the role of simply being driven around while I fumble with the steering wheel and atlas. Above the two front seats is a long, narrow bed and some cabinets that all serve as Tristan’s very own bedroom space. That was important to me, that he had some of his own space, not just that he would sleep on the couch at night or whatever. I wanted him to know that this was his little corner to retreat to if he’d like, and to know how much space he had for his toys and things, important as he needed to realize that the days of bringing home piles of plastic every holiday were over.

Traveling the other direction from the kitchen we’ve got a great, large bathroom, which serves many functions from storage closet to dressing room to actual bathroom. Behind that is Olivia and I’s bedroom, with a short queen sized bed and some storage. For being so small, the layout actually can feel quite roomy at times.

Nathan: We typically live in places we like for two weeks to a month, sometimes as long as 3 months. Other places we might only stay the night if we’re on our way to somewhere we think is better, or a couple of days if we’re all spent on driving. Gas prices and campgrounds are great ways to gauge what we need to do next. If we want to save money, we’ll try and find a campground that has a $250 or $300 / month rate. Stay there a month, no money needs to be spent on gas and the rent is cheap, so we can save up a ton and maybe go and stay at more expensive places or travel a bit further the next month. But all in all, our moods, not our wallets, seem to dictate where we’re going. The more a place has to offer, the longer it’ll take us to get it out of our system, I guess.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Nathan: I am the only licensed driver in our little group. I don’t like driving, well, I don’t like driving a lot. For one, prior to this experience I hadn’t owned a car for about three years while living in Pittsburgh and found it incredibly liberating. No insurance, high gas prices were nothing more than radio talk show filler to me, no worrying about where to park or having too many drinks to drive home. On the other hand, I love roadtrips, but being in shotgun, to me, is a reward for having driven all morning. Now that I am always driving if we’re moving, I’d rather just not do it at all. To that affect, we usually don’t drive more than 3 hours a day and I always try and take 2 lane highways. I hate the Interstate, for a plethora of reasons, but mostly it boils down to the fact that the US Highway system, those 2 lane, non-divided roads, are winding, go through the most beautiful of America’s landscape and you actually get to see towns, real life towns, not the perimeter Walmarts and McDonalds and giant gas station depots that surround the Interstates.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Nathan: We’ve been living and traveling in the RV for a little over a year. We plan to continue living in the RV, but are going to take a few months break from traveling while I try and fix up a much smaller camper van. Since we seem to return to Austin every few months anyway, I just think that having a van we can travel in for a few weeks or a month will be cheaper and easier than hauling around our giant RV, which can sit patiently and wait for our return when we do go off.

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Nathan: You learn to require less privacy, for one. But aside from that, if Olivia needs some time to herself, she can go and work from a coffee shop. If I do, I typically go or a bike ride or just sit outside of the RV and work. Tristan rarely requires privacy, for him, he wants attention, but he’s very good at amusing himself and exploring parks we live in when he can tell we need time to ourselves. We’ll also just ask him to go play as the two of us need some time together, and we’re getting better and better at it everyday, I think.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Nathan: I still have a few really close friends from high school, and am used to keeping in touch with people and using them as an excuse to visit their various corners of the country. Email, Facebook, text messages, there are so many ways to keep in touch now that I often feel like I’m still close friends with some people I haven’t seen in years. We visit our friends in Pittsburgh a couple of times a year, we’ve got lots of friends in Portland and Lake Tahoe, so there are some places we’ll always be returning to. And some friendships are just fine over Facebook.

It’s funny, actually, being on this grand adventure and all, because of Facebook and our website, we’ll go to tell people some stories and they’re like “Yeah, I know, I read it on your blog.”

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Nathan: Only in two respects, and very slightly: I love Pittsburgh and tried to be very active in keeping that city progressing along. It’s an amazing place, it’s a secret and most people around the country think of PGH as a smokey old factory town, which it isn’t at all. So I kind of regret hearing about all of the great advances it’s making with bike lanes, the park system, transit, lots of cool stuff happening that I’m missing out on. But I know it’ll all be there if/when we move back someday.

The other thing I miss is just having close friends you can meet at a bar or whatever. I’ve gotten pretty good at meeting and making conversation with strangers over the past year, but sometimes you just want someone you can easily talk to, or not even have to talk to, just hang around with, and not have to “meet” someone. But I love this life and feel blessed for all it’s given me and my family.

Nathan: We pay our expenses the same as anyone else, US Currency.

Olivia and I are both independent, freelancer web designers with decently successful little businesses. A couple of laptops, some Sprint air cards for Internet and finding enough time to work when there are Grand Canyons and Rocky Mountains and all types of fun things right outside of your window is the hardest part.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Nathan: No tow vehicles, just three bicycles, two of which are typically with flat tires at all times. The desert is harsh on bicycle tires, but we are well accustomed to walking 4 or 5 miles a day, which we even did in Pittsburgh. We look for places with good public transit and ride our bikes when we can’t easily walk to a place.

I recently bought a little scooter, though, and we might get it hooked up on the back of the RV, but probably not. It’s just being stored at my mom’s place right now, though I’m going to ride it from Colorado to Austin in a few weeks, just for the fun of doing something like that.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Nathan: No pets. We’ve almost inherited a dog or two, in particular a stray mutt followed my son and I around this little town, Marathon TX, when we stayed there last February for a month. We all fell in love with him but he was just a puppy – with paws the size of human hands – so we figured he’d probably turn into Clifford the Big Red dog and therefore had to say goodbye to him when we left.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Nathan: Best small town: Bisbee, AZ. Best outdoorsy area: Grand Canyon. Best city: Austin, TX. But there are other great ones too: Ohiopyle, PA, Tahoe, Flagstaff, AZ and Marathon, TX come to mind.

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Nathan: We’ve got videos, photos and we write about our travels at tumblewagon.com. Twitter and Facebook exist, but tumblewagon.com is where it’s all at, really.

Next great adventure…we’ve all got so many dreams, so little time to do them all it seems. Olivia will be hiking the Appalachian Trail next summer, and that should be an amazing experience but she’ll be gone for 3 months / time over the next two summers so it’ll be a bit hard for us all too. But she’s an amazing hiker, on these long distance hikes, she’s walked across England and done some trails in PA as well. Tristan is particularly excited about starting a soccer league in Austin this fall, so that’s his main focus right now. I’m doing the above mentioned scooter trip and then want to fix up a van so that we have a simpler, cheaper way of traveling when we don’t want to bring the whole rig along with us. I also want to get dropped off in Transylvania, when Olivia does her big hike, and hitch hike to Portugal. Just to see what it would be like. I haven’t explored much of Europe, or anything outside of the US, and really want to get some more stamps in my passport.

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RV Family — The Baehr Family

Lisa — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:00:33 +0000

Yet another great set of “20 Questions for RV Families”. To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail your answers (along with a family photo) to info at wright on time books dot com.

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Tricia: We are the 5 Baehrs, twin boys age 10 Birke & Brandt and 7 yr. old girl Bailey. Dad John works in the industrial flooring industry (epoxies & such) Mom, Tricia responsible for the 3 kids, meal prep, campground procuring, adventures, art and domestic stuff.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Tricia: We’ve been on the road for 1 year now.

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Tricia: TN, AL, GA, FL, NC, MO, VA

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Tricia: We like the term Roadschoolers…we lean more to the unschooling instead of a curriculm based agenda…all of life is a learning experience and much more of it on the road, volunteering for non-profits and organic farms are a couple of things we particularly enjoy and seem to learn the most from the folks at these places.

Tricia: We use the internet quite a bit…on rainy days local libraries are fun and usually have a lot of local flavor to them. We find a lot of used text books in second hand stores, although my kids are 5th/2nd grade they’ve been known to pick up college text books. We are learning together that acquiring knowledge is a very personal thing and the ability to understand different concepts is not based on a person’s age or grade level. We love books and probably have too many although we do switch them out at times…and they are heavy to travel with.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Tricia: We do not have a home base…we have a state of residence where we umbrella under what our state calls a C.R.S (church related school) We sold 98% of our possessions and we do have a climate controlled storage unit with family heirlooms, photographs and out of season gear in it.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Tricia: The Families on the Road website was what inspired us to live as a FOTR. Whenever we read the stories on that site it touched our hearts in a way that we knew it was the life for us. Also The Story of Stuff was inspirational as well. Another book was Full-Time RVing…we planned for 3 years to live this lifestyle

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Tricia: Well, let’s just put it this way…it’s much easier that dealing with a 5 bedroom house and a 3/4 acre lot!! Learning about grey/black tanks was probably the biggest challenge. We all work together as a team. The kids and I are able to do everything it takes to get the RV ready to travel…however my husband and the boys take care of all the outside stuff while my daughter and I work on “battening down the hatches” on the inside. It’s definitely a group effort; it teaches the children the importance of team work.

Tricia: Our RV is a 28 ft. travel trailer with no slides. It has a full size bed in the front and 3 bunks in the back. In the center is a couch (that can also double as a bed), a dinette (into bed also) and the kitchen area.

We purposely bought a used RV to start out to learn the ropes a bit. After a year we have researched quite a bit and visited many RV dealerships looking for the perfect match for us. What we’ve found that we think would be perfect for our family is a little longer (32-33ft.) with at least 2 slides…a U-shaped dinette and an outside entrance into the bathroom. We still think we like the travel trailer vs. a drivable RV or a 5th wheel. An arctic package is something else we need for when my husband has work in colder climates in the fall/winter season. Storage is a big factor too. We have found that several manufacturers are producing floor plans that we like.

Tricia: It depends on the job but the longest we’ve been any where without traveling has been 6-8 weeks. Gas is not really a factor. When planning this lifestyle we budgeted for up to $5 a gallon. Campground fees are a factor depending…if my husband is on a job, then his company pays for the campground which is still less expensive than they would be paying for a hotel. Occasionally we boondock at a truck stop if we get someplace late and leave early. We basically go where his work takes him – he has worked mostly in the Southeast since we’ve been on the road the past year.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Tricia: I drive our F350 Truck most of the time pulling the RV when my husband is driving a work vehicle and his work crews. I was a little nervous at first but now it’s no big deal. Cities haven’t been a problem but we haven’t really been on any really narrow roads yet so I guess I’d be okay. If we are traveling to a new job/company then my husband drives unless he needs a break.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Tricia: We’ve been on the road exactly a year (Aug 08-09). At least until our kids get to be high school age and then we will let them take part in the decision about what we do next… Right now I would say this is the BEST way to live – maybe I have gypsy blood – We all love it!

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Tricia: There are partitions, bathroom doors, etc. in the RV. We all have times when we just want a little space alone and we work that out together.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Tricia: telephone and internet…of course facebook!! We do visit when we can and if they are near they will visit us. Last Christmas we rented a cabin in the mountains. Birthdays are spent however the birthday person wants…I had the last birthday and we all watched the sunrise over the Atlantic ocean in the early morning then we watched the sunset on the river and the marshes off the coast of Georgia.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Tricia: Sometimes they miss the place and the people but not the life. We talk about living in the moment and enjoying each moment…that the past is the past. One of our twin boys wants to be an organic farmer and he would like to have earth that is his to grow stuff on – I circumvent this by letting him volunteer at organic farms.

Tricia: My husband works full-time in the industrial flooring industry which required him to travel extensively prior to us being a family on the road. We just joined him! I do a little face painting for fun and a little extra cash when I can…but it is more for a creative outlet than anything else. The kids really haven’t discovered a way to make money yet, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t thought about it!

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Tricia: We have towable RV….big truck and travel trailer, we do have bicycles that we transport with us.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Tricia: We had two cats but one recently got out at a truck stop and we lost him, it was very sad, we looked for hours. He was always a bit skittish and we kind of knew there might come a time that that would happen. The other cat is awesome, loves to travel, never gets lost and loves being with her family!

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Tricia: We have a web-site www.5bearsgousa.blogspot.com also a blog (not very good at blogging) we twitter/twitpics too. My husband & I both have facebook pages. We are getting ready to go to the Augusta, GA area for a week or so and then to visit family in Wisconsin…after that who knows??!?!

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RV Family — The Showalter Family from FL, USA

Lisa — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:22:59 +0000

Here’s another great set of “20 Questions for RV Families”. To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail your answers (along with a family photo) to info at wright on time books dot com.

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Showalter Family: We are a family of Dad, Mom, Ashleigh, Ambir, Aric, Auburn and Austin. Only four of us are living in the RV though. Those four are Dad, Mom, Auburn-16 and Austin-14.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

Showalter Family: We have been doing this for a year now.

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Showalter Family: USA States we have visited so far: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Oregon

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Showalter Family: We are homeschoolers, definitely roadschoolers and also unschoolers

Wright on Time Books: How well does homeschooling work while living on the road?

Showalter Family: It works beautifully!

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Showalter Family: We do have a home base, without the home of course. Florida was our home state before we did this, so we still consider this our home base. We sold 95% of our possessions and have the little bit that we kept in a storage unit.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Showalter Family: We use all different resources so it is hard to imagine listing them all. We use maps, both online and hard copies, and we use google often. The library has become a favorite resource because we can download books and movies for free and view/listen to them at our convenience. We love books like the one you wrote, although your book is the first of its kind that we know of.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Showalter Family: The maintenance of the RV has been very minimal at this point. We bought our RV new so it doesn’t have many miles on it yet. The most difficult aspects of the handling of the RV are probably the hooking it up to travel and emptying the sewer. Dad does both of those things. When we get to a new place, the girls do the inside “set up” and the guys do the outside work. When we pack up to leave, we split the work load the same way. Dad takes care of the truck, Mom takes care of the inside of the RV and the teens each take care of their rooms and their bathroom.

Showalter Family: Our RV is 42 feet long. It is a fifth wheel which means the front end hooks onto a hitch on the back of our truck. We have a main bedroom, main bathroom with a shower, living room-dining room-kitchen combo and then the teens each have a bunk room of their own in the back with a half bath in between.

I would have wanted a smaller RV because they are easier to pull, but we do enjoy the space that our RV gives us and we each get space with the floor plan we have so we do think we picked the best possible choice for our family.

Showalter Family: We move, on average, about every 12 days. Gas prices and campground costs do affect this, but that is a minor consideration for us. Weather if the biggest factor on how fast we move. We like to stay long enough to get a feel for an area, yet move before we get too bored. We always stay in campgrounds. We always seek new places to visit.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Showalter Family: Dad and Mom do the driving, although so far Dad is the only one that has driven while the RV is hooked up. It is an issue at times driving such a large vehicle. We have to consider our route carefully. Bridges can be an issue if they are too low. It is harder to drive in the mountains. We try to avoid the curvy/narrow roads up mountains when possible but we don’t let them keep us from seeing what we want to either.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Showalter Family: We have been on the road for a year and will do it as long as it is working well for our family. It has worked even better than we thought it might. We LOVE it!

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Showalter Family: We have learned to respect boundaries well. If someone needs space, then we give it to them because we know we want the same in return.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Showalter Family: We mostly keep in touch through the computer and postcards. We have visited some family members and will continue to do so. We spent the main holidays with family last year. We have missed birthdays at times and that has been very sad to us.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Showalter Family: We do get homesick, but it is normally missing the people and not so much our old life. We deal with it by talking about it, venting when we need to and remembering that there is positives/negatives to anything in life.

Showalter Family: We pay for our living expenses through Dad’s job. Dad still works full-time and Mom will work here and there part-time. We work all year long. Auburn has found paying jobs by doing dog training for people.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Showalter Family: We have bicycles that we carry on a bike rack that fits on the back of the RV.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Showalter Family: We have a dog, a bird and a cat. We didn’t get any of our pets until we went on the road, so it is the only life they know. They all seem to do very well with it.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Showalter Family: Dad-Maine and Yosemite, Mom-Yosemite, Austin-Arizona, California, Texas and Maine, Auburn-Yosemite

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Showalter Family: You can learn more about us through our blog: http://showustheworld.blogspot.com/

Our next great adventure is to work our way up the coast of Oregon and Washington!

Thank you for letting us be a part of this neat venture of yours!

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RV Family — The BareNakedFamily from TX, USA

Lisa — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:00:04 +0000

Here’s the second set of “20 Questions for RV Families”. To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail me your answers (along with a family photo).

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

BareNakedFamily: We are a family of five that traded one American Dream for another leaving the corporate world after a nine year career to find our own Family business. We gave away most of our belongings, cars, and a psycho cat and moved into a 37 foot RV with three kids, two dogs, and one cat. Pulling the kids out of school we had no idea about homeschooling, but knew we’d figure it out along the way. We launched our website for friends and Family to keep up with our travels and became known as the BareNakedFamily which represented shedding material stuff to find our American Dream. After traveling around North America for five years, we homebased in Austin, TX in a 545 sq. ft house. We worked and created many different successful Family businesses on the road, but are now fulltime employees of our three kids who are on the verge of launching their first businesses into the world. We are giving back to them what they’ve given to us all these years , the freedom and support to find our place in Family business.

Wright on Time Books: How long has your family (or did your family) live in an RV?

BareNakedFamily: We traveled for about five years before moving into backpacks and living in Mt. Shasta, CA for a winter with fellow RV’ers in their homebase.

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

BareNakedFamily: Our Family traveled to 43 states, Canada, and little bit of Mexico. Canada becoming a favorite for us and our dream place.

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

BareNakedFamily: We prefer not to give our Family a label because we take something from all those categories and combine it for a well rounded approach to education. In the first few years of traveling, we were really into identifying ourselves however we could, making a statement about who we were and what we stood for only to realize that was still a very conditioned part of our old life and no one but us really cared. It’s like we matured and became comfortable with just being who we were, label or not. And that helps people understand you, your way of education, and your way of living a lot easier.

Wright on Time Books: How well does homeschooling work while living on the road?

BareNakedFamily: Ridiculously well. It made homeschooling so much easier to have the reality of America available at our fingertips. We saw Niagara Falls and rode to the bottom of the Falls, studied the witch trials in Salem, Mass, been to the battlefields of Gettysburg, witnessed the recovery efforts of 9-11 with our Dad who was working at Ground Zero, been in the world’s highest freestanding building, seen the chair Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in, watched the Space Shuttle Columbia lift off and never return, driven with the Navajo Indians on their lands, squeezed into cracks of the earth and witnessed the Slot Canyons from the inside, stood above the Grand Canyon, looked into the Meteor Crater, driven the stunning roads around the Pacific ocean, hung out with many stars in Hollywood, followed some of our favorite bands, and played tag at rest areas at 3:00 am. And we did all this with no schedule making it easy to achieve and really take advantage of.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Yes, we have a homebase. But choose to ignore the politics of homeschooling and couldn’t tell you whether it was important legally or not. We are too busy with life and homeschooling to worry about the nay sayers. We pulled our kids out of school and never looked back or cared about what the government thought about any of it.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

BareNakedFamily: Our belief in the importance of our Family. No matter what, that was the driving force in all that we did. They way we were living in the typical American Dream was literally tearing us apart and we knew we couldn’t let that break us. With a desire to have a solid relationship with each other, raise our kids with principles and integrity, and create our own Family business that would afford us time and resource we simply relied on ourselves. It was trusting that we were doing the right thing for our Family and being solid in that. That’s what inspired us even on the days we were wondering what the [heck] we were doing. As we were getting ready to hit the road we found the Nodlands website and connected with how they did it. They were also a huge inspiration for us. We also used www.FamiliesOnTheRoad.com a lot teaching us about a few things before leaving.

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

BareNakedFamily: It can be very hard. We lost our brakes as we drove over the Hoover Dam and have broken down on highways all over the place and in the middle of nowhere. But, just like living in a house you have maintenance issues and make it work. We both had to handle any issues, because with a huge rig and three kids you need to be resourceful solving the problem quickly. It’s not a man thing or woman thing, it’s a we’re broken down in the middle of nowhere thing and we need to get outta here thing.

BareNakedFamily: Our RV was 37 ft. long and beautiful. It served us very well and was completely given a rock n roll makeover from its previous life of fake wood and boring decor. We couldn’t have asked for a better RV for our Family and it fit everything we needed just fine. Depending on whatever business we were doing at the time, it often stored all of our [things] just fine. Most of our stuff was able to be stored in the cabinets and closets of the RV and the little spaces everywhere.

We never wanted a bigger RV, but at times would have loved a slide. We lied about the length of our RV to fit into some parks along the way since a lot of places were built for smaller RVs but we were content with ours and knew we could always make it fit. Having bunk beds would have been a plus, but we managed just fine too. Austin slept on the dinette which folds into a bed and the girls slept on the couch which folded out into a double bed. Greg and I slept in the back room in the RV which had a queen size bed.

BareNakedFamily: For the first year we moved around a lot, eager to see new sights. When we found a place that we really liked we’d often stay for a month or two getting to learn what it was like to live there. Some of our favorite places we often went back to and stayed another few months again and again. We also followed the weather a lot. Gas prices and cost of campgrounds didn’t really affect the way we made our decisions, it was more about where we wanted to be. We paid a lot to stay in places like Malibu because we had a lot of fun and enjoyed it there quite a bit. Where else can you watch whales migrate while doing the laundry in an RV park perched above the Malibu coastline? We’ve stayed for months in one of the most expensive campgrounds, Campland on the Bay, in San Diego because our kids have a ball there and we have lots of RV friends there fulltime and stationary. Nothing like pulling back into a place where no one questions your lifestyle!

We managed to travel a route from West to East taking us through Texas quite a bit to see friends and Family. In those routes we’d often hit some of our regular places in the middle of nowhere and cute little towns that we loved visiting.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

BareNakedFamily: Greg and I both did the driving. It was intimidating at first to be driving such a large rig, but you quickly get the hang of it. I loved driving it and would settle in for hours of a long drive in the middle of the desert with a great CD. Greg loved driving at night and we’d often put the kids down to sleep giving us time to sit and talk into the night. One day we left San Antonio, TX and were loving driving and talking so much that nineteen hours later we had no idea where we had driven to. Looking around for road signs, we discovered that we had just pulled into Phoenix, AZ! Sure, I would have loved to avoid certain curvy roads like the Blue Ridge Parkway when we had to turn around blocking all lanes of traffic on a two lane road or realizing that in the Northeast, parkways are for passenger cars. We often tried to plan to take routes that would take us around some large cities and mountain passes.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

BareNakedFamily: When we left, we originally planned on being gone for a year trying to find a place that we wanted to settle down in and start a Family business. After that year, we ended up back in our starting town of Issaquah, WA, rented a place, and signed a six month lease thinking we would try to start a Family business from there. Moving everything out of the RV and into the house, we were content for six weeks before realizing that we could no longer be in a house and craved the excitement of the life we had created on the road. After spending that time setting up and living in the box again, we knew that this is not us anymore. Becoming bored and antsy, we found someone to take over our lease, packed up the RV, and left after only ‘settling’ for six weeks. Getting in the RV, we headed to Yellowstone National Park for the next month, disappearing into the woods to find out what we wanted to do. It was there in Yellowstone on a drive across a remote meadow as we were looking to spot our first grizzly bear that we coined the name BareNakedFamily for our existing cheesy family website. I say cheesy because ’til that point it was designed to ensure everyone else that we weren’t screwing up our kids trying to justify that the smiles and locations that we were traveling to, and not for our Family. That quickly changed when we coined our new name, finding the desire to share the more intimate thoughts and struggles of living on the road. We realized with this newfound name how much we had still been living for others, trying to assure them we knew what we were doing even though we weren’t always clear and we were ok with that. From that point on we have always been BareNakedFamily which has afforded us a life on the road and a life in small spaces when we’re not. So, yeah I’d say it worked to our liking!

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

BareNakedFamily: I assume if you’re talking about privacy, you’re asking how do you have alone time as a couple? In that case, it’s not about handling it at all to us. There is only opportunity to talk about life, love, and reality of what intimacy looks like. The only thing to handle is the installing of a lock on the inside of our bedroom door. We’ve been very clear with our kids about these kinds of things and don’t view it as a challenge or a taboo subject requiring handling. We’ve done what we’ve always done and if someone has questions, we simply answer them. Trust is important in a Family and in a tight space, so it’s our intention to always be honest and real with our kids giving them a pure representation of love.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

BareNakedFamily: We usually are able to see our friends and Family often by driving through and staying with them in driveways, campgrounds, and having them come stay with us. Keeping in touch with the Internet and cells phones make it easy to stay in touch with everyone as we have traveled. We’ve spent holidays with Family, but it depends on where we are at the time.

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

BareNakedFamily: Not really. There are aspects of our old life that we miss, but know that we could not go back because we are more awakened to what we love. Even in the hard times, we know that we are doing the right thing because we are doing it together, rather than doing it the way we used to which was all of us going in different directions. We usually discuss it if we’re having a hard time or missing some things, but always know that we are much happier than we were then.

BareNakedFamily: For us, we pay for our living expenses by working. Our work has looked a lot of different ways since being on the road, but always had the same goal ~ to work together as a Family. We’ve accomplished this by working in construction, vending at festivals and events, hotel management, had our own production company, started a non-profit, worked in retail, contract labor, and have been writers and publicists. Many people still ask us how we do it and the only answer that we’ve been able to give is to just do something. These positions we have created and we have often sold ourselves and our ways to others for the opportunity to do what we like and work together. There is no right way to do any of this and we’ve had to take jobs along the way to stay afloat, but always choosing the ones that would allow our Family to work together. There are many ways to work together on the road, but not one simple answer to give. If you can’t find the work, create it.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

BareNakedFamily: We towed our 74 VW Thing behind our RV along with the kids bicycles which were more often a pain to have. We got rid of bikes and bought bikes off and on along the way making it a very ridiculous part of RVing! There would be months the kids didn’t even touch them and Greg and I were tempted to haul them off in the middle of the night!

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

BareNakedFamily: Our two dogs and cat traveled with us for years on the road. Our cat loved being on the road and always came back to the RV wherever we were. She went missing in Arizona one day and we waited for her return for three weeks before having to move on. It was heartbreaking to think of leaving her there and not seeing her again, but we had to go. Three months later, some fellow RV’ers had found her body on hike right outside the RV park we had been staying at and retrieved her collar which had her name tag and vet info. They wrote a wonderful letter to our Family telling us how they found her and sent the collar back to our vet who then sent it to us.

Our two dogs traveled with us for years before moving on too. We had a ball having our pets travel with us and enjoyed watching them see new places with us. They were wonderful pets and are always missed by our Family.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

BareNakedFamily: We absolutely consider Canada one of the best places we have ever been to! We also love Salem, MA and have celebrated Halloween there making it a favorite for us. San Diego, Malibu, and Seattle are an all time go to place for us as well. These are the really special places to us.

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

BareNakedFamily: You can read more about us at www.BareNakedFamily.com and also find us on Facebook, first name Bare last name NakedFamily. They won’t let us have Naked in our user name, so we are winging it that way!

We are shifting our working together principles and letting our kids lead the way for the next chapter of BareNakedFamily. For years, they have followed us around the country with all the BareNakedFamily projects that we have created, giving us constant support and exemplary work ethic no matter what we were doing. We want to honor them and all their hard work and continue teaching them how to work for themselves doing what they love. So, in true BareNakedFamily style, we accepted the position to become fulltime employees to our kids helping them launch their passion and their art into the world, giving back to them what they have given to us all these years. It’s our intention to help them get out in the world and produce what they believe in using all of our talents and skills we’ve learned along the way. Now, when people ask us what do we do for a living, we simply tell them we work for our kids…You can read more about working for the kids and keep up with us and what we’re doing on www.BareNakedFamily.com.

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RV Family — The Taylor Family from TN, USA

Lisa — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:37:15 +0000

Welcome to the first “20 Questions for RV Families” post. To have your family featured, please read the questions and e-mail me your answers (along with a family photo).

This week’s guest was a classmate of mine from high school. She’s been on quite a trip with her husband and two adorable sons, and has an even bigger adventure coming up. Read on to find out more!

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Wright on Time Books: Tell me a bit about your family.

Jennifer: We are an adventure-loving family of 4 – Dan, Jennifer, Mason (9), and Griffin (8). We spent 2008 on a year-long tour of the United States in an RV studying American history.

Wright on Time Books: How long did your family live in an RV?

Jennifer: About 15 months

Wright on Time Books: What states/countries has your family traveled to?

Jennifer: Every state except DE, WV, AK, HI, ND, WI, MI, IA, NE

Wright on Time Books: Are you homeschoolers? Do you call yourselves roadschoolers? What type of homeschoolers are you (or do you prefer to not give your family a label)?

Jennifer: We are homeschoolers, always have been. While we were on the road we did refer to ourselves as roadschoolers, or as one newspaper article put it, road scholars. We don’t adhere to any one schooling philosophy, but rather a conglomerate of learning theories. We explore and learn as much as possible in a hands-on fashion, which explains why we would want to travel to study American history. We loved the idea of being able to run up Little Round Top or ride our bicycles where Paul Revere rode his horse.

Wright on Time Books: How well does homeschooling work while living on the road?

Jennifer: We found that our homeschool routine relaxed a bit on the road, mostly due to the extraordinary number of field trips we were taking. What we used to do in the morning might get done in the evening or while driving. We also found that our children read a lot more on the road than they had previously at home.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a “home base”? This is especially important for legal homeschooling, isn’t it? Did you sell all of your possessions, or keep things in storage?

Jennifer: Every fulltimer (as we’re called) must set up a state of residence. It is important to take into account the state’s homeschool laws, tax laws, etc before making a choice. We remained TN residents during our trip because we kept our home and rented it out. All of our belongings were put into storage. This is a more expensive route than selling everything, but if you don’t intend to stay on the road long-term, it’s a good option. We expected to come back home after about a year.

Wright on Time Books: What resources did you use both before you began your adventure and/or while you were on the road? Any particular books or websites that you couldn’t have lived without?

Jennifer: rv.net, familiesontheroad.com, rvparkreviews.com, googlemaps, GPS, Next Exit, National Parks Services

Wright on Time Books: How hard is it to deal with the maintenance of the RV? What are the most difficult aspects? Who handles what?

Jennifer: We were very fortunate that my husband could handle many of the minor repairs, like fixing leaks, repairing the fridge, fixing lights/fuses, etc. We did almost have a blow-out once, and that was tricky. Finding a reputable mechanic is very difficult. And… the repairs are very costly (we had a motorhome).

Jennifer: We had a 40 foot long Holiday Rambler Ambassador PLQ. It originally had an office in the very back of the coach, but we had the office furniture removed and put bunkbeds in its place. So, we all slept in the bedroom in the rear of the coach, the bathroom was in the middle, and the living room/kitchen/dining area were in the front. We loved it. The kids kept their clothes in 3 cabinets above the master bed. My husband and I kept our clothes in the closet cabinets opposite the bed. Toys were stored under the bottom bunk in bins. Off season items, extras and things we used infrequently were stored under the master bed. Towels were rolled and tucked into the space between the shower and the wall. There was a medicine cabinet and a cabinet over the toilet that held spare toilet paper and some other supplies. We kept our food in a small pantry cabinet and in 3 cabinets above the table. School supplies were kept over the sofa. Baking supplies went over the computer area. (we removed the smaller sofa to make way for a small desk which held the computer, monitor, printer, office supplies like stamps and pens, and our Wii) Cleaning supplies went under the sink. Most of the rest of what we brought was stored in big, plastic containers in the underbelly or “basement”.

Jennifer: We moved about once a week, sometimes more often than that. We were on the road when gas prices were at their peak in 2008, so although the gas prices didn’t determine when we moved, we often didn’t go as far as we had planned. We couldn’t afford the extra gas. Campground fees were higher than we anticipated. We averaged about $30/night for full hook-ups (that includes water, sewer, and electricity). Some places, near big cities, were much higher, and some places were much lower. That’s an average. We had a route planned before we left and we stuck to it pretty closely.

Wright on Time Books: Who does the driving? Do you ever have issues driving such a large vehicle? Do you avoid cities or curvy/narrow roads up mountains, or do you take them in stride?

Jennifer: My husband did all the driving (thank God), but I got pretty good at pulling the rig up when we were in line to register at a campground:) In addition to the 40 ft. motorhome, we towed a van. We had trouble once getting into a place that looked big enough for us to turn around, but really wasn’t. After several attempts to get out of that tight squeeze, we realized that our tow dolly was chewing up the front fenders of our van! We had to take the van off the dolly and then we were able to get out. We didn’t avoid mountainous terrain, although we were very careful going down long, steep inclines. As long as the roads were big enough for us and we knew there’d be a way to turn around we’d go just about anywhere.

Wright on Time Books: How long have you been on the road/plan to be on the road? Has this worked out to your liking?

Jennifer: We were on the road for about a year. In retrospect, I think the kids would have gotten more out of it from an academic standpoint, if we had been on the road longer – maybe 2 or 3 years. We all really enjoyed being on the road, but every 4 months or so we’d find that we needed a break. It was usually during those times that we’d roll into a town where we had friends and we’d spend lots of time at their houses, away from the RV. Just a few days in a different environment was enough to renew our spirits.

Wright on Time Books: How do you handle privacy issues while living in close quarters?

Jennifer: The bedroom had a door. The bathroom had a sliding door. If you wanted to be alone you could go to the bedroom and close the door or go outside. We put the kids to bed fairly early, around 9:00, and then Dan and I could stay up in the front of the coach alone for a few hours. Plus…the rule…always, always, KNOCK.

Wright on Time Books: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? Do you visit them? Do they visit you? Phone, e-mail, etc.? What about holidays and birthdays?

Jennifer: Email, cell phones. We visited several friends around the country that we hadn’t seen for a long time. Some of our family came to visit us in St. Louis when Griffin was in a play there. We stopped by my hometown and visited relatives. We met up with some friends that were also traveling in a motorhome on 2 different occasions. We spent Thanksgiving on our own, one of our kids celebrated his birthday with family, one of our kids celebrated his birthday with friends. We came home for Christmas…hung our stockings with suction cups on the inside of the windshield and had a 2 ft. fiber optic Christmas tree. It was great..

Wright on Time Books: Does anyone ever get homesick for your old life? How do you deal with that?

Jennifer: Our kids were homesick for about 3 weeks when we first set out. They missed their friends and their routine. We used that desire to connect as motivation to learn to type. They each learned to touch-type in about 3 weeks and began emailing their friends. That helped. Plus, they met lots of kids along the trip, and as always, they had each other. My husband and I didn’t get homesick. We were too busy planning for the next stop.

Jennifer: I had recently retired from my job as an Air Traffic Controller and we used my medical pension, along with our savings, to pay for our trip. My father also helped with the motorhome. We did not work. The kids set up a lemonade stand in Boise and earned about $16.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have a towed vehicle? Bicycles? Mopeds? Etc.?

Jennifer: Our “toad” was a van on a dolly. We also brought 4 bikes.

Wright on Time Books: Do you have any pets that travel with your family? How do they like living on the road?

Jennifer: We brought our dog, Priscilla, with us. She was a miniature schnauzer. She did pretty well on the road, but she was almost 14 and got sick and had to be put to sleep while we were in California. It was really difficult.

Wright on Time Books: Where is the best place you’ve been according to each member of your family?

Jennifer: The boys say Legoland in Carlsbad or the City Museum in St. Louis was their favorite, but that’s only until you remind them of something else, like “What about the tide pools in Oregon?” and then they’d say “Oh yeah. That was one of my favorites too.” It was all amazing. I loved the Redwoods. Dan loved Jackson Hole, WY and the Tetons.

Wright on Time Books: How can we find out more about you and your family? Website, blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc.? Please tell us also what the next great adventure for your family is!

Jennifer: You can read about our journey around the U.S. in more detail (and see pictures) at www.driventoeducate.com. There you’ll see that, after being home for about 6 months, we’ve decided to join a missionary organization and work in Africa for a year. I’ll be teaching missionary kids and my husband will be providing IT support to a branch that is translating the Bible into 10 different languages. Our boys will get to learn about a new culture, learn Swahili, and develop a bigger world view. Can’t wait!

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Real Life RV Families

Lisa — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:26:06 +0000

The Wright family is not based on a real life RV family, but there are traits of all kinds of people in each of the characters, and I’ve read about and talked to many families who live that lifestyle while I did research for these books.

Living and homeschooling in an RV is a lifestyle that many people find quite rewarding and the rest of us find intriguing. I’m actively seeking out RV families (past, present, future, full-time, and part-time) to interview on this site! Please contact me for more information or check out my “20 Questions for RV Families” ! I would love to spotlight your family and my readers would love to hear your answers!

Thanks!

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