Wright on Time Books

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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??!?!

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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!

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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).

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?

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”.

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?

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.

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?

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!

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!