T minus 9 months and counting!

May 1st is our planned departure date for our year-long RV adventure! Our to do list to get ready includes:

• Sell excess crap (almost everything)


• Research and Buy an RV that is big enough to live in for a year but not so huge as to be embarrassing driving down the highway! (and will still fit in most small National Forest campgrounds)


• Save money!


• Outfit RV with full solar panels, water filters, and other goodies for full-time living and staying in RV parks as little as possible


• Redecorate RV if necessary (and it probably will be - ick!)


• Take practice trips to figure out what we are missing and what we don't need

We are slowly getting rid of things - I donated a carload of stuff to Boojum Institute last week (their offices and staff house burned down in the Sawtooth Complex Fire ) and I've placed ads on Craigslist for lots of items! It's interesting and liberating to get rid of all the excess baggage!

We are also doing lots of reading about RVs, have found some great forums, and purchased buying guides from the RV Consumer Group, which are VERY helpful. We've been studying all about solar panels and have figured out what we want, we have been working on budgets (in spite of high gas costs, this will definitely cost less than a year of living at home!), and we've been learning about boondocking (dry camping) and free camping and workamping, and we have been exploring all sorts of possiblities!

Devin has been working very hard on getting all of his training certificates updated so he will be employable at the end of our vacation travels, ready to find contract work along the way, perhaps, so we can try out different areas of the country for a while. We are considering Seattle area, maybe Montana, Colorado, Oregon... and we are certainly open to finding that perfect place we want to settle down in while we are traveling.

Our travel plan is to first head up to Alaska for the summer, then across Canada to the Maritime Provinces and down through New England and the East Coast during the fall, to the southern states for winter - exploring the Everglades, swamps and bayous, Gulf of Mexico, Missiissippi River, Rio Grande, and then?? We'll be driving less and staying longer, enjoying the journey, and not in a hurry to get anywhere.

We plan to have a tow vehicle (a "toad") that has 4wd so we can still go off on backroad camping adventures (since we don't really consider the RV camping - but we will have some ~great~ backyards!!