Kenny and I have been in Eustis, Florida since early November 2015. We're working and living at an RV resort surrounded by highways. We've been having fun running the kitchen, but like to get away as much as possible and explore this foreign land.
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We started this blog with the best of intentions to chronicle our new life as full-time RVers, but now we’re four months deep and haven’t written a single blog. Oops! In our first month, we traveled 3000-something miles, first driving to Drayton, North Dakota, then down to Key Largo. There are a few experiences worth backtracking for that we’ll share over the next few weeks on the blog, starting with the two-week period before we ever left Denver. Otherwise, this is a fresh start and you can expect regular, timely posts. The morning of August 31, 2015 began the last two weeks Kenny and I had at our jobs. It was also the day we needed to move out of the house we'd rented for the last four years.
Why move out of your house before you’re done with work? Great question! Take another trip back one month when the van breaks down on our way to my friend’s wedding over 300 miles from home. To get back to Denver, we need to buy a new fuel pump and pay for a rental car. We decide to work for two more weeks at our jobs to earn back what we lost in car repairs, which is sweetened by the deal that someone offers us their uninhabited rental property for free, while contractors work on the basement. Meet our egg. She's a super lightweight 17' fiberglass Casita Trailer. She's not only the first home either of us have ever owned, but also the first home that we've owned together. After having spent the last year rebuilding a floor and tearing out the walls of a 1968 travel trailer due to water damage, we were searching for a trailer that would resist rot and last. That's when we came across the Casita. We started looking for a used 2000 or newer 17' Casita Spirit Deluxe anywhere in the US. Through sites like Craigslist, Fiberglass RV, and Casita Club, we found what we were looking for in Oregon, Oklahoma, New York, Florida, but nothing in Colorado. We were ready and willing to get on a plane or jump in our car to hit the coast, but every person we called to set up the logistics to buy their Casita from multiple states away had someone coming to buy the next day or even within the hour, and we couldn't guarantee to get there fast enough. I setup alerts on an RSS feed and If This Than That to notify me every time any fiberglass trailer was posted anywhere in the US. After a four-month hunt for a used 2000 or newer Casita, we found one less than 10 miles away in Denver. The next day, we came home with this beauty. Welcome to the kitchen. We have a good sized refrigerator, sink , gas range, and hood vent, along with a lot storage.
Kenny and I quit our jobs and we're weeks away from becoming full-time RVers. If you're wondering what that means, here are the most common questions we've had so far from strangers and loved ones alike.
ARE YOU RETIRED? DO YOU HAVE A LOT OF MONEY SAVED UP? Unfortunately, no and no. THEN HOW WILL YOU AFFORD TO LIVE?! Fortunately, there are tons of online resources that have helped us lineup seasonal work all the way through next September. While we're going to be full-time RVers, we're also what people call "workampers." A workamper is someone who RV camps and works in exchange for their RV site, which depending on the job, includes a salary. Many campgrounds, RV parks, national and state parks, and other seasonal businesses use workampers to staff their operation. Long-time workampers at the Live.Work.Dream blog have already eloquently explained workamping and you can learn more about it here. Other great resources have been Workamper News, Workers on Wheels, and the Workamper Facebook group. BUT WHY? In short, we're restless. In full-ish, a few years ago, Kenny and I were returning to Denver from a road trip we'd taken to the Pacific Northwest. Rolling down Colorado Highway 50, we pointed out plots of land for sale where we would put a campground/breakfast spot, boarded up restaurants in a sleepy stretch where we'd open a pizza shop, a forested area where we'd build our bed and breakfast. We were both unhappy with the jobs we were going back to and were inspired to do something for ourselves. Soon after we started taking classes at the Denver Small Business Development Center and writing our business plan for, not a campground or restaurant, but Potsko's Fried Pies. We decided our little pie business would be a low-risk test to see if we had what it takes to run a small business. We also had a far-fetched idea that we would jump on Denver's food truck industry and expand Potsko's from our home kitchen to a commercial kitchen inside a retrofitted 1968 travel trailer by the next summer. The trailer we bought to retrofit was more work than we signed up for, but pie business was picking up. We were at a crossroads: do we pour more money into our food truck project or jump ship? |
The Campers
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