We Did RV Life for a Month
I walked into my office one day and my Dad looked at me and said, “Son lets rent an RV and travel the US.” It was music to this travelers ears. If you have been with us for a while you know that we have done a lot of traveling. So to hear out of my Dad’s mouth that he wanted to drive 7500 miles over 33 days and experience America first hand, I was very excited. Obviously with Covid-19 going on, there would be some difficulties along the way, but we felt it best to tackle this task by renting our own personal RV for the expedition. I was tasked with finding an RV and making the arrangements for planning the whole trip (a dream for me).
When we were little my Dad tried to get us to do a cross country trip with my family and all of us kids squawked at the idea because we wanted to go to Disney World instead. We ended up not doing a cross country trip and I ended up falling in love with travel late in high school. When my Dad offered it again, I was not going to miss this opportunity. We found a nice rental place local to us in Denton (DFW area) and we went and scoped out the best options. I ended up booking a 2018 Sportscoach Coachmen RV for 33 days! Thats right we were going to do RV Life for 33 days in the US!
I have to be honest with you, I really did not know what to expect and the RV rental company we rented it through was extremely understaffed and busy so we were not able to do a full walk thru of our RV before we hit the road. I reached out to Coachmen personally asking if they wanted to support us on our journey as we documented the whole thing along the way. They were gracious to take a chance on us and sponsor us for our trip. They also were extremely knowledgable to help us try and understand what we were getting into and any help we needed with our RV. Everyone at The Journey wants to thank them for their support as we would not have been able to bring awesome content to our viewers without their help and support. I would highly recommend looking for a coachmen if you are thinking about going into RV life. We are going to share a ton of tips, tricks, and things we wish we would have known about RV life. We are also going to do a full RV tour on our Youtube Channel of our 2018 Sportscoach so you can see if first hand. Make sure you subscribe to our channel here. With all that said, after 30 plus days of planning, booking accommodations, mapping out our route, and planning excursions, the day had come for us to pick up our RV.
As we pulled up to the RV rental site nothing but smiling and anxious faces could be seen standing outside the store. We had to wait about an hour and a half to get the RV as they were incredibly busy. The general manager brought our beautiful baby to the front of the store and walked us through everything in about 20-25 min. He handed me the keys and said have fun! The sheer adrenaline and excitement were all I could feel so the fact that I just got a 20 min tour on a massive RV meant nothing to me, I was ready to explore!
Kelsey and I have contemplated doing some sort of van/rv life and trying to travel full time, so this was a really good trial run to see if this is something we could see ourselves doing full time. I don’t have time to go into details of every day in the trip as it was 33 days and you would be reading a book. We want you to come along for The Journey on our blog as well as our Youtube Channel to see all the amazing footage and tips we are going to give. The main point of this blog is to excite you! Excite you in the fact that we tried something completely out of our comfort zone and we ended up loving it. Excite you in the fact that maybe you are contemplating doing RV life and maybe this is the last push you need. Excite you in to knowing that if you want to do it you totally can. There is nothing special about us we just know how to manage situations when things don’t always go as planned. Here is a quick list of things I learned just off the top of my head from our trip.
What I learned from this trip:
RV Life is not for the faint of heart
You have to be prepared for things to breakdown
The freedom it provides is addicting
Setting up your house in 15-20 min its pretty much awesome
Driving an RV is a lot harder than it looks
Its a lot easier to change plans
Decide what is important for you (if you are choosing to buy one)
I could totally see myself owning an RV/Van one day
There is no secret to why people do RV life. It is addicting and extremely fun. The freedom it gives you is not really comparable to a lot of traveling experiences. Being able to pull up to a site and set up your house and explore around that area for multiple days is hard to beat. The remoteness it provides. The connectivity with nature that it provides. The unity it provides with the members you go with on your trip are all things that can’t be measured on a piece of paper. Of course there is some work that goes with it and it takes a special kind of person who is willing to deal with some of the ins and outs of RV life, but I have to say you got to try it! Use one of your buddies RV’s for a weekend trip, rent one from a rental company, or buy one and see if you like it. I promise you it will leave you with memories that will last a lifetime. I am so glad my Dad came out and said lets rent an RV because my traveling spirit has been filled 10 times over from the memories made over the last month. I just can’t wait to share all of them with you!
P.S. Make sure to go check out coachmen on their socials and reach out to them if you are thinking about purchasing or renting an rv. You will not be disappointed.
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