Sunshine and roses

Trent will be your driver for this post.

We do not expect RVing to be all sunshine and roses.  Here is a list of things Trent is not looking forward to:

1. Unexpected bills: Here in a small town with nothing to do, in a home that we rent, and with a fairly new car - rarely do unexpected costs pop up. Here our unexpected costs include things like small-time fundraisers at Sam’s school, quick trips to the only decent coffee shop, or a bill arriving in the mail from a doctors visit that occurred a few month ago. On the road our unexpected costs will include things like needing new tire(s), emergency repairs for the RV, or unexpected usage fees. There are also likely to be things I’m overlooking for this list and I bet those will be super fun.

2. Laundromats: I thought my days of going to laundromats were over. When we moved here we bought a nice green certified high efficiency washer and drier.  I don’t remember that last time I regularly had to go to the laundromat.  I’m not looking forward to it but I can bring back the habit I had in the Army of doing my laundry early Sunday morning and reading the NYT while waiting. We will not have huge piles of clothing, so hopefully laundry will go quickly.

3. Smoke: I’m not looking forward to smelling the cigarettes from our neighbors at an RV park. The other day our house neighbors were smoking outside on their front porch at a distance of maybe 50 yards and I could smell it in our house. Our neighbors at an RV park could be 10 to 20 feet away. I’m also not looking forward to rolling into an RV park only to find smoke everywhere as people burn who-knows-what in their camp fires. I guess unlike this house, if the smoke is too bad, we can just move Clark to a new spot or new park. We might also try to hit western states that have fire bans.

4. Narrow roads in construction zones: Clark is much wider than our car.  I feel fairly comfortable driving him. However, I don’t like driving our car in those cattle chutes in construction zones. It will be even less fun in the RV.

5. Taking Clark into the shop for anything: We will be living in Clark. If we have to take him to the shop we need to find another place to live until he is ready. Hopefully we can use these times as an excuse to stay with family & friends or get a room at a hotel with a pool.

6. More UV exposure: The plan for our travels is to stay in decent weather year-round. This will likely increase our UV exposure as we spend more time in south. I don’t mind the heat as much as I do UV.  I had more than a lifetime supply of UV in middle and high school as I spent all my time at the pool or beach. I don’t really need more. I’ll be breaking out my UV protecting running hat and looking for shade wherever I can find it.

These are some of the downsides but I expect the upsides will far outweigh them. This morning I ran in the local state park campground and I saw people just coming out of their RVs with cups of coffee. I was wishing we were already on the road like them.