Nomadic McDowells: A (Current) Day in the Life

Susanne is your driver for this post.

People often ask us what it's like to RV full time. Many seem to think that we explore national parks by day and roast s'mores over the campfire by night. That rosy image reflects our reality about 0.01% of the time.

In truth, living in an RV is a lot like living in a house, except that the RV moves and we have to go to a Laundromat if we want clean clothes.

To clarify what the RV lifestyle is like for us at this particular time, I thought I'd provide you with a day in the life glimpse of our lives on a regular weekday. It varies, of course. Sometimes we do take the entire day to see a national park. But more often than not, this is what it looks like:

6:30 AM: Nobody is up... except our feisty orange feline. Biscuit has arisen, and she's raring to go. Biscuit greets every new day with the frantic conviction that her humans will never wake up; her gut reaction is to meow and attack our feet until someone responds. Trent usually gets up first, soothes the cat, freshens up her food, eats breakfast, cracks open his laptop, and gets some work done while Sam and I are still asleep.

7:30 AM: If it's a running day for me, I go out for a run somewhere close to the RV. 

9 AM: Sam is usually up by now and watches some TV to help him ease into his day (current favorite shows: Cosmos, Fixer Upper, and Good Eats). I take a shower (hot, if we've remembered to turn on the hot water heater), make coffee (one of my favorite daily rituals), and prepare breakfast for myself and Sam.

10 AM: Trent "goes to work" - that is, he leaves the RV to find a quiet spot in the campground rec center or office. If we're at a site with full hookups, he'll check the tank levels and empty the gray and black tanks on his way out.

Sam and I get started with homeschooling. His daily tasks always include reading, writing, grammar, and math, though we don't spend much time on any one thing. That's the benefit of homeschooling: he can work on each task at his own pace, and if/when he gets tired, we move on.

While Sam tackles schoolwork, I blog (either for Nomadic McDowells or my running blog), update our social media accounts, communicate with my Beachbody clients, and facilitate my online geology class. 

Noonish: Sam wraps up his work. I make lunch for both of us. Nothing fancy. Sam's into smorgasbords these days, so he likes some combination of fruit, yogurt, crackers, and cheese. I typically have a salad or heat up leftovers from the night before. Trent usually comes back to the RV to make one of his special wraps: flour tortilla, peanut butter, and spinach. Mmmmm.

1 PM: On about half the days, Sam and I (and Trent, if he's not too swamped with work) go on a field trip to a park, the local library, or an area attraction (for instance, we went to the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the UFO Museum while here in Roswell, NM).

On other days, Sam comes up with a project and works on that while I get my own work done. His projects are almost always self-directed. So far he's set up a website, developed his own art business, read history books, painted, and started a coin collection.

Afternoons can get tricky because Trent and I always have work to do, whether that's for the companies we freelance for or blogging/social media. On one hand, we don't want to spend our entire nomadic existence on our computers, but the fact of the matter is that we aren't independently wealthy. The bills have to get paid.

4 PM: I start eyeing the beer in the fridge. Sam reads or plays a video game. Biscuit naps in preparation for another night of terrorizing her humans.

5 PM: We make dinner. We have a toaster oven and an InstantPot, and for the most part, these two appliances allow us to make anything we want. The InstantPot is nice because a) it's fast and b) we can program it and walk away.

6 PM: Dinner! We squeeze around our little RV table. It can get tight, especially if we've let clutter accumulate. We do eat outside sometimes, but between the heat and the bugs this summer, that hasn't been as appealing as it sounds. We anticipate dining in the great outdoors more as we get into fall.

7 PM to bedtime: If we're at a regular old, nothing-special-here site, we do what many other people do in the evenings: clean up, play with the cat, take walks, watch Netflix, text with friends, read, veg out. At our current location, we're basically situated in a large (but nicely maintained and landscaped) parking lot next to a busy road, so there's no huge incentive to commune with nature. If we're at a national park or some other particularly beautiful place, we'll spend more time outside.

So that's about it! Does anything surprise you? Anything you're still wondering about? For our fellow travelers/nomads, how does this compare to your daily schedule?