My husband and I are home! After four trips in our RV, 15,000 miles, and 18 states and 2 provinces, our RV is once again in our driveway.
In September we did a circuit from southern Ontario through Ohio and Illinois to Indiana and then up north through the Dakotas to Winnipeg and home. Then in November we went south to Charleston and left the RV in storage there; in January we flew down to Charleston and took it to Georgia, Florida, and ultimately Texas; and then last month we picked it up again in Houston and drove it home. We put a sticker on if we stayed overnight; here’s where we’ve been since the fall:
We plan to do that next year, too, though we’ll be heading through the central states–Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma in the fall–and then spending some of the winter in Arizona, Nevada and Utah before returning home (so if you’re in those states and you’d like to book me to come and give a Girl Talk on sex and marriage to your church, just email my assistant Tammy!)
We’re empty nesters this year, and I’ve been getting more and more requests to speak, so Keith and I decided to take the plunge and drastically change our lives. We bought this “Minnie Winnie” RV, and Keith switched to half time at work, so that we could be on the road for a few weeks at a time. It’s been so much fun. We just love it! And it made the transition to being an empty nest a little easier. It’s harder to miss your kids when you’re so busy with a new life.
A bunch of you have emailed and asked, “so, what was it like living in an RV?”
And today I thought I’d share a bit about it, along with some tips that Keith and I have come up with. Of course, we just had such BRILLIANT foresight and planning to launch our first RV trip when gas prices were the lowest they have been in ages (we were just so SMART to do that, right? 🙂 ), but here are some things that you can actually do something about:
Living in an RV: Comfort and Convenience Tips
1. Bring Very Warm Clothes and Blankets
Florida in January is not necessarily warm. In fact, it went below freezing several nights.
Here I am in my fleece sweater, with our comforter around me, and my fingerless gloves (I didn’t plan to bring the gloves; they just happened to be in my jacket pocket, thank goodness!).
We brought our comforter from home rather than sleeping in sleeping bags, and it was so nice (and super warm!). Just don’t assume that just because you’re going to warmer places that it will always be warm, especially at night.
2. Bring Things That Are Luxuries
Or at least things that make you feel like you’re at home! Instead of bringing your worst set of dishes and your worst hair products and your worst clothes, bring stuff that you like.
For me, that meant bringing good knives for when I cooked; a good frying pan; my comforter, and even my slippers! They’re ugly, but they’re so comfy.
And it meant bringing a large collection of teas. I love my teas, since I don’t drink coffee or pop anymore, and so I filled up a whole drawer with teas and brought my tea maker. That way I never felt like we were “just camping”. I felt like we were living!
3. Bring Lots of Tupperware
We remembered to bring all of the kitchen stuff except for Tupperware. Yes, you need dishes and pots and cutlery. And, yes, you need groceries. But you will have leftovers. Make sure you remember to bring something to put those leftovers in, or you will end up scrounging old tea tins and peanut butter jars and anything else you can find!
4. Buy Two of All Important Things
Because we took multiple trips we were forever packing and repacking. And sometimes we’d fly home after leaving the RV somewhere, only to rejoin it later. We quickly realized that we couldn’t be bringing very many things from home if we wanted camping not to be a hassle. Even something like a hair dryer–do I really want to be lugging that back and forth and trying to remember not to forget it?
Besides, packing for a trip is stressful enough. If you also have to pack kitchen stuff and sleeping stuff and all the stuff we don’t normally have to pack, it becomes overwhelming. So we just made the decision to buy two of a lot of things. We bought two garlic presses. Two good carving knives. Two paring knives. Two comforters. And yes, even two hair dryers!
And I bought second sets of all our bathroom consumables, too, like toothpaste or hair mousse or moisturizer. It just stays in the RV and I don’t have to worry about it.
Living in an RV: Communication & Media Tips
5. Get Karma for Better Wifi
One of the most frustrating things about life in an RV is the wifi. At most RV parks it’s sketchy at best. In the morning, when few people are on it, it often works great, but at night, when everybody is trying to stream Netflix, It will take forever to load. And we were both trying to work while we were on the road!
A friend of mine suggested Your Karma wifi. Karma is this tiny little device that converts any cellular signal into a wifi signal. Up to 8 devices can connect at once. You can sign up for a certain amount of data a month, or you can “pay as you go”, buying data as you need it. I chose the second option, since I’m only on the road in the United States every now and then.
It works out to about $10 a GB. One day I tried to see how long a GB would last, and I worked on my blog straight for 6.5 hours. That’s pretty good!
The best part is that ANYONE can join your Karma device without affecting your speed. But when they join, you get either money off your monthly plan (if that’s what you have) or you get 100 MB free. I ended up earning about 500 MB as I used about 3 GB, so it was a nice boost!
And it meant that when we had long days of driving, I could check comments on the blog or check my email when we stopped for lunch. I’d just switch on Your Karma for a few minutes and I’d be all done.
If you travel a lot, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Get $10 off through my link if you’d like to sign up (and you can give me another GB of data free when you do that, too! 🙂 ).
6. Get Express VPN So You Aren’t Hacked
When the wifi at the campgrounds was bad, we would go to a McDonald’s or Starbucks and use their wifi.
Then I met up with my friend Ryan Langford, who runs the Ultimate Bundles, and he told me a scary story. He and his wife were traveling in Europe and using Starbucks’ wifi. Someone hacked in to their signal, stole their passwords for their banking info, their email, and their blog, and then sent them a ransom note. They stole the blog, and said that unless the couple paid them a significant amount of money, they would take the blog down and delete everything, and steal all their money.
After three very stressful days constantly on the phone trying to prove who they were, they got control back. But apparently this is becoming more and more common. I’ve since heard of other bloggers who had the same thing happen to them.
The solution? Get Express VPN, which encrypts your wifi so when you’re using a shared server (like at an airport, a restaurant, or a campground) no one else can hack in. We signed up immediately and I use it all the time. It doesn’t slow anything down, but it gives me a lot of peace of mind! And it’s really easy to load on both desktops and phones.
Since I travel so much I now consider this a must. I want to be able to use wifi and get work done while I’m away without stress.
Find out more here--and if you sign up through that link you’ll get 30 days free (and so will I! Thank you! I’ve made my assistant sign up and my kids, too. This stuff is too important when you travel!).
7. Bring Stuff To Do at Night
My husband and I watch Netflix when we’re home, but while we’re out in the RV we like trying to keep media at bay. So I bring my knitting and we often play a strategy computer game together. Or we try a board game for two people.
Bring lots of books, bring crafts, and bring things to keep you busy in the evenings!
Living in an RV: Travel Tips
8. Stop and Smell the Roses (or See the Sights)
One of the best parts of our trips were the things we never planned to do.
Keith says that I have a “sixth sense” about where we should stop, and whenever I say, “pull over here”, he knows to listen now! We’re bird watchers, and three times on this trip I’ve said, “I think we should go for a quick hike here”, and we’ve found a new species. Which to him is a big deal.
Once I saw a sign for a beach in Northern Ontario, and I said, this is the spot! And it was. It was gorgeous.
Another time we stopped to see the Terry Fox Memorial (he’s a Canadian hero who ran halfway across Canada to raise money and awareness of cancer back in 1980, but died before he could finish his run. Now every year Canadians run for Terry–and for cancer).
It was a very moving experience, but we hadn’t even known that it was there. We also stopped at the Andrew Jackson house, Biltmore House in North Carolina, several hikes, and more, all without specifically planning it. We spotted something that looked interesting and we went. It’s a great way to see the country!
9. Stop and See Friends!
But we didn’t just stop and see the sights. We stopped to see friends, too! I have a list of all my online friends in a database now, with what city they live in, and when we know we’ll be in the area, we stop and say hi. Here I am meeting up with Courtney Joseph from Women Living Well when we were in Ohio. It’s just a great way to solidify those relationships.
10. Be Spontaneous–Don’t Always Book Ahead
My husband likes to book all of our campgrounds and plan out all of our driving ahead of time. But that meant that we ended up cancelling quite a few at the last moment, because we enjoyed the place we were staying so much that we didn’t want to leave. Here’s a beautiful small RV park right on the Gulf Shores in Alabama. We discovered it, and then thought, why go to Texas early when we can stay here?
After paying cancellation fees several times we stopped booking ahead. Yes, we had two nights where every campground seemed full (though we finally did find an opening), but on the whole, it was more fun to go without a specific agenda and to be free to stay a little longer if we were enjoying some place (or if the weather was lousy for driving!)
I’m glad to be home, and I hope that next year we’ll do fewer trips but make them longer, because the back and forth was tiring. But spending a lot of the winter in the south, rather than with the snow, was wonderful. And my husband and I learned that we don’t get sick of each other, even in confined spaces!
So if you have any other questions about life in an RV, ask away! And I hope that one day I’ll meet up with you on my travels, too.

My wife and I are planning an extended trip in 2017 so this was a wonderful post!
Very helpful. Your computer suggestions will come in handy as we travel on shorter trips for our marriage seminars as well.
So happy you had such fun together as a huhsband and wife and shared it with your tribe.
Yeah, I was really blown away when Ryan told me that about hacking. I knew never to check my bank accounts when using a public wifi, but I always checked my email. And if people have access to your email, then they can change your password on all kinds of other things! It really is scary. So I feel a lot better now knowing I’m safe!
I thought this was EXCELLENT INFO on the “karma” & VPN” hardware/software info! I’m passing it on! & I am saving for my trips.
Kim
Both Karma and VPN have saved me so much time and anxiety! They really are great.
Good morning,
Just read your blog. Great ideas. We are going to go on a pre-retirement
trip for a year. So excited buying a 5th wheel in January 2018. Thanks for the tips. π
Hi , I have enjoyed your tips on traveling together in your RV , I plan to get a RV in a couple of years . As I will be retiring ! I’m heading home to Colorado Springs Colo. to take care of my Mom of 83 , and she is healthy also ! We have dream to hit the road in a RV for sometime now . So right now I’m looking at any good advice you and others can share , I been looking on Pen at RV advice and information etc. And it has been helpful too ! Thanks again for the tip’s , And God bless you and your next adventure . Will check in from time to time ! Til then…
Definitely some good suggestions here! We’re 3/4-timers, spending about 25% of our time at home, and one of the BEST things we did was getting 2 of things. Carrying things in and out of the house to pack and unpack is a major pain!
We have The Biggest Rule to keep frustrations at bay in our motorhome too: Only one person up at a time! This saves a lot of squeezing past each other through the narrow aisle up the middle, frustrations with having to stop what we’re doing for the other to pass, etc. Though there are occasions where it’s not possible to follow (few and far between), TBR has definitely kept things peaceful :).
We are also Karma users, by the way :). Although we also have 2 other “hotspots” since I work on the road and MUST have a good internet connection. There have been times where only one of them has been reliable, so we consider them a necessity (along with our Wifi Ranger).
Great article as always! Happy travels :).
YES! The two of each thing is just so much better. We tried taking our comforter back and forth in luggage for a while but that got old really fast. π
Yes, the wifi ranger is awesome, too. Should have mentioned that as well! We’d like to be 3/4 timers one of these days, too. π
The karma thing looks interesting…do you use airtime on your cell connection when you use it? So this would be instead of getting a data plan and using your phone as a hot spot? We usually spend a month in the southern states over the winter and have used Roam wireless on our cell phones and then used the hotspot feature to connect laptops, etc. Just trying to figure out whether this would be a better option next time.
Welcome back to cold, snowy Ontario! Although spring should make its way here this weekend…here’s hoping anyway.
Yes, instead of using our phone as a hotspot. It’s a lot cheaper. And it’s really quite fast! I really enjoyed it. It doesn’t work in Canada unfortunately (darn, because the wifi in the Toronto airport is SO bad), but it works everywhere that we tried in the U.S.!
The picture of you in front of the KOA, is that on the Outer Banks in NC? Unless they all look the same. It looks like the place we stayed in October right after Hurricane Joaquin hit.
It was terribly windy and we have a pop-up. I thought we were going to take flight. We went there specifically to see birds, but I think it was too windy even for the birds.
It is that exact place! The weather was lovely when we were there, and it was right on the beach.
When we’re you there? I love the Outer Banks. My favorite place to be. We went after the season so it was not crowded and we did have beach front. The access to the beach was wonderful especially because we have a disabled son.
Although I’m not sure a pop-up is recommended.
I want to go back.
We have plans to go in September, but my son will be graduating from basic training for the air force in Texas.
Looking forward to your PA visit!
We were there in November! The weather was gorgeous. We really loved it.
Hi Sheryn! Totally off subject here but I’m an Air Force mom as well and wanted to share a website that was beyond helpful to me when my son went through basic training. It as afwm.org (air force wing moms); they also have a facebook group you can join and the link for that is at the top off their webpage. I had so many questions and what not but by the time we left for San Antonio to go to graduation we couldn’t have been more prepared. There’s tons of encouragement from the wingmoms through the facebook group as well; the time our kiddos are at Lackland isn’t easy for us mommas. My son left for basic 1/7/14; it seems like it was just yesterday.
You have just described part of my bucket list! I’ve wanted to travel around the country in an RV for as long as I can remember… and I’m 54! ???? I’m not dead yet so maybe one day…
I have that same hope Cyndi- and I’m 51. I originally had visions of homeschooling my kids as we drove around the country – at least for a few months anyway (my husband would have had to take a leave of absence from work- which never happened)
Sheila has seen more of my country than I have π
I think that it can definitely still happen – though. I hope you get your travel!
Yep same here P. I’ve not been to many of those places that Sheila’s hit up π definitely not Florida.
We say that if we win the Powerball, we’ll pull our son out of school & homeschool him along the way in a big RV
Terrific post! We have a trailer that we use for camping trips and are planning on getting a nicer RV when we retire for extended travelling. I’m always looking for tips.
I do hope when you come through Utah you have an event or two that I can attend. I don’t belong to any church at this time, so I’ll just have to pay attention here.
And, there are many Walmarts that allow overnight camping in their parking lots. It’s an option if you just need a place to park and sleep and there’s nowhere else available.
It was a lot of fun meeting you and Keith when you came to Baltimore! Looks like a lot of fun and a better, more flexible way to get around for speaking tours.
We loove to travel and explore and hopefully this is something we can do someday! π (it’s like a fancier way to camp!)
Oh My, Sheila! You are like my twin sista from anutha mista! You know hubby and I live the RV life and have done a few trips just us (without the kids) but we love it! I sleep better in the RV than in my own bed. I have to second all of your tips, and add a couple: Have a checklist of all the things you have to do before you leave a site: including the one we would always forget – to close the vents!! And carry a set of tools and a shovel for the unfortunate moments when you accidentally get stuck in sand or mud. We’ve had to dig out twice so far and the gift of kind neighbors is priceless in those moments, but if no one is around, a shovel is super helpful. π Happy trails! And keep the pics coming. So fun to see and read about all your adventures.
Hugs,
Raj
p.s. make sure you treat the roof every summer for leaks. It’s in the manuel and no one will remind you but the rain. π
We will definitely put a shovel in the RV! Great advice! π And we’ve done that with the vents too. Yep. π
This sounds wonderful! My hubby (also Keith!) and I plan to buy an RV when the kids are out of the house and travel all over North America. We have a few years to go though… our youngest is turning 3 on Thursday!
We are planning on doing a 6 month long trip with our 2 teenagers and 20 year old son in the new year so these tips are great. Of course our rig will be a little bit bigger than yours. That is scary what happened to Ryan and Stephanie. I think I will be speaking to the hubby about making the investment in a Express VPN.
Oh, how fun! And DEFINITELY get the VPN. Definitely. π
My husband and I are just about to embark on a camper van trip through Europe (with two kids under two)(!!!) I am so excited! Thanks for the helpful tips
Oh, that sounds so fun! I hope you have an amazing time!
Since you’ll be traveling in the southwest you really should see New Mexico. I live in southern New Mexico in a place called Elephant Butte. Although winter is not the best of seasons to visit Santa Fe, it really is an enchanting place.
We winter in Arizona for a couple of months each year,and the weather is excellent, but bring your snuggle clothes cuz the nights can be chilly.
Happy trails
Thanks, Liz! I certainly will. And I’d come speak in New Mexico, too, if anyone wanted me. π So if your church may be interested, let me know!
About planning your trip and making reservations, check out Good SAMs Trip planner. We bought our RV from Camping World last year and it came with a membership to Good SAMs. I’ve used the trip planner program on two trips. It was great. You can plot your route with stopping points along the way. Then you can pull up campsites and points of interest-from quirky to scenic to historical. It also shows RV warnings like low clearance overpasses. It’s a great program to allow you to plan but have a lot of flexibility.
Peggy
My husband & I just bought our 1st RV & spending the winter on South Padre Island , Texas . We drove from Terrace Bay , Ontario Canada where I’m pretty sure that photo was taken at the falls , on our on lovely beach at the ‘Mouth of the River’ ..is this right ? Just on Pinterest checking out RV tips & by chance was reading yours when I recognized the scene ?
It is Terrace Bay! And we’re going down to South Padre Island in March! Are you still going to be there? π
Yes , leaving MARCH 20th for home.
Do you remember the name of the campground in Gulf Shores Alabama?
Oh, I think Bay Breeze? I’m pretty sure that’s right! It was small but lovely and the people were so friendly.
Klβm may I suggest another park near there, it has a bike trail (if you donβt have a bike you can rent them from the park), a Nature trail, can get a site near the water, pool, just so much to do. Sites are full hookup and large. My favorite site is #48 in the summer. Itβs Gulf States National Park in Orange Beach. We just got back from there last week. They have 300 sites for any size RV you have, plus all sites are close to a great bathhouse.
Great ideas, thank you for sharing your knowledgeable insights. We just bought a hard top pop up camper with no screens for the beds. I like the idea of Karma and buying two of everything. I have a question what kind of foods are easy to cook while camping? Thank you again.
We are planning to full time rv in about a year. We figure on getting a 35′ class A rv to have enough room. Any thoughts on how much is enough?
I think whatever you’re comfortable with! We honestly don’t find a 25 footer too small, but if we had other people with us it wouldn’t work. The big thing is that you want counter space. We don’t have counter space, and that’s really a pain.
Interested ?
An alternative to Karma is Unlimitedville. I prefer it to Karma (STILL waiting for my refund from early 2016). We watch Netflix on the Unlimitedville Hotspot and don’t even bother hooking up to the park’s wifi or their cable. I full-time so I don’t have to worry about doubling up on stuff. I also use canning jars (1/2 pints and pints both regular and widemouth) for storage as well as cooking (cup cakes and single serve desserts). Never liked plastic plates or storage containers even for camping. For dinnerware I use Corelle.
What are your credentials for marriage counseling and sex tips. Have you written a book that is available? Are you in tune with younger couples (ex. my Daughter and son in law)?
Hi Sharon! Yes, I have 9 books published now, including several by big publishers (including Harper Collins and Random House). The two biggest are The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex and 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage. Thanks for asking!
I guess in Canada when you say “living in a RV” after reading your tip It was noticed by me that you were camping and not a full timer. good ideas for campers because full timers have everything with them already. good ideas for everyone is your WIFI / internet advice, I have read a few different hacks to get free WIFI in different locations and I listen to all of them. I am a full timer so my home is ALWAYS with me. All of my favorite stuff is already on board, My living room is designated to entertainment, I have remodeled my RV the same as some would remodel their stick /brick home. we are extremely comfortable in our little 36.5′ 4 slide-out 5th wheel. however never turn down ideas, some will work for us and others don’t but if they’re not out there to read we will never know. So, Thank You for your article .