Life in an RV: 5 Most Frequent Questions

I am asked this question all the time by friends and family members who call or email to ask me where I am. This is kind of funny, because I lived for 15 years in California, and the only people who called to ask me where I was were in California at the time.

Still, it's usually an easy question to answer, unless we're actually in motion when they call. And one of my favorite RV stories stems from exactly this question being asked:

Phone rings.
Me: Hello?
My dad: Hi! How are you?
Me: Uh, fine.
Dad: Where are you?
Me: Um... I'm about 30 miles outside Albany, New York, on my way up to the Adirondacks. Where are you?
Dad (who lives in Michigan): I'm about 30 miles outside of Buffalo and should reach Albany in about 3 hours.
Me: Cool! Want to meet up for lunch?
Dad: That'd be great!

He was driving my stepmother from Grand Rapids to Boston so my stepmom could help my grandmother during an illness. We met for a late lunch. We hung out. We bonded. My dad and stepmom finally saw the RV. And about an hour later, they got back in the car and hit the road again.

It was utterly random, but a wonderful coincidence to meet up with them on the road like that.

Most full-timers are retired. They live in their motorhomes and travel around because they no longer have job commitments to keep them in one location, and the kids are grown and flown the nest.

I'm in my thirties and have no children. We typically hear "you're too young to retire" from folks who are older than we are. Sadly, we never hear "you must have made your millions already" (and even more sadly, it's true).

My husband is a programmer who owns his own business, and I am a freelance writer. We work from our RV the way other self-employed people work from home. Our home office is smaller than most, and we've had to go paperless for all our documents, but weekdays are still work days.

We have a satellite Internet system that was expensive, but is very reliable. Many full-timers use local wifi systems, whatever Internet the campground provides, or wireless Internet cards from their cell phone carriers. We have found that all of these Internet systems are useful as backups, but when you genuinely rely on your Internet connection for work, it is worth having a dedicated system that doesn't rely on "whatever you find." We also find that the kinds of situations that require the backups are also the situations where the backups fail (because the campground is too remote, or too wooded to get a signal).

There are a number of people who live in RVs and work full time who aren't self employed. Construction work is one of the biggest employers for full-timers, as skilled laborers can follow the seasonal work to the next job site, wherever they're needed.

There is also seasonal and temporary work, including work-for-trade at campgrounds and parks. This kind of work is often advertised as "workamping," and it usually means an extended stay at a campground in exchange for the site and sometime an expense stipend. Skills in housekeeping, dealing with the public, running small stores, and any handyman skills in general, are useful in landing this kind of work.

Another common question we hear is "how do you decide where to go?" The U.S. is about 6,000 miles wide-- that's a lot of space! We have friends and family on both coasts and liberally sprinkled in between.

Earlier this year, we were heading from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Cameron, Missouri, about an hour away from Kansas City. We knew it would take 2 days to travel (a long driving day is 350 miles-- trust me, in an RV, that's a long day). We had planned to go through Chicago. I grew up outside Chicago and still have family and friends there, people I visit once every 3-5 years.

As we pulled out of the campground and headed for the freeway, however, I turned to my husband and said "Um.... do you mind if I change our plans?" He said no, but why. "See, we're due north of Indianapolis, and I have an online friend who lives there, who I've never met, even though we've been friends for about 8 years. Nothing ever brings me through Indianapolis, but I go to Chicago all the time. Would you mind if...?"

He steered onto the southbound highway instead of the one heading for Chicago, and that evening, we had a nice grill-out with an old friend I'd never met.

You want to know about the bathroom.

It's okay. I know. It's a curious thing.

For most people who live in a house or apartment (a "stick and brick"), the bathroom is a magical place. They go in, do their biological task in the appropriate location, and with a pull of a magical lever-- WHOOSH! The waste disappears from sight, mind, and sense of smell.

Not so for the RVer.

Our water and sewer connections are on the outside of our motorhome. There are three major "tanks" and systems: Freshwater, Graywater, and Blackwater.

Freshwater is clean water coming in. We use bleach to sanitize our hose and all the connections before hooking up a garden hose to the spigot provided at the campsite. If we know we won't have a water hookup, we can fill a 100-gallon holding tank to provide a freshwater supply.

Graywater is dirty water from the sink and shower drains. Again, there is a holding tank for the graywater in the RV. When we are hooked up, we don't use the holding tank, we leave the graywater outlet open. The graywater drains through an accordian-like hose into a sewer connection in the ground, provided by the campground.

Blackwater... that's the magic stuff, isn't it? That's the waste from the toilet, and only the toilet. It drains through the same accordian-like hose as the graywater, which means that hose? It's pretty nasty. However, unlike the graywater, the blackwater is never left open. It's poor etiquette, but it's also bad for the tank. In the first place, you don't know what critters might come up the hose. In the second, the blackwater holding tank should stay wet and full of enzymes to help break down the, um, solid wastes. If the drain were left open, the tank would dry out, and there would be caked on, er, solids, all over the inside of the tank. Over time, those solids would become thick walls, the tank wouldn't hold as much, and it might even crack under the wrong conditions.

So, once a week, we go out and drain the black tank. It takes about 5 minutes to drain, and we usually flush it out (there's a hose connection for that-- we do NOT use the freshwater hose for the blackwater flush). After the black tank is empty, we put 2 ounces of an enzyme-based "sewer helper" into it, and flush 1-2 gallons of water down. The sewer helper chemicals help keep the tank from developing noxious odors in between flushes.

Oh, and yes. I do find it hilarious that "blackwater" is also the code name for a corrupt private military.

I hate this question. You want me to say "right here," but the fact is, if I were so in love with "right here," I wouldn't ever leave, and hey, I'm heading out tomorrow!

We don't have a favorite place yet. We lived for a long time in California, and Santa Cruz is still one of the top 5. But I did discover a love for the desert after we started driving. And I have a great fondness for Washington, D.C., because I love the historical archives and museums available to everyone there. I also loved Titusville, Florida, where you can watch the Space Shuttle launch without having to pay an entrance fee, and where every other professional person works for the space program or the military.

I also have found on the road that, wherever you go, there you are. I do not stop being who I am, with my particular blend of neuroses and dysfunctions, simply because I'm in south Texas. I do not suddenly become hip and trendy just because I'm in Atlanta. I am who I am, and where I am doesn't change that.

What's more, it is becoming increasingly difficult in the United States to find places that are different. The biggest reason for this is that independent stores are dying a slow, painful death. We do our best to spend our "out of town" money in local shops and restaurants wherever we go, but there is a comfort in being able to find the "right" brand of cat litter by visiting the local chain pet store.

So, I'm not sure I could say I have a favorite place. Maybe the right answer is "Wherever I go next!"