Picking the Best RV for Full Time Living
Picking the Best RV for Full Time Living
Guest Blog Post
By Brianna Halvorson
On April 13th, 2019, my husband and I put our house on the market. We have decided to flip our lives and move permanently into a fifth wheel.
First let's go back a year, to where this mobile life first piqued our interest. Nick and I were engaged, living in a 5 bedroom 2,200 square foot home, had two roommates, and we were dreaming of our honeymoon. We were going to take two weeks and I wanted to go to Iceland! Nick was dreaming of a beautiful sunny beach and paradise. After doing budgeting from the wedding we realized our honeymoon needed to be on a smaller scale. It all started with the idea of renting an RV and roaming around the U.S for our 2-week honeymoon. This quickly led the two of us to follow many people on YouTube, who left their conventional lives behind to live a different style of living. Some people were converting buses into RV's or renovating older models, and that inspired us to start thinking about following this lifestyle ourselves.
This peaked interest brought us to a local RV show. My husband Nick had never been inside a fifth wheel, RV, or even travel trailer before. We toured many different versions. We learned the difference between class A, B, and C and weighed the pros and cons of each. We figured our honeymoon was a great opportunity to get our feet wet and see if we enjoyed a more mobile lifestyle. We rented a class C RV through Rvshare.com. We settled on class C because it not as large as a class A and we were planning on stopping at multiple places and thought it sounded like a more convenient option.
Class C - RV we rented in the photo above.
We learned during our honeymoon trip that a class C sounded a lot nicer than reality made it out to be. We had many struggles (or adventures, as I liked to refer to them) during our two weeks on the road. First, we had a blow out on one of the tires within the first 24 hours of renting the RV. This blow out left us stranded on the side of the road for hours waiting for a tow truck large enough to accommodate our RV. We broke down around 2 pm and the tow truck driver showed up after dark. We made the best of this and watched the sunset from the RV while drinking a glass of wine.
The other unfortunate side of this blow out was we were towed to Les Schwab (after hours) and had to sleep in the parking lot until they opened the next morning with absolutely no hookups for our first night with the RV.
This tire blowout also took out the use of the generator and slide because when the tire exploded it cut numerous wires. We were able to continue our journey without either of them ever working (thank God). It was an inconvenience, but doable. Another problem we ran into was that we would travel all day get to our RV park, get hooked up, settled in, then realize we needed to go out and get groceries or to get dinner, etc.. So we would have to take our WHOLE home with us to get a few groceries that night. Although I must say grocery shopping was nice, you literally walk out the grocery store doors and load everything straight into your kitchen instead of your car. But if you had any "quick errand" it would turn into a whole ordeal to do because your home and mode of transport was the same. We learned we had to plan ahead! Secondly, we also ran into issues of not having a separate vehicle when we tried to find a hot spring on some internet "local legend."
We got on a rough dirt road and the RV could not handle the deep ruts and bumpy ride. Everything was flying out of cupboards and sliding across the floor. We could hear everything creaking and whining in the RV. We ended up having to park then walk the rest of the way.
This adventure turned me and my husband onto the idea of considering a travel trailer vs fifth wheel. Again, the local RV show came around and we were better prepared. We knew we wanted something separate from the vehicle. We viewed many travel trailers and even more fifth wheels, each of which has the towing vehicle detach. We liked the idea of a travel trailer because the truck my husband currently owned could tow that. We ended up being sold on a fifth wheel because of the elevated ceiling height compared to a travel trailer and it has better maneuverability. We are both tall people, my husband is 6’ 3” and I am 5’ 10”. We wanted to be able to stand upright in the bedroom area. My husband has been a semi-truck driver for 12 years and understands how to handle big rigs and how a fifth wheel handles versus how a travel trailer handles. We narrowed our search even further, by deciding on the fifth wheel over travel trailer.
I really liked the Jayco fifth wheels, the 2019 models now have white interiors which I LOVED. My husband (thank God he is the one with the more sensible head on his shoulders) was unconvinced by these beautiful beasts and just wanted the best bang for his buck.
By this point in our lives, our big home was down two roommates and our house was feeling big and quiet. We were looking almost daily at Rvtrader.com for fifth wheels. Our honeymoon experience albeit, not the most ideal, cemented even further our love for this idea of a more mobile lifestyle. One huge thing that connects me and my husband is our love for freedom and adventure. The times in our lives when we feel the most restless are the times when we are extremely rooted. The concept of being able to pick up your whole life and be gone, onto the next thing, within 30 minutes greatly appealed to us.
After months of searching online, and me being way too stuck on a Jayco Pinnacle with a front bedroom layout, my husband found ‘The One’. A 2014 Keystone Montana Mountaineer. It has the white interior I had fallen in love with and all the specs my husband was looking for, all within the price we wanted.
At this point things started to just fall into place. We were approached to sell our house, bought a fifth wheel, and my husband transferred positions within his company all within a few weeks. I have no idea how so many small, different elements all came together to create such perfect timing. This portion of my life can only be explained by the grace of God. While we were looking for an RV park to live in we realized monthly rates at LEAST double during the summer. Dare I call this rookie mistake number one? We had a good friend help us get a position working for a local county park on a lake where we spent most of our summer anyways. They were in need of a summer caretaker. Requirements included having your own RV, and to be willing to live on-site during the summer, among a few other duties. Nick and I applied and we got the job!
Our fifth wheel was delivered April 20th and I'll gladly continue to document his journey and our future mobile adventures together.
About the Author:
Hello, I am Brianna. I have always had a love for all things outdoors. Growing up I would spend my summers barefoot, going camping with my family, and climbing everything in sight. Now as an adult I am a hiker, climber, wake surfer, snowboarder, traveler, who works 40 hours a week in pharmacy. My husband, Nick, is equally as adventurous, always up to trying new things and like me, loves to be outdoors. I would classify us both as free spirits, Nick, way more than me. He has more guts to do crazy, out of the box things. Nick is also an avid poker player, he has infectious laughter, and can make friends with everybody he meets. I have not always been so graceful in conversation or making small talk, but I like to think between us both we make a great balance of life.
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