RV Life Season 5

Celebrating 100,000 miles of Clyde!

Nicole Anderson

17 Feb 2026 • 15 min read

During our RV-to-rental home-to-RV whiplash, we needed to take a few trips back and forth to move all of our belongings out of the house. Some of it went into a storage facility, and the rest made its way down to our home-base in MA. Our minds were focused on getting ourselves situated as quickly as possible, so we could forget the past 3 weeks and move on with our lives. Then, one night, something happened that gave us cause for celebration.

Anthony had made the trip up to NH by himself that day, and after a long, wintry day of heavy lifting, he caught the 100,000th mile on Clyde, about a half hour before he got home. Amidst the stress of the move, we reminisced about our 5 years with our very first pickup truck. What an incredible journey Clyde has given us, but even more importantly, he's been a reliable vehicle that has kept us safe and comfortable on the road. Of course, we had our ups and downs, but the stories are ones we will share and smile about forever. We couldn't have had these 4 years of RVing without him. So without further ado, let's take a trip down memory lane and give Clyde the celebratory feature he deserves.

About Clyde

Clyde is a 2020 GMC Sierra 2500. We got him in February 2021, almost exactly a year to the day we launched on the road. We faced a lot of obstacles when purchasing our first truck. We had always been fans of small vehicles and never liked the ruggedness of trucks. At first, we resisted getting one at all. We considered trying to tow the RV with a large SUV, but once we settled on our 28ft ATC toyhauler, we knew we needed to go heavier duty, especially if we wanted to travel all over the country. At the end of the day, learning to maneuver a large truck would be nothing compared to maneuvering the entire RV! All that said, we still needed to find a truck that wouldn't feel too bumpy barreling down the road. We test drove tons of makes and models, and GMCs felt the most "un-truck" to us. We liked the comfort, the interior setup, and its specs for towing a rig our size.

The other obstacle was trying to find a truck with everything we needed, in the middle of a global pandemic. Pickings were extremely slim. Clyde only came into our lives because the supposed-to-be owner custom ordered it and then backed out, leaving Clyde available for auction. We took out a 5-year lease on him. Financially, this was the best choice, even though we knew we would go over the allotted mileage for the lease by extreme measures. That didn't matter to us because we had intentions of purchasing him after the lease expired (which is happening this year).

Clyde wasn't the look we would have chosen, but he had all the creature comforts for long travel days. We got the heated and vented seats, the extended cab, and plenty of leg room. He was rated to tow our weight, even though he was a gas truck and not Diesel. This was a purposeful choice on our end, but would it be one we ended up regretting? We'll share some stories about that coming up.

Upgrades

First things first, we got a truck cap. We knew without a doubt that we would need as much storage as possible, and a truck cap would fit our belongings and keep them safe from rain. Theoretically. We've documented our many, many challenges with this truck cap, which included leaking, loose bolts, and endless malfunctioning latches. Most recently, we discovered that these caps warp easily, and our belongings might have even played a role in misshaping the cap to the point where it wouldn't latch. Our cap company told us they don't install these ones anymore. It's been a pain to deal with, and we fully intend on replacing the cap as soon as it's financially feasible to do so. Meanwhile, we just need to focus on the positives. The cap was a must in our pre-travel outfitting, and most of the time, it served its purpose.

After Season 2 on the road, we decided to tint all our back windows. We did a lighter tint for the cab, so Tanner wouldn't have the sun beating in on him whenever we traveled east. We got a darker tint on the cap so we could block people's view of whatever we were carrying.

Those were our big upgrades, and along the way Clyde got lots of maintenance and repairs. Some of those stories have become the most memorable on our blog, and for good reason. We always say, we might live in Buggy, but Clyde is the engine that keeps us all moving. Without Clyde, we would be sitting ducks. And sometimes, we were.

The Great Mystery of the Non-Starting Ignition

Season 2 was a big year for Clyde. It's no wonder by the end of it, he was tired. We were spending October in New Mexico and Colorado, before blitzing back east to get home to MA. One morning, we were checking out of an Airbnb where we were staying during trailer repairs, and Clyde wouldn't start. We feared we would need to get a tow – a big challenge given that we were up a steep hill in a driveway with no turnaround space. Thankfully, with some patience and prayers, we got him started and were able to get down the mountain. However, nothing was solved until the following month, after our drive cross-country. In Colorado, the GMC service techs replaced the truck battery and sent us on our way. By the time we reached Maryland, we knew the battery wasn't the culprit. After getting stuck in the parking lot of the campground store, we used our jump pack for the first time, but certainly not the last. Jumpstarting Clyde became a common occurrence. By the time we returned to our local GMC in MA, we had over 2,000 miles of stories to tell them. They dove deep into diagnostics and found something that raised our eyebrows. We had a parasitic driver's seat! This meant that, even when we shut off the ignition, the electronics of the seat were still sucking battery life. The techs fixed it and hoped our mystery was solved.

It was not. We still had instances where Clyde wouldn't start, and so we brought him back to the service department. How the story ended is arguably the most underwhelming ending to any mystery. We had a malfunctioning starter. How did we have this many service appointments without someone checking the starter? We can only guess that some tech in Denver didn't do his due diligence, and thereafter, every single one of us assumed the starter had been checked. We certainly assumed it had been!

Since solving the mystery once and for all, we haven't had an issue with Clyde starting. This is good, because our local GMC has since shut down, and we can say with confidence that they were some of the best in the country.

Read the full mystery:

More Season 2 Drama

Why was Clyde so tired, you ask? Season 2 was our first year traveling all the way across the country, and we had our fair share of drama. We put Clyde through a lot this year, and it all started with our Blitz West.

The Cruddy Gas Conundrum

In the middle of our Blitz West, we detoured down to southern Texas to visit Big Bend National Park. On our way out of the state, we noticed that Clyde's gas gauge was reading wrong. We were driving through a lot of boonies and it scared us to not have an accurate gauge. Thankfully, we got to civilization without incident, and the GMC techs in Las Cruces, NM told us that it was likely the fact that we were using "contaminated gas." Not only were we forced into using 85 octane going through the Texas countryside, but the techs guessed that it may have had too much water in it. We were also getting low oil alerts, despite not being low on oil. The Texas dirt had seeped into our engine, crudding up our oil. Traveling to the Texas boonies was well worth it, but we need to thank Clyde for taking one for the team.

We Actually Ran Out Of Gas

Ironically, we didn't run out of gas in the 85 octane boonies, but we did run out of gas in the 93 octane boonies! On our way to Joshua Tree National Park in CA, we made the grave mistake of passing by a gas station that looked too crowded. We underestimated just how desolate parts of CA could be, and we ended up running out of gas not once, but TWICE before making it to the National Park. Thank goodness we had reserves, but Anthony filling up on the side of the freeway with semitrucks speeding by is NOT one of our fondest Clyde memories.

The Only Flat Tire

After 4 years of RVing, we are shocked to say that we only got 1 flat tire. We came close a couple of times, like when we drove over a bolt in Arkansas and all the times we got uneven wear because of our axles, but the only true flat happened to Clyde. It was fortunately one of the most chill ways to get a flat. It happened at a gas station near our campground, and we made it back to our campsite. We called AAA to put the spare on for us, and early that next week, we got 4 fresh tires. Now, if only the rest of our Vegas stay had gone smoothly.

Ah, the memories...

Clyde Saved Our Lives

Those new tires in Vegas came in handy more than we could have ever predicted. A few weeks later, we were in Utah and got caught in a massive flood, when a river bank behind our campsite broke and sent the Spanish Fork River gushing into the campground. We needed to evacuate in the dark, and by the time we were ready to pull out of our site, water had already risen to our ankles and the mud was getting slick. Clyde pulled the trailer out of that flood without issue. Then, just as we thought we were out of harm's way, we pulled over into a patch of soft soil, and our whole rig sank into the ground. We attempted to tow the trailer out, but Clyde was also off-kilter and kept sinking further. We knew that if we had any chance of getting out of the campground before the floods rose, we needed to leave Buggy behind. We weren't sure if Clyde would be able to make it out even unhitched, but he did. The next day, he teamed up with our buddy Garret's Dodge Ram and hauled our trailer out of the mud. This was our most traumatic experience on the road, but we were so proud of Clyde for getting us and our RV to safety. He may not have been able to pull Buggy out of the soft soil, but he got him out of our campsite and onto higher ground. If that hadn't happened, the damage could have been much worse.

We Really Flooded Our Blog With This Story.

Clyde's Sticky Situation

As if Season 2 hadn't been challenging enough, Clyde had a little mishap in Kansas, as we made our way back to New England at the end of the year. We turned down what looked like a gravel road, but as we described in the blog, "The gravel became dirt, and the dirt was mud, and the mud was slimy." Clyde had succeeded in escaping mud several times before, but even he has his limits, and his limits lie in Kansas. You see, the topsoil doesn't get easily packed down in the barren and windy Plains, and so when it rains, that soil becomes inches upon inches of mud. We learned from the locals that getting stuck is actually a rite of passage. Aren't we proud! Clyde needed a little tug to get up the slippery hill, but he proved his prowess the next day, towing our trailer through rutted, slick roads as we urgently escaped our campground to avoid bad weather.

Don't worry, he got a good cleaning in the rain the next day!

Clyde the Beast

You've probably noticed by now that Clyde has some good power behind him, despite not being Diesel. We never regretted getting a gas truck. We've towed over some of the country's steepest mountain passes with him, and even though he needed to take it slow, he got the job done. Here's our story of towing over Teton pass. He's pulled Buggy out of muddy ground on more occasions than just Utah. He handled the bumps and construction of the George Washington Bridge like a champ. We even started having transmission issues in the middle of Season 4, but we noticed nothing but some noise and shifting motion when Clyde would climb steep hills at a certain speed. Later, we deduced that the same Denver bums who didn't check our starter also didn't fill our transmission fluid enough during routine maintenance. Despite not having enough fluid for months, Clyde still trekked along. The only downsides to having a gas truck have been the poor mileage when towing, and the difficulty fitting into some gas stations when we're towing. Neither of these has been a dealbreaker.

Where's Clyde?

We got Clyde for the sole purpose of towing our travel trailer, and we knew that unhitched, he would be a very big vehicle just for driving around town. He's large in size and even larger in turning radius. Sometimes we get looks, like we must be arrogant doofuses who don't care about the environment, but we know better...and have calculated it. Scenic drives have been dicey at times, since we've needed to travel some steep and twisty roads, but oh, the incredible views we've seen out Clyde's windows! We even began a series on our Instagram called Where's Clyde Wednesday (#wheresclydewednesday), where on Wednesdays we'd post photos of Clyde in beautiful places around the country.

We cannot even come close to sharing all of the beautiful landscapes Clyde has driven us to, but we will end this post by sharing some of our most scenic Clyde photos. Thanks to our dear truck for making these adventures possible. We can't wait to officially buy you this year!