Did we take our New England trip at the right time?

Summer is over, and we're now removed from and able to look back on a pivotal year. In July 2025, Anthony was laid off from his job, and this was the start of a series of events that is the perfect exemplification of the phrase, "When it rains, it pours." Fast forward to July 2026, and we were back in New England, tying up loose ends that had been left frayed and dangling in the chaos. Within that year-long span of time, we flipped life on its head a few times. We attempted to rent a cottage in NH for the winter but broke our lease after just 2 weeks. We moved back into the RV and endured a horrific winter stationary in MA. Then we tried to muster up the energy to hit the road for another year of travels. But we were tired. Our RV was tired. Components started breaking down. Minor stressors felt huge because we had already been through so much.

Looking back, it was only a matter of time before we'd do something big to smash our way out of this pattern. The day after Buggy's inverter breakdown and my emotional breakdown, Anthony and our camper neighbor Brian were troubleshooting while I was on the phone with my mom. Typically a no-nonsense Italian who is the first to let me know if I'm overreacting, her responses had shifted lately:

"I told your father, 'She's had it up to here. Actually, she's had it up to more than that, but I can't reach that high."

After finding humor in the fact that, at whatever height, I couldn't see her gesture through the phone, I realized that her empathy and understanding was actually scary. It meant that things were actually that bad. As she likes to ask, "What's Zen about this, Nicole?" But usually she asks it in a "What have you gotten yourself into?" way. This time, it was just obvious: "Nope, there's no Zen. And it S's." That's her way of saying "sucks" without swearing.

The decision to look at rentals in Myrtle Beach had the same precipitating power as Anthony's job loss, only this time, every event that followed helped us climb out of our hole. Anthony got a job. We found a 3-bedroom cottage that had a calm energy from the start. By the time we signed our lease, we might as well have been completely different people, living completely different lives.

Well, almost. We couldn't just say goodbye to the past and start anew. We had a whole life outside our cottage door. Some of it was still in New England, and some of it was in the RV. After settling into the cottage, we decided to take the RV up north, which turned out to be a trip of many adventures and misadventures. We struggled to not slip back into our old mindsets, and we were tested hard with more RV issues, heatwaves, and the overwhelming disappointment that, not only did we need to delay our cabin build, we couldn't even park on our land when we visited NH. This New England trip took a toll on us, but we did it so we could feel more settled once we got back to Myrtle Beach.

We tried to time it right. At first, we planned to take the trip earlier in the summer, but we decided to rent the cottage first. We reviewed this decision in the blog:

Plan A had us blitzing to New England, staying there for a shortened period of time, and returning to SC to rent our cottage before we heading to VA for our friend Roberto's wedding. After realizing that would be far too much stress and haste, we decided on Plan B: to rent the cottage immediately, settle in, and then tack our New England trip on after going to VA.

One thing we haven't covered in the blog, though, was that we also had a secret Plan C, which would have delayed our trip even more, until the fall. We could have rented the cottage in May, gone to VA in June, and come straight back after the wedding. We had repairs on the calendar for around Labor Day Weekend, so after the appointment, we could pick up the trailer and continue north, landing in New England in September. Now, we know how the July trip turned out, and we know how our September was in SC. A lot happened these past few months that made us wonder, did we actually take our New England trip at the optimal time?

July trip advantages

The most obvious advantage to going in July was that we got our tasks done sooner. We closed down our NH storage unit and consolidated all our belongings into fewer spaces. We retrieved our desks so we could finish furnishing our office spaces. We also got to check on our land and install new trail cameras, after having no way of keeping an eye on the land since the winter, when our old cameras broke.

Clearing this task list helped us settle into the SC cottage more fully. We had no future trips on the calendar, which means we finally had permission to stay still for a while.

July trip disadvantages

Despite the trip being productive, we constantly had to remind ourselves that the stress was temporary, and to keep our eyes on the prize. The prize being the aforementioned permission to stay still. We pushed ourselves through this trip because emotionally, we weren't ready to be back in the RV. Our decision to get off the road was to avoid resenting the RV life that once brought us so much joy and adventure. Jumping back into travels so soon was a major risk. If things had gone smoothly, we probably would have coped much better, but they didn't. By the time we got back to SC, our rig was barely functioning, and we were at our wit's end.

Taking the trip in July also meant traveling during a major East Coast heatwave. The heat in SC had been relentless, but we had very little reprieve up north. On top of that, we battled haze and poor air quality from Canadian wildfires.

We thought we had taken care of our inverter issues before the trip, but then when we were in VA, we had a blackout that forced us to shut our new inverter off for the remainder of our travels. This is annoying under normal circumstances, but in the hot temperatures, we needed to get on 50amp electric hookups as much as possible. This led to other unforeseen issues, like us needing to change campgrounds after being forbidden to run our AC at our reserved site.

We almost thought about cutting the trip short and trying again later, once our electric was fixed again. But instead, we marched on, as unpleasant as it was.

Lastly, we left our cottage after just 7 weeks, and while we had mostly finished furnishing it, we hadn't fully prepped it for a long-term vacancy. We had security cameras, and since it's a professionally-managed gated community, we always have extra supervision. We wanted to do more, though. I had added timers to some of our lights, but we realized too late that they weren't configured properly. Our cottage was left in the dark for 5 straight weeks. I also wished we had put water sensors under our sinks that would alert us to any leaks. YouTube is a great place to learn from other people's situations (thanks, Eamon & Bec!). Thankfully, our cottage was totally fine the whole time, but the added preparations would have given us more peace of mind.

September trip advantages

Of course, the later trip is completely hypothetical, but as we went through the month of September in the cottage, we kept a close eye on our alternative possibility. How was the weather in New England? What was the status of our RV? How were we feeling about RV life?

Had we taken the trip in September, we would have had more time to settle into our cottage. We could've done the added safety precautions. The pets could've had a longer break from the chaos. We could've give ourselves a longer break from the stress of the RV. It's also quite likely that we would've eliminated lots of the stress we endured on the July trip.

If the electric issues occurred on a 5-day wedding trip, this would have been a totally different scenario. We'd just thank our lucky stars that we had electric hookups, finish the trip, and make our way back to SC, not setting out again until the electric was repaired. No scrambling to change our reservations, no battling heat without AC. Just a minor inconvenience that we'd need to take care of as soon as possible.

Is there a chance we'd have more electric issues on a September trip no matter what? Of course! After all, we had just gotten our electric fixed in June, and just 2 weeks later, the blackout happened. Turns out, the 2nd problem was likely a result of the fix of the 1st problem! Just goes to show, even if a repair was recent, that doesn't mean something else won't break or malfunction. In the RV life, things break constantly.

But let's say we still didn't have fully functioning electric for our September trip. The weather would've been much nicer, and we wouldn't have needed our ACs. My mom constantly raved about the gorgeous weather they were having in MA, and our trail cameras snapped enviable photos of deer grazing in temperatures in the 50s and 60s. Meanwhile, we continued sweating in the soupy swamp of SC, during months that kept shattering heat records.

If our electric was fixed, we would've been able to boondock on our land in NH, and we'd have full electric capabilities at our home-base in MA. Besides the fact that we prefer staying at our home-bases, there are logistical advantages, too. These stays automatically allow us more flexibility because we don't have the confines of reservations. We can go back and forth as we please. When attempting to tackle a massive to-do list, this flexibility is extremely useful.

Gauging our emotional state through the summer gave us a lot of insights, and as September rolled around, we were already feeling the bubbles of excitement to get on the road again. Now, we can't ignore that circumstances are very different – we're excited for a fun trip, not necessarily a trip filled with tasks, responsibilities, and the physical and emotional labor of going through years-worth of belongings. But given that a September New England trip would've probably allowed us a much better balance of fun and productivity, we can safely say we would emotionally handle that trip much better than the one in July.

September trip disadvantages

The disadvantage that comes straight to mind is a "lack of stuff." First off, when we prepped our trailer for storage, we got rid of a lot of things that we'd ideally like on our travels, like our trash cabinet, Mac and Piccolo's cat tree, and countless other items that were too old and grimy to be kept in an environment that's not climate-controlled. These aren't essentials, really, but they help make the space more functional and homey.

Then we have the stuff that would've been in storage for all these extra weeks. We wouldn't have our desks at the cottage, and since they were barely used, we really didn't want to buy new ones. We wouldn't have had all our kitchen appliances, like our Zojirushi bread maker which, strange as it sounds, helps us truly feel at home in a place. We'd also need to pay 3 more months of exorbitant prices to keep our NH storage unit.

In May, we created our Summer to Remember goals with our New England trip in mind. Had we delayed the trip, our list would have become mostly obsolete. It doesn't sound like a big deal, since we could've just switched out the New England goals for SC goals, but we doubt we would have accomplished much. The weather was too darn hot to really do anything. We sweated through a few of our SC goals, but we even struggled to do those. The summer would likely have become a bunch of cottage-related goals, or we would've scrapped our Summer to Remember altogether. Neither of those would make an appealing blog post.

But the biggest disadvantage is, our September trip wouldn't have actually happened.

Yep. We would have been sitting at the cottage, preparing for a trip the week after Labor Day, and we'd get the news that everything would need to be pushed. Our appointment at Trailers of the East Coast was supposed to be the last week in August through first week in September, but they told us to wait a couple weeks. They were ordering a bunch of parts from ATC and wanted to ensure everything arrived before we brought the trailer. A great reason, and we were more than happy to wait...because we had already taken our New England trip. So now, TOEC has our trailer until late September, and EcoEthic Solar will get it for the week after that. Our September trip would have become an October trip.

Would this really be a bad thing, though? I mean, we love New England in October. It's peak foliage time, the weather is usually great, and there are some incredible activities in the region that time of year. But, temperatures in October do get pretty darn cold, and we've had issues with cold fall nights in the past. Delaying a trip is tough no matter what. While we would've mostly stayed at our home-bases (electric willing), there still would've been bookings we'd need to switch. We'd also need to change our schedules in regards to work projects and visits with friends.

It gets worse. The delay would have forced us into a decision we weren't ready to make: Where were we spending Thanksgiving? Say we had a 5-week trip like we did in July, but it started in October. The trip would bring us to the 1st or 2nd week in November (depending on when we got the RV back from EcoEthic). Would we really return to SC for only a week or 2 before blitzing back to MA for the holiday? Unlikely. So, if we wanted to spend Thanksgiving in MA, in our RV, we might have been forced to make the decision to stay out from the beginning of October, through the holidays (safely assuming we'd spend Christmas up there as well, since that's basically a non-negotiable). This would mean 3 months away from the cottage, and we wouldn't want to do that. We need our RV trips to be shorter than that, at least for now, or else it would feel too much like we were full-timing again.

It's easy to think about all the ways a fall trip would have been better, especially when we know how much got messed up in July, but the truth is, we'll never actually know how Plan C would've worked out. A smooth trip is never a guarantee. More things might have broken. We might have faced other stressors, like our big holiday decision. At the end of the day, we can look at our summer and realize that it wasn't perfect, and some parts were downright nasty, but we didn't need perfection. We needed to tackle big tasks and set ourselves up for the best "Myrtle Beach chapter" possible.

There's one other sneaky advantage to taking the trip in July. We frontloaded the stress and closed the door on our full-time RV lives by picking up the pieces it left behind. After we got back, we started to heal our wounds. Our healing and Buggy's repairs means that we can now open our minds to what our RV lives will look like from here forward. If an October trip hung over our heads, we wouldn't have been able to form a part-timer identity. Taking the trip in July gave us the space to dream again. That's why our choice, with all its imperfections, was a good one. This transition is about more than just logistics, repairs, consolidating, and organizing. It's a journey into a new chapter of our lives...and we're finally eager and hopeful for what lies ahead.