Our New England to-do list: Was our trip as productive as we hoped?

We spontaneously transitioned into part-time RV life by renting a cottage in Myrtle Beach! After our rather tumultuous year in life and travel, we couldn't have been happier with our decision. If we had it our way, we would have settled into our cottage and taken a much needed break, where we could bask in stability and space, until we found our zest for travel once again. But life continued moving despite our quest for stillness. After taking a month to furnish our cottage, our next task was to return to New England to tie up loose ends that we left dangling when we launched back on the road in March.

We've noticed in the RV community, that the longer people travel, the more they start planting roots in various parts of the country. You don't even need to be fully nomadic for this to happen. We've seen RVers purchase RV lots and homes all across the country, use friends' places as their accommodations, and have storage units dotted all over the map. We initially only had roots in MA, the state we lived in before we launched. After selling our house, we used my parents' basement to store a few items. Their driveway became our first home-base for our RV, a place to park when we were back in town.

After a year and a half of full-time traveling, Anthony registered as a South Dakota resident for tax purposes. Here, he got a "personal mailbox," aka nomad address, which planted a seed both in SD and TX, the forwarding address for his nomad mail.

Then at the end of 2024, we purchased land in the mountains of NH, where we have plans to build a cabin, and later, a house. In the meantime, our land became our second home-base, a place to boondock with the RV and orient ourselves in our future neighborhood and community.

Then this year, we sprinkled seeds in SC with our cottage rental. This was when our vast root system became readily apparent. We had some funny exchanges as we shopped for items for our new home. Whenever Anthony had to show his license, the conversation went something like this:

"Oh wow, you're from SD?!"
"No, not exactly. It's a nomad address. We were full-time travelers for 4.5 years."
*Confusion and follow-up questions ensue*
"We're actually from MA, but we also have land in NH and plan to build a home there. But right now we're renting a house here in Myrtle Beach."

Sometimes the conversation would dive deeper, where Anthony would divulge his background, that he's not actually from MA but grew up in NY. And technically, if someone wanted to send us mail, we could give them addresses in the following states and the mail would eventually reach us: MA, SD, TX, NY, FL, and SC. But not NH yet because we don't have an address. Even though it's the only state where we own real estate. Sprinkle sprinkle.

The point is, we were a little all over the place, and we needed to take our New England trip to consolidate things. Our cabin build had gotten delayed, and so we needed to get our belongings out of NH for the time-being. How did they end up there in the first place? Because we attempted to get off the road last November and it didn't work out. Then we wanted to go through all our belongings in MA and figure out what should stay, what should go to SC, and what should go to Goodwill. Because here's the other thing that happens in the RV community: We put things in storage that we think are important, but then years later, we wonder why we ever kept the stuff. We don't become less sentimental in our travels; we just learn what's worth being sentimental about. Compared to memories and experiences, very few "things" make the cut over the course of several years.

Consolidating our items was a big reason to return to New England, but we also had standing appointments. The pets were due for check-ups, and we didn't yet have a vet in SC, plus it's easier for Tanner to see a vet that knows his now very long, very complicated history. We were also looking to close on a border extension on our land, which had been in the works since last August but got tied up in our months of financial constraints. Now that we were out of the woods, we wanted to buy more woods! Speaking of the land, we try to visit there every once in a while to check on it and ideally do some landscaping so it doesn't get too overgrown. This time, our top priority was to install new trail cameras because ours had stopped working last winter. We want to have eyes on our property, both for security purposes and our own connection to it when we miss it. Plus, watching the wildlife is really entertaining.

Shortly after we launched back on the road in March, our EZ Pass toll transponder stopped working, and our research showed that we needed to be back in the account-holder state, aka MA, to get a replacement. So we added that to our New England to-do list.

With that, our list was set:

• Clear overgrowth on the land and install new trail cameras
• Close on the additional acreage
• Clear out our NH storage unit and close it down
• Go through everything in storage in MA and decide what stays and what goes
• Pets' vet appointment
• Acquire new EZ Pass

Six items doesn't seem like a ton, but we knew we were squeezing them into a short span of time. Furthermore, we were fitting them in on a trip that, truth be told, we didn't actually want to be taking. We weren't emotionally ready to be back in the RV, and in addition to this year being a huge breaking point for us, it was also one for our trailer. Buggy is now 5 years old, and his age is starting to show. We needed to be prepared for more mechanical issues to arise.

If you've been following along on our trip updates, you know that mechanical issues did indeed arise. The very electric issues we thought we had laid to rest ended up resurfacing, only this time even worse because we had a new inverter we couldn't even use! This flipped our trip plans upside-down because we suddenly needed to be on 50amp electric hookups as much as possible. This meant we couldn't stay on our land, which meant less time to check our land-related items off our list. Then our truck evidently wanted to join the wear-and-tear party, and we needed to get Clyde in for servicing.

Then, as we rounded the final leg of our trip, we incurred more damage to our roof (yes, "more" because we had been traveling with a leaky roof all year), and we broke our Starlink dish, leaving us without reliable internet. These were the big problems. We also had some smaller ones that added extra challenges to our trip.

RV life comes with problems and drama. It's par for the course. But we didn't have excitement and adventure to offset the low points. All we could do was focus on the tasks at hand, and hope that checking off our to-do list would lift a lot of the pressures weighing down on us during our time of transition.

The land stuff

Once in New England, we ventured up to NH first after finding a 50amp electric site available for 2 weeks. If we had been able to park on our land, we could have stayed flexible with timing, but because of our electric issues, boondocking wasn't in the cards. So we stayed at an RV park 15 minutes away and immediately removed one item off our list: clearing the overgrowth. If we weren't going to park on it, there wasn't a good reason to mow, since it would just grow back again. Some parts of the land, like our roughed-in driveway, don't get a ton of growth anyway, so we were still able to park the truck and install new trail cameras. It was tough not being able to camp on the land, but we made the most of our visits, even bringing Tanner to frolic in the tall grass.

The new trail cameras are working great, and so far, this seems to be the year of the deer. We've also spotted a couple of black bears.

Our limited time in NH also meant that we couldn't stay to close on our border extension in person. However, we think we'll be able to do this remotely.

The NH storage unit

This was one of our highest priorities because our storage unit monthly fee kept increasing and we didn't need the space. We got the unit during our brief NH cottage rental and decided to keep it in case we wanted to start buying items for our cabin. That was when we thought we'd be building this year. Since none of that panned out, we wanted to grab our stuff and close the unit down. We shared in this blog post that we were successful in getting this done. Actually, clearing it out was a piece of cake. We had a lot less stuff in this storage unit than we remembered, probably because most of it was emotional baggage that isn't tangible.

We'll talk about the specifics of our hauls in an upcoming blog post, but the biggest items out of this unit were Anthony's desk and office chair. We decided to not buy new desks for the SC cottage because we had barely used the ones stored up in New England. Instead, we made makeshift office spaces until we could retrieve these ones. We knew that hauling desks over 1000 miles in the back of our trailer would be a big undertaking, but at first it was actually kind of cool. We had space to make an office nook using Anthony's desk! The desk fit almost scarily perfectly.

MA storage

Anthony's desk ended up in the NH storage unit, but mine was in my old bedroom at my parents' house. Once we realized we'd be spending winter nestled in our RV there, I requested permission to take back my bedroom and convert it into a temporary office space. My parents have been elbow-deep in home renovations for over a year now, making space even more limited. I hoped to retrieve my desk before they needed to do anything to that room, but our trip delay + an earlier recarpeting of the upstairs meant the room went through some iterations before I could get back. My parents kept everything safe in the process, but our stuff had landed in several rooms – my bedroom, a loft space, and their basement. We spent a lot of time going through everything. Unlike the NH storage unit, clearing out these spaces was daunting. We still had stuff that we stored there after we sold our house in 2021. Nothing like living several lifetimes to make us realize that so many of those things didn't feel like "ours" anymore. We had a lot of decisions to make on what to keep, what to offload, and what to usher into our new lives down in SC. Again, more on that in a future post, but the good news is, we got what we needed and organized the rest. This was a huge weight off our shoulders.

The vet appointment

The goal was to get the cats' annual exam and Tanner's updated bloodwork at their home vet. This way we could take our time finding vet care for them in SC. Tanner is 14.5 years old now and has many of the expected age-related ailments, so having a vet that knows his history is extremely helpful. We try to get him bloodwork every 3-5 months to check his thyroid levels and kidney and liver function. The older he gets, the less we know what to expect from his tests, but all things considered, he was mostly A-OK! His arthritis has worsened quite a bit in the past few months, so the vet prescribed him an NSAID. He has a worsening heart murmur that we need to keep an eye on. His dementia hasn't progressed as quickly as we feared. This dog is a super trooper!

Unfortunately for him, his new siblings keep forcing him to take precautionary meds. Last year when we took the cats for their first wellness exam, Mac was diagnosed with ringworm, and this led to a whole array of meds, baths, and environmental sanitization. All 3 pets needed to go on a meds/bath regimen, made even more necessary by the fact that we couldn't keep them separate in such a small space. The stress we all experienced cannot be explained, and frankly, we'd rather not relive it.

This time wasn't as stressful, thankfully, but somehow, our extra-hygienic indoor cat Piccolo contracted giardia. We're still scratching our heads on that one, unless one of us dragged something in, got it on her, and she contracted it when she was grooming herself. None of the pets showed any symptoms, but Piccolo was the only pet tested, and so we treated all 3 with a round of meds. Tanner was thrilled because he got a very tasty food additive. The cats got liquid because they can't be trusted to eat the proper dosing. They were less than thrilled.

And lastly, we had concerns that Mac was suffering from mild asthma, and a lung X-ray confirmed it. He was put on meds for this. So there we were, after what we hoped would be a no-muss-no-fuss vet appointment, playing vet pharmacists to 3 pets who were now on some combination of 3 new meds. It was deja vu all over again, after years of needing to try a whole variety of meds with Lily, and then last year with the ringworm eradication. But the shining positive in all of this is, all of them are really well-behaved at the vet. Wish their reward could be a clean bill of health, but they haven't been so lucky.

Thankfully, we could take care of everything in one vet appointment (well, not counting the 2 trips back to the vet to pick up meds), and we had time to find a vet in SC for Piccolo's follow-up testing for the giardia. We're used to conducting pharmaceutical gymnastics on the road, and so we just kept on trucking.

That was everything we completed, so you might be wondering...what happened with the EZ Pass transponder?

That was one item we didn't end up checking off our list, and for very strange and confusing reasons. We quickly realized that, if we were having this much trouble getting a replacement, other people might too. We also found some important information for RVers who wish to purchase an EZ Pass. We realized that this would best be a dedicated blog post in the future, so subscribe!!!

We ended up staying out for 5 weeks, and in that time, we're happy with what we accomplished. We checked the most important items off our to-do list, particularly the ones we needed to do while we were in New England. And when unforeseen issues arose, like the problems with our truck, those took precedence, and we got the servicing done quickly and efficiently. All of this in the middle of mayhem with electric and internet issues, roof leaks, and the vet pharmacy? Yeah, we're proud of ourselves. Hopefully now we can return to our cottage with a cleaner slate, so we can finally enjoy some stability.