The big pivot

Last year on November 6, we made a huge leap towards our next chapter of life. We bought land in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the place that we always considered end-game. Since then, even though we continued traveling full-time, we stayed honest on the blog. Nomadic life is great, but we always knew that, for us, it had an expiration date. Now, we would be stopping as soon as it made sense to.

Initially, the plan was to start looking at land this fall, but when our dream property came on the market last year, we jumped at the opportunity, thus changing the timeline and trajectory of our lives in unexpected ways. Back then, all we knew was that we would have our land but not do much on it yet. We stayed the course, planning our travels for the following year, and spending part of winter stationed at my parents' house before launching on the road for the 4th time. This year's travels were fantastic. We went back out west, visiting some of the most beautiful landscapes we've ever seen and making memories we will carry with us for a lifetime. However, something happened as soon as we got the land. Part of our hearts stayed there as we traveled, and we found ourselves burning out way more easily than previous years. To remedy this, we returned to New England in the summer and spent the rest of the year there, slowing our travels and mainly camping at our home-bases: the OG parents' basketball court, and our new boondocking haven in the mountains.

We chose another remedy, too, one that we haven't mentioned on the blog until now. Back in July, as we prepared to become a family of 5 and head back east, we made the command decision to look for a rental home in NH. We had lots of reasons, most pressing being our burnout, the prospect of having new kitties, and wanting to be in the area as we lined up workers for our build. We knew that, if we were feeling this way now, it would be even worse several months from now, when it's time to launch back out again. I said to Anthony, "You'll need to drag me out of NH by both feet." We had one big obstacle to contend with, though, which is that NH does not have an RV-friendly climate in the wintertime. If we truly wanted to sustain our NH life through the winter, we would need to find a stable structure.

We spent most of autumn in NH and began to truly feel at home there. We've been able to contact contractors without feeling rushed to line things up before we leave again. We've gotten to know our cats, and while they're fine with travel, they are clearly craving the stability that they've never had before. We owe Tanner some stability, too. As his dementia worsens, routine becomes more and more important. This has nothing to do with not liking the travel life. We love it. We just knew that, if we didn't get off the road soon, we would come to resent our travels. Our circumstances and our mindsets dictated that we needed a change of pace.

Of course, we have lots of stories about our move, but before we dive into those, let's answer the big, pressing question:

What's happening with the travels/blog?

A rental property gives us the ability to settle down in our new home state, recover after our fatiguing year, and weather the winter. However, we don't yet know what the future will bring come spring. We might continue the sticks 'n bricks life, or we might miss the adventure and move back into the RV until our cabin is built. The travel life has taught us that not everything needs to be set in stone. No matter what, Buggy won't be a stranger! We will find a way to continue RVing in our next chapter of life. In the meantime, we're parking/storing him at our MA home-base and are going to stay in him for Thanksgiving, which we'll be writing about!

Which brings us to the blog. We will be slowing our posts down as we finish out the year, but plan to post whenever we have new content. In December, we will share how our Thanksgiving went in the RV. Then at the end of the year, we'll do our annual "Season Recap" video – which is sure to be a good one! After that, we'll take a break from the blog for a while. Eventually, once we find our stride as part-time RVers, we'll publish posts when we have the content.

We are still planning to post NH-specific updates on our Instagram and Facebook, so we hope you'll follow along there!

Now let's talk about the move: The logistics, the hurdles, and the emotions of stopping full-time RV life.

RVers know the feeling: We live in a small space, so we can't possibly have too much stuff! Then, as soon as we need to move out, we realize that we pack a lot into that small space. To keep our move as efficient as possible, we stayed parked on our land, so we only had short drives bringing things over to the rental. It took a few trips, but we give major points to Clyde the Beast, because we can fit a lot into that truck bed!

We packed out everything except for our essentials that we would still need for the next couple of days, because the next step was bringing the trailer down to MA. Although still a winter climate, coastal MA gets less snow than NH, and so our MA home-base would be Buggy's stationary spot for the season. On Monday, November 3, we made our final full-time voyage between our home-bases, a travel day that had become very familiar to us.

Only, we couldn't possibly have a seamless last full-time travel day! It's us! That morning, we woke up ready to hitch up and bring the RV down to its stationary spot on the basketball court, but we ran into a big problem before we were even out of the gate (the literal gate. We have one at the entrance to our driveway).

That Sunday night dipped below freezing, and typically our batteries can handle the temp drop just fine, but early Monday morning, they lost voltage and we ended up losing all electricity, including our 12V. This happened once before, only in extreme heat, not cold.

While we could have packed up without power, it wouldn't have been pleasant, and so we thought of possible solutions to quickly get us back up and running. When our last battery failure happened, our solar contractor told us it was possible to jump start our generator, which typically needs the 12V power to start. We've never tried it before, but if we wanted to take the time, we could figure it out. But first, I suggested that we plug into the truck, since we'll be doing it soon anyways. We don't have a truck-to-trailer DC charger, but a little bit of power does trickle through from the 7-way. I thought maybe it would be just enough juice to jump start the generator. Sure enough, our plan worked.

This situation became emblematic of the growth we made during our years of full-timing. Even though we certainly weren't newbies the last time our batteries failed, our process for coming to a solution was a lot more complicated. This time, we felt like bona fide veterans. The problem was something we had seen before. We didn't panic. We sought a simple solution and had our fix within minutes. Of course, we can't always expect solutions to be this easy even as veterans, but we're primed to find them if they exist. This hiccup demonstrated our success in one of the biggest goals we had for our RV life: We wanted to learn how to be more handy, building our mechanical and troubleshooting skills. This isn't just the physical know-how, but the connections we make in our brains as we try to come up with solutions to problems. Our critical thinking has sharpened, as have our mechanical skills.

We spent the next couple of days at our MA home-base, packing the remainder of our belongings and taking the first steps in getting the trailer storage-ready. Since we'd be returning for Thanksgiving, the main task was cleaning and making sure that we didn't risk mold or critters during our few weeks away.

We may have reached veteran-status as RVers, but only as full-timers. We were now newbie part-timers, and those learning curves were just beginning. Most RVers do this type of cleaning after camping season, but our camping season had never ended before. We removed all our food and defrosted our fridge and freezer. We took our rugs out to be cleaned. We scrubbed down all the surfaces and moved our furniture away from the walls so moisture wouldn't build up. We left some cabinets open for airflow.

Some of our tasks made us feel like we had come full circle as RVers. When we first got the RV, we sealed up any and all holes we could find as part of a weather- and critter-proofing process. Anthony went around and did that again. It's a good thing he did! Somewhere along the way, all the sealed holes under our rig became unsealed again. Because we took the aluminum tracks out of our floors, we have a lot of holes where bolts used to be. How long were we at risk of critters finding their way into our home?! Considering we also lacked one of our greatest lines of defense for 7 months – a cat – we feel very lucky that we didn't end up with unwanted visitors.

Sure, patching about 100 bolt holes wasn't very fun for Anthony, but our problem quickly went from bad to worse, when Anthony came across a hole a little bigger than bolt-sized.

What you're looking at there is an over-foot-long hole from where part of our aluminum floor used to be...a one-piece aluminum floor, mind you. A chunk broke and fell off, exposing our cork subfloor. We had no idea because our cork and vinyl flooring covers the hole from the inside, and it's in the rear corner, above the spare tire holder on the outside. We hadn't done a crawl under that part of the RV in a long time.

Our resident material scientist came up with a theory as to how this happened. A while after we switched our couch out for an oversized chair, we noticed that one of the legs made a dent in our vinyl plank. Anthony thinks that, during travel, the chair could bounce during bumps, creating microcracks in the aluminum. Over time, water would seep into these cracks, and they expanded with freezing and thawing. (Remember the arches?) Then, driving or some other impact knocked the piece loose. Even all that frost wedging shouldn't have caused such a big break, but any explanation was helpful at this point.

This issue quickly shot to the top of our repair list for ATC, and we have a feeling a trip to Indiana might be our first come spring. But for now, we patched it up with aluminum tape and sealant.

Once our fixes were complete, we finished packing, bringing our rental-bound items out to the truck and our RV-related items inside the RV. Then, we drained our water lines in case of frozen temperatures during the weeks away. Full winterizing would come after Thanksgiving. Then finally, we packed our pets for a special travel day sans RV, shut off our 12V power, and said "See you later" to our beloved home of the last 4 years.

Remember that fateful night when we felt we officially became NH locals? We had another conversation that night, too. Anthony wondered why we seemed so much less sad than when we moved out of the house and into the RV. I said, "It's because we're not leaving Buggy forever. We still have him, and we'll still have more adventures with him." Beyond that, we aren't marching into a life that's totally unknown to us. We have lived in a house before, and we know what to expect from the sticks 'n bricks life. When we first got the RV, we had never owned one before, let alone lived in one.

We're also at a completely different point in our lives. 4 years ago, we were making an unconventional decision that would relieve us from debt, be a great adventure and learning experience, and set us up to live our dream lives in NH. Now, we're cashing in on all that, and our lives in NH are beginning. More learning experiences (and surely more debt!) await, but it's a dream we've had for a long time, slowly but surely coming to fruition.

Lastly, we're secure in knowing what we need right now. We need to be in NH, in a stable environment. We need our focus to be on our cabin build, work, our pets, and our local family and friends. Maybe come spring, we'll be itching to get on the road again, and we'll squeeze in a few more months of travel before our cabin is ready for move-in. Maybe we'll seek a different style of living altogether. The best part about life is, it's not linear, and RVing has helped us realize how exciting the curveballs can be. We've found many twists and turns along this road, and no matter what, we always look back and see all the good that's come from them.