The moment we’ve been building to has finally arrived. Well, sort of.
If you’ve been following our journey on this blog or one of our other platforms, you know that we decided to abandon a life of sticks and bricks, buy a camper, and live life on the road full-time starting in 2025.
As of March 27th, we have officially moved out of our rental in Tennessee and hit the road, but not in the way we intended.
Read on for an update on our nomadic story and what has (already) gone awry.
Things to know:
Our lease in Tennessee ended on March 27th, leaving us to move or sell all of our things and hit the road. While this was the plan all along, one major component is missing.
Nomads without a camper
We’re big fans of watching people live out their dreams, especially when those dreams align with things we enjoy (like travel and beautiful scenery and adventure).
A final family portrait (on film) before saying goodbye to our house in Tennessee (bonus points if you spot Chowder).
While there are many approaches to a lifestyle of travel, most people share one thing in common–they opt for a home on wheels of some sort. From massive RVs to travel trailers to rooftop tents, practically every nomad we know centers their life around their go-anywhere home.
If you haven’t guessed by now, we are currently nomads without a camper, which you could read as “technically homeless.” That’s not particularly ideal nor is it how we anticipated this transition to full-time RVing going.
What’s going on with the camper?
We documented our process of choosing a camper that we thought would be ideal for us and the way in which we like to travel. To sum it up, we went with a custom flatbed truck camper.
When we opted for a custom camper, we accepted the inherent risks of going the custom route. Namely, that timelines can be unpredictable, and we were likely to encounter some challenges that larger manufacturers don’t often face.
So, while we didn’t anticipate being three (going on four) months behind schedule, we did know that delays were a distinct possibility.
Custom campers from small builders can experience different setbacks than campers from large manufacturers.
Without diving too deep into the details, that’s exactly what’s going on and why the camper is taking longer than predicted to complete–small business growing pains, material delays, and so on. Normal stuff that is mildly frustrating nonetheless!
Thankfully, we shouldn’t be waiting much longer. We project to pick up the camper within a month and hit the road immediately. Obviously, nothing is set in stone, and until the camper is mated to the truck, we are keeping our hopes leveled at a steady “fingers crossed.”
What are we doing in the meantime?
That is a great question. The plan right now is to split time between friends, family, and rentals. If that sounds a little chaotic, it’s because it is.
In an ideal world, we would have had an accurate timeline from the start. Being able to make arrangements ahead of time would have allowed us to rent an apartment or some other long-term solution that was more stable and cost-effective than our current options.
We’re in for a lot of this and avoiding eye contact with our bank accounts.
Unfortunately, that simply wasn’t the case, leaving us to bop around somewhat aimlessly for the foreseeable future. It’s our hope that we can keep this interim period as budget-friendly as possible because rental expenses can add up very quickly.
What about your travel plans?
Because we initially anticipated picking the camper up in January, we had put together a semblance of a route and began making travel arrangements for the first few months of the year.
With those plans now in shambles, we will have to adjust both our timelines and the areas we prioritize visiting.
Alaska is the crown jewel of our itinerary this year, so it will take precedence. Depending on when the camper is actually completed, we may have to cut even more of our pre-Alaska plans to make it happen.
We’ll have plenty of adventures this year, but our plans have changed to accommodate for the delays.
Thankfully, our journey is dictated almost entirely by our desires and whims, so we can remain flexible and make the most of an uncertain situation. We just need to remind ourselves not to get in a rush as a result of the shifting timeline.
How are y’all holding up?
Our response to the delays and the less-than-ideal circumstances they have created has been as you would likely expect–a mixture of frustration, disappointment, and determination to make the most of something we can’t control.
We’ve been able to keep level heads and balance each other out. When one of us starts to get gloomy, the other is there to lift us up. We work well as a team like that.
Now that we are officially out of our house and wandering aimlessly, we actually feel quite a bit better. It’s almost like this time is a prequel to our real adventure–a bit of adversity that we have to endure to fully appreciate what’s to come.
Despite the disappointment and frustration, we’re making the most of this interim period.
We have never been good at staying in one place for long, and we were in Tennessee for 14 consecutive months (a new record for us). Being back in the chaotic world of the modern nomad feels like a relief, oddly enough.
The only real stress we have about the situation (other than the unknown of when the camper will be ready) is the potential for costs to balloon as we rely on short-term rentals to get by.
It feels as though we have been teasing our shift to full-time RVing for far too long, and now you know why. It was never our intention to draw this thing out and make it into some big, dramatic thing, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles!
Hopefully, we will be giving you a tour of our custom home-on-wheels very soon. In the meantime, we appreciate you reading our blog, following along on Instagram, and checking us out on YouTube.
Speaking of, you can watch the video below if you’re interested in learning more about the current situation.
Happy trails!
- Riley + Hanna