Nomads (whether we like it or not)

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

Our camper of choice for full-time travel

If you’ve been reading our blog, you know that we’ve put a ton of time, effort, and thought into selecting a truck and a camper to act as our nomadic home in 2025. With full-time travel approaching quickly, we’ve finally landed on the type of camper that we’ll call home in the coming year(s).

While we can’t give you a grand reveal quite yet–the camper isn’t actually in our possession–we do want to give you a preview of the style of camper we chose and some of the key features it will have. We hope you’re as excited as we are because we are HYPED.

Things to know:

We’re traveling full-time in 2025, and we finally picked a camper to facilitate our new nomadic lifestyle. Read on for a preview—we think you’ll love it as much as we do!

The camper we chose for full-time travel

Our list of blogs we wrote to follow our decision-making process includes a lot of “Why we didn’t buy X.” While this process of elimination worked well for us, it did leave some of our friends and readers wondering what type of camper could possibly be left.

The answer? A flatbed camper.

What is a flatbed camper?

The bed on our Ram 3500 will soon go missing.

The concept of a flatbed camper echoes that of a slide-in truck camper. Both are intended to be mounted to the rear of the truck on a temporary or semi-permanent basis, allowing you to tote your home around with you wherever you go.

The primary difference is (you guessed it) that a flatbed camper requires a flatbed truck rather than your standard pickup bed. Flatbed campers are designed with a flat footprint that encompasses the entire surface area of the flatbed rather than being built to accommodate wheel wells and bedsides.

The benefits of flatbed campers

Flatbed campers are not as plentiful as slide-in campers, and there’s an obvious reason for that–consumer trucks come from the factory with boxed beds, making them by far the most common type of truck bed on the road. The demand for slide-in campers is simply much higher.

So, why go through the hassle of swapping to a flatbed and seeking out a flatbed camper manufacturer? The answer is simple–flatbed campers provide some notable advantages over their slide-in brethren, and those benefits appeal to us.

• More floor space. Because a flatbed camper uses the entirety of the flatbed footprint (rather than the space between the wheel wells), you have far more floor space to work with. This means a roomier interior that better facilitates moving around and navigating around your camping partners–a must for full-time living out of a truck camper.

• A more permanent solution than slide-in campers. While flatbed campers can technically be removed (just like slide-in options), they are typically designed to be semi-permanent. This makes them more of a cross between a removable camper and a true RV, and there are advantages to that, including plumbing into your vehicle’s electrical/fuel systems, using more secure mounting systems, and so on.

Why not buy a chassis-mounted camper?

If you choose to go the flatbed truck camper route, there is one primary alternative–a chassis-mounted camper that permanently mates to the frame of your truck. There are advantages of this style of camper, including one that is particularly compelling to us–a pass-through to the cab.

The option to use our truck for truck things is important to us.

In an ideal world, this is the route we would have gone. In many ways, it is preferable to us, but there were two key considerations that held us back from fully committing to a chassis-mounted camper–permanence and versatility.

• Permanence. We have plenty of experience with long-term travel, but we are still viewing this shift to full-time RVing as an experiment. It will last a minimum of a year, with the opportunity to stretch without limits. Because we aren’t committing to a longer period (3+ years), we wanted something semi-permanent that could be removed and sold separately from the truck, if necessary. This also gives us the option to change our camping setup should we desire.

• Versatility. A chassis-mounted camper is a camper through and through. By opting for a flatbed camper that can be removed, we can use the truck as a truck when needed. This grants us flexibility if we purchase a home or want to set up our camper as a home base for a prolonged period of time.

Our flatbed truck camper

Because flatbed campers are relatively rare, most options that are currently on the market fall into the custom or semi-custom categories. As a result, our search ended in choosing a pretty custom camper, and we’ve been working with the builder to achieve our end goal since making our decision.

We want to save the big reveal for when we actually pick up our camper (the excitement is building), but we’re happy to share a few of the main features with you here. Consider it a little preview of what’s to come!

• Open floor plan. We are prioritizing floor space and freedom of movement.

• Off-grid sustainability. We opted for plenty of power, water, and so on to stay off-grid for extended periods.

• Quality. We were willing to spend more for quality rather than opt for quantity and/or a lower price.

With our camper under construction and our 2025 travel itinerary in development, it’s safe to say that the coming months hold some significant changes and excitement for us. We can’t wait to share our adventure with you–from picking up our camper to visiting The Last Frontier. We hope you’ll follow along by reading our blog, checking us out on social media, and watching our YouTube videos!

Please feel free to drop a comment below. We love engaging with and learning from you!

- Riley + Hanna