Who we are
We’re Greg & Linda Hunter. We’re a retired couple (eek) that decided to get rid of almost everything and join the millions that are travelling the continent in an RV full time.
We’re travelling with out three dogs, Keilo, Heimi, and Smokie. Each of The Boys is 100 lbs or more and very good at consuming space. It’s not that much of an issue in the trailer because we just consider it as including high leg lifts in our exercise program. It’s a different story on a travel day where positioning in the truck needs to be just so. When we were laying out the details of our plan a few years back we expected to have already said good-by to Keilo, who is 11. Based on our experience with large dogs, we’re surprised and very pleased to still have him with us.
Our Sticks and Bricks
We called our home Hunter Lodge. We lived in a log home on six acres of woods that gave us a very private and quiet place to both relax and entertain.
While full time RV’rs call a permanent home ‘sticks and bricks’, in our case, it was more like sticks and stones. (It is in New England after all, where there’s a new crop of rocks to move every year)
Our current Home
We live in a 2018 Grand Design Reflection 303RLS. It’s a 32′ 5th wheel with three slides. These give us the space we need (did I mention The Boys?) that balances comfort and maneuverability.
When we first started looking at RVs, we looked at the big ones 35′ and larger. (It was a long process of looking at 65 different floor plans with checklists and ratings. I am an analyst after all. …and it did payoff in the end.) Our thought was if we’re living in it full time, we need to be comfortable and we’ll need a lot of stuff. As we watched the videos of the people already on the road (thank you for insight) and did more research, we realized we needed to be as short as possible to do a lot of what we wanted to do. While our 5th wheel may not be considered short by some in the RV community, this is where the balance function and maneuverability against comfort for the family comes in.
Not to be overlooked, part of our home is the F-350 pickup truck we pull the 5th wheel with. We bought the truck after we bought the trailer to make sure we had enough truck for which ever trailer we finally settled on (We’ll be going through the Rockies after all). After deciding on the truck, we found that we had to order it to get what we wanted. It shouldn’t be a surprise to most, that in the Northeast, trucks of this size already on the dealer lot have a plow package installed and not a tow package. Keep in mind that one of our goals is to not be in snow, much less plow it. (If the boy is going to have his toy, some bells and at least one whistle has to be included.)
our experience
We spent over 30 years camping seasonally on the same site. We’re used to trailer life in a small space. We also had plenty of practice being in that space because for many of those years we had four Leonbergers in the trailer with us. (The difference between a Leonberger and love seat is you don’t have head fake a love seat to get to the kitchen.)
I suppose there are some like these people
that don’t consider the camping we did as REAL camping. To us it camping and what we’re doing now. We just don’t go home at the end of the weekend because we are already home. (Although I think that guy in the yellow tent might have a two-stage margarita mixer tucked in there.) The experience we didn’t have is actually moving the trailer and the dreaded Backing Up! Before this, the only experience we had with that was watching the show on the next campsite over while sitting on our seasonal camp deck drinking a beer. (We say plenty of examples of how NOT to do it.)
Our Plan
Our original plan was to move to New Hampshire when we retired. Both of us had spent most of our summers in New Hampshire in some fashion. It seemed like the right thing to do. About two years out from our retirement target, we were vacationing on a small lake in New Hampshire with The Boys when we changed the plan but kept the same timeline.
The thought of exploring the country in an RV expanded into doing it lot. Then the questions came up – How do we know we want to live in New Hampshire when we haven’t seen the majority of the country? Which led to – Why buy a house now?
That’s when we decided to roll about the countryside for two or three years (or until we’re tired of it) seeing what we can see and experiencing what we can experience. During these travels, we’ll keep an eye on whether a location is a place we’d be interested in living full time. (although, we are coastal type people)
When we sold our log home, we became Dislodged Hunters. Now we’re on the road, planning where we’re going 3 to 15 days out.