While some people that go full-time have it on their radar for years, choosing the full-time RV lifestyle was a decision we made in a matter of weeks.
When we returned from a birthday trip to Phoenix, Arizona in late May 2019, we were each met with unexpected challenges at work. The trip combined with those changes in our careers left us wanting more. We craved more time together as a family and more travel adventures.
Within two weeks of returning from our trip, the plan to go full-time was in motion. We put a deposit down on an RV in Florida and bought one-way airplane tickets to pick it up.
Part one of our journey started on July 26, 2019.
We spent the next month getting rid of our stuff and getting our home ready to list on Airbnb and VRBO. By the end of July, we were ready to go full-time! We headed to Motorsport Ranch just outside of Fort Worth, Texas for our first race weekend on the road.
Although we were full-timers, we were both still transitioning our careers so we stayed close to home. We spent the next couple of months living full-time at an RV park about five miles from our home near downtown Oklahoma City.
After a close family member fell ill (and later passed), we moved our RV to our family's land in Wichita, Kansas for the remainder of 2019. We spent more time with family over those two and a half months than we had in the previous sixteen years of our relationship.
Part two of our journey started on January 8, 2020.
We left Wichita, Kansas on January 8, 2020 to spend the next month in Oklahoma City wrapping up some personal items before heading out on the road for what was supposed to be approximately eight months. We spent some time in the Dallas, Texas and Houston, Texas before continuing our travels to Galveston, Texas, Lafayette, Louisiana and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Our trip was just getting started when COVID-19 hit the United States and all of the states started shutting down. When the Governor of Louisiana limited public gatherings to a maximum of 50 people, the race event we were attending was shut down two days early. We were then faced with a decision. Do we go home or continue traveling? With all of the uncertainties, we decided it was best to head back to the family's land in Wichita, Kansas.
Part three of our journey started on May 16, 2020.
After two months in quarantine, states started opening up and events started being rescheduled. We decided to head back on the road while still practicing safe social distancing guidelines. The original plan was to make a fairly consistent loop around the United States from south east to north east to north west to south west. However, because so many events had to be rescheduled due to COVID-19, we decided to completely re-map our travel schedule. Unfortunately this schedule had us spending most of our time on the east coast and did not allow us to travel to the west coast. However, despite the condensed travel schedule, we still managed to travel a total of 12,164 miles in 2020!
Part four of our journey started on February 7, 2021.
We traveled 19,638 miles with 112 different overnight stops to build our business, Bison. We ended up having to cut the final race weekend in Houston, Texas out of our travel schedule when Rob was diagnosed with COVID-19 on October 22, 2021. Tosha drove the final 12+ hour drive from Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama to Wichita, Kansas since Rob was quarantined from the rest of the family (as much as possible in 400 square feet).
Part five of our journey started on January 6, 2022.
We traveled 25,249 miles with 121 different overnight stops to build our business, Bison. We spent 542 hours behind the wheel, visited 40 states and purchased $22,450.45 in fuel! We experienced the highest of highs (our oldest daughter got married in Kansas) and the lowest of lows (one of our really good friends died doing what he loved). We purchased a Sprinter van in Sacramento, California in June, just in time to drive it 2,400 miles across the country from California to Pennsylvania. Rob and I left the kids in Kansas and spent three weeks in December living out of that Sprinter van in Southern California.
Part six of our journey started on January 1, 2023.
To say that 2023 didn't go as we planned would be an understatement. The image below is how we planned our year...
... and this is how it actually went!
We struggled with vehicle issues for the second part of the year, completely cutting off our travel as a family. Rob traveled on his own part of the year, mainly handling Wisconsin/Illinois and New Jersey on his own. I booked a flight last minute from New Hampshire to Washington and was our business's loan representative on the west coast. (The white circles on the map are places we went without our RV or van.)
Part seven of our journey started on January 1, 2024.
This year's focus: go international! (No, really this time! After five years of planning it, we're finally going to do it!) Last Updated: March 16, 2024
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