The End

Well not really the end, just the beginning, but the end of our beginning if that makes any sense. We made it back to Tampa, parked in front of moms house, and proceeded to load everything that was ours into the trailer. We spent the second night in an abandoned parking lot, where we slept a lot more comfortably. The next morning, I spent about an hour calling around to find a place to set it until we moved on. We found a cheap park called McCormick's, and once we were loaded back up, is when we found out our battery didn't hold a charge. We had to call my sister and jump the trailer to close it up. We made it to the rv park, which turns out the rv aspect of the park was more of an after thought, their main business was being a water ski and motor sports arena, which was cool to watch, but was really terrible as a park. There was nothing there to do out in the middle of no where( which was nice), but was perfect for our needs. All we need at that point was a place to get organized and settled while we scourged the Internet for traveling opportunities.

While we were getting settled, Kurt got an electrical job at the base. Life carried on as normal, then in June, we got our first volunteer position at the local State Park, Hillsborough River in fact. Which was great, during the interview, I was asked if I could do interpretive signs, "Sure" I said, "I would love to do it", I had no idea what it really was, turned out, It was my job to change all informational signs, which was fun and easy. Then got changed to cleaning bathrooms, which was just easy. Kurt continued to work while I continued to look for opportunities and a larger truck, remember we only had the 1500. I found one at the Apalachicola Nation Forest and we left in the end of August.

We made the trip with someone else towing our trailer, Kurt didn't trust the truck now that everything was loaded into it, and went to Northern Florida. We got to the park and set up shop. Kurt continued to work in Tampa and was staying down there during the week and coming home on weekends, which only went on for 2 weeks then they laid him off, which was one of the only times I was glad for the lay off. Unfortunately, by the time they laid him off, the National Forest decided they didn't want us, we were there for 1 1/2 weeks, when I was informed that they didn't think I could clean bathrooms alone, with 3 kids to watch. Which was bull, come to find out the other couple there didn't like kids. I had 3 days to vacate. So again, I began looking for a place to go and a way to tow the trailer. As we were looking at renting a uhaul to move us, we meet a great family who lived across the street. The husband was a mechanic and gave Kurt some needed advice and conformed that the truck could handle our load. We just needed to upgrade the leaf springs.

When we arrived in Campbellsville.

I found us a little campground called Parker Farms in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty much every where in that part of Florida, and loved it. We stayed for a month, replaced the leaf springs with 3500 ones and replaced the shocks, now, we have the ass end to haul of load. We got our first workamping gig with Amazon and was scheduled to start the beginning of Oct. With him out of work and his unemployment not yet approved, I had to sell my van to get the gas money to get up there. It was either that or living in Wewahitchka, Fl. So I sold the van and that day we left for Kentucky, I was scheduled to start the next day. Talk about pushing it. We were almost into Alabama when the brakes on the truck went out. Being on a tight schedule and low on cash, we stopped to get LOTS of brake fluid and continued on, it was dark and he couldn't even see to determine what was wrong. So we traveled 10 hours and 600 miles on trailer brakes and down shifting talk about white knuckling it. We arrived in Campbellsville just in time for orientation and I began working the next day. Meanwhile, Kurt got new brake lines, replaced then, and we were as good as new. This concludes the End of the Beginning. Next up, The Adventure! continues.

The ridge at the Campground.

1st Night

We arrived at the grocery store, which luckily was still open. While Kurt started setting up the trailer, I went in to see what we were going to have for dinner. Walking up and down the aisles, I took mental inventory of what we had in the trailer to work with, we had no power and no cooking equipment, remember, we just bought it, all I had was an oven to work with. I decided on tv dinners and plastic forks, with donuts, and fruit for breakfast. After checking out, I went proceeded to the back of the parking lot where we had our first meal in the new trailer, which consisted of Hungry Man dinners and Kid Cuisines. Not bad for a first meal, and prepared for bed. So, between the 5 of us we had 1 blanket and 2 pillows, on a cold night. I think I may have thought about turning on the furnace, but I was worried about it catching on fire, I have a thing about gas. I piled the kids on the jack knife couch and we all tried sleeping 5 people on it. Sometime in the middle of the night, Kurt and I moved off the couch on to the bed and chose sleep and freezing as opposed to no sleep and warmth. Thus concludes our first night in our new trailer.

 I was awaken by singing birds and sunshine, and the memory of a broken water pump. As our wonderful luck would have it we broke down across the street from an Autozone and Kurt ate and headed over to get the part. We got the part, while he spent the next 5 hours changing out the water pump, which would of been easier if he had mechanics tools as opposed to electrical tools, he basically did everything with a screwdriver and a pair of channel locks. Meanwhile, I spent 5 hours entertaining the kids. After 3 trips to the thrift store, a few toys, and a clean shirt for kurt, we were loaded up and back on the road. While we were loading up and pulling jacks, I had my first encounter with a curious onlooker. She was an employee from Winn Dixie on her break. She come up to us curious about the trailer, so we talked to her for a few, she expressed that what we were doing was something she would love to do and have always wanted to do, but wasn't able to. Money I think was her issue, she felt that she need to stay a cashier at the store, like that was the only money she could make. None the less, she envied us and what we were doing. After she left, we left, and headed make to my moms house in Tampa to load the trailer up with our stuff.

Let the Adventure Begin

Part 3
It was about midnight when we left Tampa to head to Georgia to look at the trailer. I packed what I thought we would need for the day trip. Pillows and one blanket for the kids while they slept on the way up and our tools, we always take Kurts' tools when we go anywhere, you never know what may happen. It was the beginning of March, and still a bit chilly, plus the truck didn't have heat, so I grabbed our heavy fleece blanket and we headed up. On the trip up, I had the normal concerns, what if, after driving all this way, we don't like the trailer? Or there was something terribly wrong with it that didn't show in the pics? We would have wasted our time and money and have to continue our search or scrap the whole idea. We got there at 7 in the morning, called the guy and waited in the Home Depot parking lot. We got donuts to feed the kids and let them out to play in the bed of the truck until he got there an hour later. He was at the trailer cleaning it out, let me mention that the ad said the trailer would include everything you need, coffee pot, plates, grill, ect. Turned out it didn't include any of that stuff, which was good really, I didn't want to have to deal with figuring out what to do with all the stuff since we didn't need it. Guess he figured that because he came down in the price he was going to keep everything, fine with us! He arrives, and we proceed to the trailer.

As we are following him, my first though is, how are we going to get this thing, if we buy it, out of here? We traveled down a sugar sand road, full of 90 degree turns up and downhill grades, and it had recently rained. What a nightmare, but as we pulled into the hunting park, my first thought was "Oh my God, It's huge!" We parked and everyone got out, the kids began running towards it screaming "Our New House!" I gotta admit, I thought that was great, and a good sign, and we preceded to walk through the trailer. While I inspected the interior, Kurt and the owner walked around outside, inspecting the exterior: wiring, plumbing, the hitch, all the things that didn't concern me, the interior was my domain, I had to make sure it was something we could live with/in. The interior was great, clean, do damage, the only thing that concerned me was the skylight in the shower, it looked like it had leaked, when I brought this up to him, he informed us that it had indeed leaked but he had replaced the roof. He was an electrician as well, with his own business, so Kurt and I thought he would be a pretty honest, hardworking guy, turns out he was a better businessman than a decent guy, but thats going to be a different story, lets just say, there was no new roof. So all in all we were (I was) in love with the trailer, glad we were done looking, and bought the trailer. He spent an hour showing us the ins and outs, the modifications, and how to level and pull up the jacks and spent another hour helping us hook it up to the truck. Once it was hooked up, I wish I would of brought my camera, the trailer made our poor truck dip so bad it actually V'ed, we were still within the weight it was rated for, barely. If the truck wasn't a stick shift, we would of never been able to tow it. So, first thing we noticed was we didn't have the right wiring harness, so , once we got the truck out of the sugar sand maze, at a slow and nervous pace, our first stop was Walmart. Once at Walmart, after a few returns and 2 hours later, we were on the road to head back to Tampa. As it turned out, Kurt had to completely rewire the truck to install the wiring harness, believe me, his electrical skills and knowledge have been extremely helpful in this lifestyle. I'm so grateful he has this knowledge, it has saved us thousands.

Our trip back to Tampa was pretty uneventful, until we reached Stuart. We had underestimated the amount of gas the truck would use towing a 7,000 lb trailer. 20 miles from Stuart, we were almost on E, it was 10pm and every gas station we passed was closed. We were sweating it, finally, we found an open one, when we pulled in to fill up, water started gushing from under the hood. Oh great, I thought, were in the middle of nowhere and our truck just broke down. Kurt determined it was the water pump, and after being there in front of the pump for so long that the attendant had to come out, see if everything was ok, and asked us to move, we were taking up the majority of his gas station, we drove the truck with no working water pump a mile down the road, where we found a Winn Dixie, and stopped for the night.

Mission Impossible

Part 2: The Search

We moved into moms house with very little income. Kurt had just started a new job as a part time cook while he continued to search for electrical work, and with no house to sell we had no real money to purchase our new rig right off the bat. So, we did what anyone would do, we waited until we got our income tax refund. In the meantime, I keep Sage in school, more or less to keep her out of the way during the day while I got things around. We did Dr.s appointments, got copy of shot records, changed all our addresses to moms, I tried to get everything covered. I was under the grand idea that once we left for our adventure, we wouldn't be back soon, who knew where we would be, but it wasn't going to be Tampa.

Then, by the end of January I really began the search. At first I stayed local, searching Craigslist and local dealers. We knew we wanted a bunkhouse with a slide, that was the search criteria, then to narrow it down, we ruled out RVs, because we wouldn't know how to work on one if it broke down. Looking back, we could of gone with an RV, an engine is a engine, but we didn't think like that at the time, we thought it would be a lot different and we didn't want to get into something we wouldn't be able to fix....properly. So that left us with either a travel trailer or 5th. We had a 99 Dodge Ram 1500, and was pretty sure that it could handle a small 5th, but I didn't want to spend the extra 500-700 installing a 5th hitch, so by process of elimination, I started looking for a travel trailer, with bunks, and a slide.

I searched locally, figured how hard is it going to be? Well, turns out, it was really hard to find one with both a bunk and slide, and one where the bunk wasn't just a double with a twin over it and a curtain to separate it from the rest of the house. When I did find what we were looking for, it was way out of our price range. I eventually expanded my search to the entire state of Florida, looking for the mysterious trailer under 10,000. I found a few, in places like Daytona, Miami, and Sarasota, but, once we got out to look at them, turns out the pictures gave them way too much credit. Visible water damage, bad smells, and just plain unlivable interiors made us turn away and head home, a little more discouraged each time. I was so tired of looking, we were starting to consider ones without the bunks as a "temporary" house, but just could see spending the money on something we really didn't want just to have it, only to turn around and sell it and start over, so, I continued the search. I began calling dealers, trying to see if we could work out some in house financing deal, we didn't have the credit to buy with a loan, so we had to find something in cash. I tried every angle with the dealers, such as, " You keep the trailer, and I'll pay you and have it paid off in 3 months"...... Never worked. So back to Craigslist. This continued until the end of February, when I started looking in Georgia and Alabama, didn't want to travel too far, but the more desperate I became the farther my search went. Still nothing, so, I finally decided to just start taking random shots in the dark. I created another email account specifically for this and began sending any trailer I liked, bogus offers, by bogus I mean say they we asking 10,000 for a trailer, I emailed them an offer of 5,000. It worked! I now had two trailers to choose from, a newer smaller bunk house  or an older bigger bunkhouse. After considering space and storage vs. age, we went with the larger older one, more bang for your buck. Two days later we got our refund, and that Monday, we headed out to Vidalia, Ga 7 hours north and 400 miles, to walk through, buy, and bring back our new home, no problem right? Wrong.

The Beginning

A few days ago, we celebrated 2 years on the road in our Travel Trailer. Instead of making one huge post about our beginnings, I'm going to try to break it down into 2 or 3 parts. Part one, The Beginning.

Living on the road in an rv has always been a dream of mine ever since my mom told me her and dad lived in a camper for the first year of my life. That planted the dream, until then I didn't know that such a wonderful thing was possible. To have the freedom and ability to be mobile and go where you wanted, seemed like the perfect life. I've never been a "stable" person. I was always looking for the next place to move when our leases were up. Then I met my wonderful husband in one of those random moves, married him and tried to settle down. He is the type of person who wanted the "normal" life, you know the one, where all the kids are born in the same hospital, grownup in one house, and where we retire and die, all in one place. So I put my mobile lifestyle on the back burner, or at least tried. Instead of moving every year, we moved every two years, that seemed to be my limit before I was bored out of my mind with the current house. This continued until Jan 2009.

In October 2008, we settled in to a rent to own situation for a nice house. Come December, I started getting weird "feelings" about the house, like an intuition. Something was going down in the universe that encompassed my world. We had a renter in the back house, it was 2 houses total on the property, and my employment had recently been terminated. I began looking into alternate ideas, thats when my fulltiming idea became more of a viable option, given the economic state of the U.S. So after bring the idea up to my husband again, this time supported with tons of research and homework, after a month, he gave the ok,(shortly after losing his job and the prospect of another in his field any time soon was grim). So, on the first weekend in Jan, we put everything we owned onto the lawn and opened up the house,(minus the few things we wanted to keep) and sold everything off. Loaded what we wanted in to a small 5x5 storage and took anything that didn't sell to the thrift store, and proceeded to move into my mothers house while we looked for a fulltiming set up.