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full timers

Yahoo Message Number: 68505
I know this may sound dumb, but do most of you travel all the time, or do you constantly move from one rv park to another? Do you have an rv park you return to each year as the season changes and stay several weeks or months. I have just retired and looking at my options. The cost of diesel is changing my plans.
Robert H.

Re: full timers

Reply #1 –
Yahoo Message Number: 68506
Robert,

I don't full time anymore but did for 10 years or so. The reason we went full time was to see this great country we live in. We went to all four corners and everything in the middle. Traveled to Alaska and Mexico including Baja. The only state we never visited was North Dakota.
Having said that, later on we tended to return to some of our favorite places and stay a couple of weeks or so. Such as Tucson AZ, Key West FL, Palms Spring CA and San Diego CA. Note these are winter places. Our summers were spent in the Pacific Northwest near family.
The cost of diesel was not a factor when we were traveling. That may not be the case For some folks now. Keep in mind you can travel one day and stay for a week then travel a day and stay a week, etc. The cost of diesel is going to be less than your food, RV parks, RV maintenance or depreciation.
It's really a great life and i would still be doing it but the boss wanted to slow down. We have a small home in Yuma AZ where we spend the winter. Then go to the PNW and live in the MH for 3 or 4 months.

Jim E

Re: full timers

Reply #2 –
Yahoo Message Number: 68513
We went full time in Feb last year. We do a combo of the 2 options. We travel from February to June. Go to our home base for doctor appts, then head out again. In mid November, we return to home base for the holidays and more doctor appts! When we travel, we plan ahead where we want to go, drive no more than 4 hours a day, then stay 3-5 days at each place so we can use the toad to go sightseeing. With diesel prices heading up, we will probably stay in one place longer and/or limit our distance this year. Some good things about staying for a month in one location: 1. you can sightsee lots, 2. you can usually get a better rate on the RV site. 3. you will get paid again before you have to buy a tank of fuel! lol. We don't own a home base. We park at our daughter's house when we're in our home town. Enjoy!! Lonny & Diane
33' Allure 2004
31065

Re: full timers

Reply #3 –
Yahoo Message Number: 68514
Hi Robert, Try Treasure Lake Rv resort in Branson Mo. Alot of fulltimers stay there, great place you can buy a membership for about $1000.00 Dues are 180.00 a year.
plus you get a deed, and you can sell it any time you want. there are 4 Phaes to park in for 5.00 a day stay 21 days on that site then you have to move for 9 at about 8.00 a day. Check them out at www.tlresort.com thats a cheap way to go hope that this helps Mike

Re: full timers

Reply #4 –
Yahoo Message Number: 68517
Robert,

I don't believe there is a pattern that fits most of us.
The starting point is the answer to the question why am I considering full time RVing now that I have retired? What aspect of this lifestyle attracted me to it?
Because the answers to this question vary a great deal, I can only tell you how we operate. It surely would not be for everybody. We did not go full timing immediately on my retiring. As many retirees from MA we owned property in NH and built a house to retire in a state that we had always loved. After living in the house for about 6 years we realized that the lifestyle of those around us in the same situation was simply not for us.
My wife had always wanted to travel and I needed something more to keep me active and interested. We knew that on our retirement we could not keep the house and travel extensively. Selling the house and buying an RV and going fulltime was the only way that we could accomplish what we wanted out of the remaining healthy years of our lives. That will be ten years ago this coming Sept.
For the first 2 years we did travel from campground to campground staying various periods of time depending on what the attractions were in the area. We spent the first winter in the south west and the following summer we made a second trip cross country touring the north west.
Having seen many of the major attraction that one hears about we began to realize that we wanted to stay longer in areas and really get to experience the local culture. For us, workamping was the perfect solution. The free sites and hookups for a few hours of work each week greatly reduced the rent and the work kept me busy and active. Staying in one spot of 3 or 4 months often repeating the following year helped us become very familiar with area of the country and helped with the ever increasing cost of fuel.
During our second year we wanted to spend some time summers somewhere near our family in MA. The RV Park situation in the northeast offers limited ability to do that so we bought a 15 acre piece of land in the White Mountains of NH and put in a full hookup pad but no house. Twice in the past we stayed out west over the summer workamping and did not get back to NH for 2 years. Now the price of fuel has kept us pretty much east of the Mississippi.
We like our full timing lifestyle but there are many that would not. It is a personal thing but the important thing to remember as a lifestyle it offers the ability to adapt to ones changing ideas probably more easily that many other lifestyles. Don't worry about what most others are doing. Just get on the road and see what happens We will all help you if need be but don't believe that there is a prescribed correct fulltime lifestyle. That is the beauty of it, freedom to do your own thing.

Don Seager

2004 Allure 31046
 

Re: full timers

Reply #5 –
Yahoo Message Number: 68528
Robert,

We usually go for extended stays which means we dock for 4-6 months at a time. The exception would be if a destination is more than a day's drive. We might put in at a local RV spot and stay for a couple of days or we might just do an overnight. What draws us to a particular area are the available

activities. Once settled, we find it takes months to explore. Activities include MTB, hiking, climbing, dirt biking, trials and skiing.

It's really hard to provide any useful information beyond superficial things owing to knowing so little about what you have in mind. Any lifestyle requires some amount of bread. Running a class A bus is perhaps the most expensive of the available mobile units to include travel trailers, 5th wheels and class C rigs. No one wants to see diesel fuel go up in price. Aside from selfish reasons, it hurts tons of other industries. The only recourse is to not use it. With so many criteria involved in choosing a lifestyle I wouldn't rank the price of diesel fuel at the top of the list. There isn't anything you can do about it. If the price was low and you commit to something then it goes up - then what? If the price is high it could come down. So using this as a criteria doesn't seem very solid to me. If a bus gets 5 MPG to make the math easy, every 1000 miles of travel will use 200 gallons. At $3 per gallon that's a $600 bill. If fuel jumps to $4 per gallon your 1000 mile trip just got $200 more expensive. Owing to extended stays, we drove less than 500 miles last seasonal year. Is a $100 increase in your annual fuel cost going to through a monkey wrench in plans? Well that's a personal situation for which I have no comments. Beyond fuel, there are so many other costs associated with running a bus (or any rig for that matter). Some estimates say you should figure a buck per mile for class A. I can't verify this figure. All the class A units are maintenance headaches and that we know from reading this forum. My personal experience(s) confirm it. And it all costs money like the new radiator for $5K and the refrigerator cooling unit for $1K. And the list just goes on and on and it all costs money. Should you be looking into living full time in a class A, I'd say fuel prices are the least of your worries. I can speak from only 2.5 years on the road full time running one bus.

Good luck with your retirement and I hope the above helps. I'm sure others will jump in with their comments, suggestions, experiences and impressions. A full treatment of the question(s) you pose is both complex and very personal. In the final analysis you'll need to sift through mounds of data and distill out what matters most to you. Tons of information is out there on the internet and in books. It's a very good idea to do your homework.

Best - Scott

At 12:41 PM 2/16/2011, you wrote:

Quote
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I know this may sound dumb, but do most of you >travel all the time, or do you constantly move >from one rv park to another? Do you have an rv >park you return to each year as the season >changes and stay several weeks or months. I have >just retired and looking at my options. The cost >of diesel is changing my plans.
Robert H.

Best - Scott

2006 Allure 430 #31349
(Bus-Stead Lemon)