Just In Case You're Wandering - A Full-Time RVing Podcast
What Is It Like to Work and Live Full-Time in an RV?
Recorded at Lost Creek State Recreation Site, Oregon Coast
Brad and Becky podcast about full-time RV living while working from the road.
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How do people successfully work remotely from an RV?
Successful RV workers combine reliable internet solutions, flexible workspace setups, and clear boundaries to create a sustainable work-from-the-road lifestyle. They prioritize strong Wi-Fi, use flexible furniture to adapt small spaces, and maintain routines to stay productive while traveling full-time
Episode 2: What Is It Like to Work and Live Full-Time in an RV?
Recorded at Lost Creek State Recreation Site, Oregon Coast
Life on the road is not all ocean views and campfires when your paycheck depends on strong Wi-Fi and private office space. In this episode, we share the real story of working remotely from an RV, juggling connectivity issues, building flexible office spaces, and living full-time in a small moving home.
You’ll learn:
- How to build a reliable RV internet setup with backups
- How to create adaptable workspaces inside a small RV
- How we maintain privacy, focus, and professionalism while living together full-time
- What we wish we had known about remote work from an RV before starting
- The hidden expenses and overlooked challenges of RV life and remote jobs
- How to stay connected to friends, family, and coworkers while traveling
Working remotely from an RV requires creativity, planning, and a willingness to troubleshoot often, but the rewards are incredible. If you are dreaming about taking your career on the road, listen in for real-world advice that will help you build a sustainable mobile life.
TranscriptThis transcript has been generated automatically and may contain errors and edits for clarity and brevity.
Becky:
We’re here again for another episode of Just in Case You’re Wondering, and today we’re coming to you live-ish from Lost Creek State Recreation Site, which is just south of Newport, OR, not too far from where we’ve been staying. It’s not a sunny day today. It is a more stereotypical Oregon Coast day. Gray skies, a little foggy. You can certainly probably hear the ocean in the background. We’ve got the windows down and we’re sitting in the car doing our thing.
Brad:
Yeah. We’re in the car again. Some of these times, well, my dog is licking my ear, some of these times we’ll be outside when there’s not wind or anything, so it doesn’t get in the mic. But today is another day podcasting from the car, looking at the ocean and just loving where we live and how easy the access is. We’re leaving Newport soon and I won’t see the ocean again for quite a few months, so that always makes us a little bit sad. But it’s always here waiting for us.
Becky:
Yep. So we try to soak it in as much as we can while we’re here before we take off.
Brad:
Alright. So our overarching question today, since we’re really focused on what it’s like, not just full-time RVing but working from the road, is what does full-time RV life really look like when you’re working from the road? That’s our overarching question that we’re going to unpack in a few other questions. So let’s start with one of them. It’s a big one. Every time we move, how does working from your RV affect the parks you choose to stay at and the campsites you choose once you get to those parks? Do you want to start with that one?
Becky:
Sure. Well for us, it definitely does affect where we go. Like we said, we do a combination of state parks and the Thousand Trails membership, which is what we bought into and that’s pretty much where we go. We do some other stuff. We’ve done some county parks and other things off and on. But for the most part, it really does. We’re looking for as clear an overhead sky as possible or a good Wi-Fi signal, like AT&T or Verizon or something like that. We have a multi-layered approach to the Internet because of that very thing. Some places we go, there’s no Verizon signal. Some places we go, there’s no AT&T signal. Some places we go, there’s no satellite signal. So we have to be prepared for a lot of different things.
Brad:
Yeah. I don’t think you have any idea how much time I actually spend researching Internet availability at parks. Before we even decide we’re going to a park, I spend some time on Google Maps and Google Earth looking at it from above, seeing how much tree coverage is there, and can I see campers from Google Earth? If so, they can probably see the sky. Especially up here in the northwest, it is so heavily forested that it can be a real problem. Oh, and I should say, Starlink is our primary Internet service right now, which is why we’re always so concerned about seeing the sky. I don’t know how they can have this amazing multibillion-dollar technology and a leaf can get in the way of it, but that’s the way it seems to work. It will not shoot through a leaf.
Becky:
Not quite smart enough to go through trees and leaves, but you know, hey.
Brad:
Yeah. But it can go all the way to space in like a millisecond.
Becky:
Yeah. But you know. That’s what it is. We would love to see more options for people on the road with RV life. Whether you’re like us and you live and work on the road full-time in an RV or a fifth wheel, or even over-the-road truckers and things like that. I’m sure they encounter some of the same issues.
Brad:
Yeah.
Becky:
When you’ve got to be connected and have that happen. I would love to see more companies.
Brad:
Yeah, for sure.
Becky:
Do something to make this more affordable and accessible, because that’s probably one of the things we spend the most on monthly in our expenses. Aside from combining our truck and trailer payment, our Internet service definitely comes in as probably our second highest expense.
Brad:
Yeah. It almost offsets the money we’re saving by living this way. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it is a lot because we cannot travel with just one thing. But we’re going to get into Wi-Fi specifics here in just a little bit.
Becky:
We’re being a little facetious there, yeah.
Brad:
Yeah, but because of what we do, we both have to be connected. We cannot do it without a connection. We have to be able to connect.
Becky:
Yeah. And it’s got to be more than just being able to send an email. It has to support basically two Zoom calls that cannot drop. If Becky’s in the middle of a therapy session, she cannot just drop that. If I’m in the middle of teaching classes, the teacher cannot just suddenly disappear. So it’s a huge deal for us.
Brad:
But we’ve made it work and that’s been the really good thing. There are ways to do it, but you have to get creative.
Becky:
Yeah. And you have to dig a little bit if you’re looking for a park to go to and you absolutely 100 percent have to have good Internet. Not only do I do the Google Earth and Google Maps stuff, but I will look at Facebook groups. There are some great Facebook groups, especially for things like Thousand Trails, where people have talked about staying in a park before and what kind of Wi-Fi they got, what kind of cell signal, and even sometimes what space they were in or what spaces are better there. That’s great. You can even just Google it and go to websites like Campendium.
Becky:
Campendium, I think, has it. There are a couple of them out there where people who visit the campgrounds will leave information about the Wi-Fi signal, what’s available, and what kind of speeds they got sometimes, which is great. Obviously with the changes at Thousand Trails, we cannot pick our site anymore. We’re not fans of that.
Brad:
Yeah.
Becky:
For the most part, that’s again a reason we have multi-layered Internet services because you just never know.
Brad:
So that’s how we choose parks. There’s one park here in Oregon, it’s a beautiful park, we love it. It’s Pacific City that literally has nothing if you can’t get Starlink. So we’re sadly going to have to just start not going there, I think, since we can no longer pick our site.
Becky:
Which stinks, because we really love that park. It’s gorgeous. If you don’t need Wi-Fi, go visit. It’s beautiful.
Brad:
Yeah, if you want to get off the grid or not off the grid, but away from anybody texting you, go there because nobody will be able to get ahold of you.
Brad:
So let’s talk about the specific campsites that we choose. It’s not just Internet. It’s also, like right now, we can’t choose our site unless we’re in a State Park. So if we’re in a State Park or before in Thousand Trails when you could pick your site, we often also looked for as much space as we could get around us because we’re in Zoom meetings all the time. We don’t want that noise coming through or, you know, we want to have the ability to open the windows when it’s warm and it’s summer and not have either our voices getting out where people can hear us too much, or other voices getting into those Zoom sessions. It’s not the major factor that we look for, but we do enjoy it when we’ve got a little elbow room and a little more privacy than some parks have.
Becky:
Yeah. And that is one thing that I will say the Oregon parks in particular and Thousand Trails for the most part because there’s so many trees, it’s pretty easy to get a little elbow room. Not always, but a little bit and that’s nice when we can get it for sure.
Brad:
Yeah. There’s a few parks that feel more like parking lots than parks, and Washington’s the same way. Most of those, you get some elbow room and you feel like you’re actually camping. That’s one of the things we love about Thousand Trails that turn some people off. They pull in and they want paved roads and level paved sites and lots of amenities.
Becky:
And there are those, don’t misunderstand. There are parks that have those for sure.
Brad:
Yeah. But we, at least I, really prefer feeling like we’re camping. I don’t mind dirt roads and potholes. I can slow down and go through them, and I don’t mind overgrown trees and things like that because it feels like you’re in the woods.
Becky:
It’s nature. Yeah, that’s the part of it that does feel like camping. Yeah, I agree.
Brad:
Yeah, that’s the way I want it to feel.
Becky:
Like that part of it, as long as those big trees aren’t hanging right over the top of our trailer.
Brad:
Yes. One of the big fears are, they call them widow makers, those dead standing trees that you can’t tell are going to come down because they make widows when they come down. That’s a little unnerving, especially in some of our wild wind storms over here on the coast.
Brad:
So would you say that Wi-Fi is our biggest challenge in full-time RV life? Or is there something else that you would think of as our biggest challenge?
Becky:
I think it was one of our biggest challenges to start with. Especially going on the road because being stationary, we could work that out a little easier. But as we decided we were going to go on the road, yeah, it was definitely more of a challenge.
Brad:
Yeah.
Becky:
As many years as we’ve been into it now, I don’t feel like it’s as much of a challenge anymore. We kind of know where we’re going. We know what things are like. We’ve gotten better at it. Brad’s gotten really great at pointing that satellite dish just right so we get through those trees. For the most part, unless there’s something unexpected, which we cannot plan for, and we have had those, it is not as big a challenge as it used to be.
Brad:
Yeah.
Becky:
I don’t feel like it’s as big a challenge as it used to be.
Brad:
OK. Yeah. I would agree. And part of that is because we have every option we can have with us so that something will work. We are always feeling great if we have two things that are solid, because then if one of them kind of goes away, we have another option.
Becky:
Right. Yep, got a primary and a backup.
Brad:
We are not going to do a full review here of everything we’ve tried, but I do want to mention all of the things we have tried and maybe some quick pros and cons for them, just so you can see what the process is like for getting to the point where you feel comfortable being on the road.
Becky:
And this really depends too on where you are in the country and where you’re going to be. There are some services we could choose that would absolutely not work out here. We do not get coverage for them. It is very rural. You have to look at that too. What is going to work in the places you plan to travel. So by no means is this comprehensive.
Brad:
Yeah.
Brad:
When we first moved to the stationary park that we were in, we didn’t get great signal. We got enough cell signal to kind of fake it and when it got it, you know, hotspots so we could get online. But we quickly realized we needed something more stable and we started out with ViaSat, which was the satellite Internet before Starlink came along. The huge downside to that is that it has to be pointed exactly the right position in the sky and then it can’t move.
Becky:
And it’s expensive.
Brad:
Yeah, and not very good. But at the time…
Becky:
It had data caps and it was slow. Thankfully we weren’t working from home at that point either. That was just the home Internet. That was pre-pandemic.
Brad:
Oh, that’s true. Yeah, that was just our home Internet. That was pre-pandemic before we went online. So if you’re thinking about ViaSat or HughesNet kind of stuff and you’re going to move ever, not a great option. We didn’t have that too long before we went on to something else. I think the next thing we tried was something called Nomad Internet, and there’s a ton of these out there like that. They promise unlimited service and high speeds and guaranteed uptime, and it’s all kind of nonsense for a better word.
Becky:
You get a little bit of it. There are moments, but it doesn’t last.
Brad:
Yeah. When it is good, it’s just a matter of a few days to a few weeks, maybe a few months before it suddenly turns off and you have to wait to get a new SIM card sent out. Now this was a while ago, so maybe they’ve upgraded what they’re doing and maybe it’s a whole new deal right now, but any of those that are reselling cell plans are at the mercy of those cell providers who turn them off all the time with no notice. We are really gun shy about anything that looks or feels like Nomad Internet service or anything that’s selling you a Wi-Fi plan.
Becky:
Yeah, and again, we’re not here to badmouth or bash any of these companies. These are just our experiences with them, so just kind of making sure that’s out there.
Brad:
Yeah, in case we get sued. Don’t sue us.
Becky:
We don’t have anything for you to sue us for anyway.
Brad:
Yeah. Something we bought early on was the Verizon hotspot and the AT&T hotspot, and we still travel with both of those active all the time. You just never know when one of them is going to get a better signal than the other. We have one park where the only one that works is AT&T. In fact, it’s the park we’re in right now in Newport. So we have to have our AT&T. We also have phone data. I do a lot of work from my car just to get out of the house and go see the country, so I’m always using my phone data for that. Most of the places, at least here along the coast, and certainly in other states we’ve ventured into, have been good enough that you can generally get service.
Brad:
What about park Wi-Fi? How do we feel about park Wi-Fi?
Becky:
Survey says… yeah. We’ve touched on it a few times. We’ve had parks where the Wi-Fi is up. Sometimes you pay for it, sometimes you can use it for free. It’s typically unreliable, very low speed. It would be great if it was better. Maybe that’s a plan down the road, who knows. Plus the fact that it’s not a secure Wi-Fi, that’s something to think about too. If you’re doing banking or those kinds of things online, you probably don’t want to use a public Wi-Fi like that. You want something you can secure. So for us, those are very much a no. They’re there if you need them in an emergency, but we don’t really use them.
Brad:
Yeah. I would never rely on that as our work Wi-Fi. Even when it’s up and running fast and great, it might just be down the next 10 minutes and not be on for the rest of the day.
Becky:
Yeah, there’s no consistency.
Brad:
I’m sure there are parks where the Wi-Fi is amazing and the service is good. If there are, tell us where they are because we haven’t run into any yet where we’ve been able to use the park Wi-Fi for much of anything. My last backup we’ve used sometimes is McDonald’s when everything else fails. We’ve both sat in McDonald’s parking lots.
Becky:
No, I’ve never used McDonald’s Wi-Fi for work. I’ve used it just to get online, but I don’t use it for work.
Brad:
Oh, right. We’ve used our hotspots. What I’m trying to say is when everything else goes down and you need to connect, even just to say, “Hey, everything’s down and I can’t get to work today,” sometimes a coffee shop or something like that is your only option.
Becky:
Yeah. If you need to connect, you make it work.
Brad:
One thing I appreciate, and if anybody I work with ever listens to this, don’t give away the game, but you’re probably the same… one thing I appreciate is that it gives me another legitimate excuse when I need some time off work. I rarely use it, but sometimes it’s there if I need it. My Wi-Fi is down, can’t do anything.
Becky:
I don’t do that, just so you know. I don’t do that.
Brad:
Yeah, her stakes are a lot higher than mine. But I’m mostly joking. Not 100 percent joking, but mostly joking.
Brad:
One thing I didn’t mention about our Wi-Fi is we went and bought the WeBoost Destination RV, which is this giant cell booster that’s attached to the back of our RV. It cranks up about 30 feet and then I point it toward the nearest cell tower. On the very occasional times when I can actually get it pointed exactly where it’s supposed to be, and if I can get it to not give feedback — and this is all getting very tech — but what I’m trying to say is when it works, it’s worth all the money I paid for it. But the times that it’s worked have been very few and far between. It is another one of those emergency “oh crap, we can’t get anything” tools, and when we need it, I can crank that antenna up and try to dial it in and get a pretty good boost. It’s very fussy though. I don’t think I’d buy that again. I’d buy a different version of something like that.
Brad:
So that leads me to the question. If we were starting over today with all of today’s technology, what would we invest in for our Wi-Fi?
Becky:
Right now, it’s what we have right now. The three that give us the coverage we need. Verizon and AT&T are both major carriers. We can get those pretty much anywhere, one or the other. I don’t love Starlink, but it works and it’s what we have right now. Like I said before, I’d love to see more options. Other than that, there’s a few things we’ve been talking about changing and upgrading to make things a little more reliable or combine speeds and things like that. But as far as our actual setup, probably just what we’ve got. Maybe not the phone booster thing because it’s really fussy.
Brad:
Yeah, the tower thing, the cell booster. For sure.
Becky:
It was a lot of money for something that’s really picky.
Brad:
Yeah. We’re really hoping that Starlink has some competitors that are going to come up soon. I know they’re out there. Unfortunately, they’re also owned by billionaires who don’t really care about the little guy trying to connect to work, but I think there’s more competition coming for that kind of connection. You see Starlinks everywhere now. On so many RVs out there if you start looking through parks. It’s kind of the go-to right now for most people.
(Okay, not a real photo, but it’s beginning to feel like this!)
Becky:
Oh yeah. There’s not a lot of options.
Brad:
Yeah. The only thing that I would have bought differently if we were starting now is I would have started with what’s called a Pepwave router, which we’re talking about right now upgrading to. I’m not going to say too much about it since we don’t have experience with it yet, but if you’re just getting started on the road or you’re thinking of revamping your setup, look into something like a Pepwave router. It has some amazing features that really help you stay connected. If we pick that up, we’ll definitely talk about it down the road and let you know what we think of it. But I think that’s the one thing I would buy differently than what we have now.
Becky:
I’ll reserve judgment till when and if we actually buy the thing and try it out. We’ve done enough experimenting already.
Brad:
Yes, because I’ve bought things and tried them out that didn’t work so great.
Becky:
That’s part of it. Sometimes you try something and it works great and you’re like woo, and other times it’s like oh, that was not so great.
Brad:
Yeah, absolutely. OK, I think we’ve covered Wi-Fi. Let’s quit talking about it.
Brad:
Let’s talk about the RV as an office, or in our case, the RV as two separate offices. Where do we actually work from inside or sometimes outside of the RV? Do you want to start?
Becky:
Sure. I work solely in the RV because of privacy concerns and things like that. I have to have a quiet, dedicated space where I can make sure that conversations are confidential and private. We have two options that we switch between. We’ve converted it so that we can transform our bedroom into an office with a backdrop that pulls down. All of my setup goes there and I can take it down and put it away when I’m not working, so it becomes a bedroom again. It’s quiet and it’s on the opposite end from where Brad works if he’s working in the house. A lot of times, like he said, he goes out and works somewhere else. He has more flexibility that way. The other space we have is in what would typically be the dining room area. Because it’s just the two of us, we don’t need a dining room, so we converted that. Right after we started RVing, we took the dining room table out fairly quickly and put in a desk. That was our desk section when we were both working from home during the pandemic, because I wasn’t doing therapy at that point. I could work. We could sit at the same desk and work. It wasn’t a privacy thing or anything like that.
Brad:
Yeah. We bought basically one big oversized desk so we could both work side by side and do a lot of elbow banging as we were working. It was really kind of fun to work that way.
Becky:
It was. We’ve not had that experience for a long time, to work in the same place.
Brad:
Yeah. And I should say, we were lucky enough to have a free-standing dining room table and chairs. We didn’t have a dinette built in.
Becky:
Yeah. It wasn’t the banquet thing that a lot of RVs come with. Ours was just table and chairs.
Brad:
So it was easy to take it out. If and when we upgrade to a new RV, I’m either going to find one that doesn’t have the dinette again, or I’m going to tear out what’s in there because it just seems like a massive waste of space.
Becky:
I’m going to put a plug in for Keystone Montana, the one with the front office. I would love that one.
Brad:
Yeah. The new one. There’s some amazing work-from-your-RV options out there now.
Becky:
There’s some new workspaces. It’s really cool to see that being recognized as a need for folks who actually live full-time like us.
Brad:
Absolutely. I think we have a pretty unique setup in a couple of ways for when we’re working. One is that neither of us really wants to look like we’re working from an RV. So what we’ve done is we bought backdrops on Amazon. You can buy one that’s already out there — they have some that are OK — but we actually found a place where you can upload your own image to have printed on the backdrop, and it’s only like 20 or 30 bucks to get one made. You can have one that looks like a classroom or a bookcase or anything. We’ve trained some other ones over the years. We bought two identical ones, so they’re both the same exact bookcase. I basically put them on dowels that hang from the ceiling, so we can roll them up and roll them down. They just unroll right down behind us and they’re really realistic looking. It always surprises my students or my fellow teachers when they realize.
Becky:
Yeah, I’ve had people ask me the same thing. They think it’s a real bookcase. Then I tap it and they see it wave and realize it’s a picture, but it looks pretty realistic, which looks nice.
Brad:
Yeah. You could do the Zoom background thing where it just blurs out the background, but it always looks weird and if somebody walks behind you, it looks even stranger.
Becky:
I was in a meeting once and someone was walking around with a weird green pillow and it just looked odd. I don’t like those so well.
Brad:
It doesn’t look professional, but a lot of people use them and they’re fine. The problem is if someone needs to walk behind you, they kind of appear and disappear, and it’s very weird and distracting.
Becky:
Yeah, it doesn’t work for us. This setup is something we take really seriously because of the work we both do. Again, like I said, I have to have that quiet space, and it’s nice having it at the opposite end. People think, well, you can hear everything in an RV, but you actually don’t. It’s not like we’re screaming at each other. It’s a door and a hallway and some space between us. We’re literally at opposite ends of the trailer.
Brad:
Yeah. There’s a door between us. I can hear that she’s talking up there, but I could never make out any of the words or the other voice or anything like that. It’s very private.
Becky:
Sometimes I’ll turn a fan on too if I think I need even more privacy. I’ve thought about getting a little white noise machine, but so far it hasn’t been an issue.
Brad:
No, not at all. It’s worked really well. The reason we bought the exact same backdrop is because Becky bounces between the two work areas. If I’m out for the day and she wants to work downstairs — it’s literally just three stairs up to the bedroom — she can pull down the same backdrop and it looks the same to her clients.
Becky:
It’s like I’m sitting in the same place.
Brad:
The other challenge was trying to figure out how to make an office space in an RV bedroom because as you know, there’s not a lot of space in there. We have a slide-out in ours, so we get maybe two and a half to three feet between the end of the bed and the dresser. It’s not enough to set up a desk. What we realized is we could buy a folding table, put one side of the legs down, and rest the other side on the bed, then sit sideways. It’s hard to describe. Maybe we can get a picture of it to put up on the website.
Becky:
I think I’ve got a picture of it that we can use.
Brad:
When you’re desperate, desperate times call for desperate measures. It actually works out pretty well.
Becky:
It works really well. I don’t even notice anything different. It’s just where I work. I have my laptop and a portable flat screen monitor that I set up, so I have two screens. The best part is that at the end of the workday, I can literally put it all away. My work life doesn’t continue in the same space as my home life. When the workday is done, I can close it up.
Brad:
Yeah, that’s huge.
Becky:
It’s a really good transition too.
Brad:
We’ll definitely try to get a picture of both of our work areas up there just so you can see how we laid them out, especially the bedroom one because it’s really hard to describe. But basically the bed is two of the legs and two legs are on the floor, and it actually gives quite a bit of desk space up there.
Becky:
It is hard to describe, but it works really well. It’s a decent-sized table, so it’s not like I’m working on a tiny TV tray or anything.
Brad:
Yeah, for sure.
Brad:
I’ve got an answer for this one. I don’t know if you do. What’s the weirdest place you’ve had to work from on the road?
Becky:
On the road, the weirdest place… I mean, I’ve had to take phone calls from the car. We had an instance where the Wi-Fi went down and I had to use our mobile hotspot and do some work that way in the car. That was not fun.
Brad:
That was like for three days. The tower went down and it was our only option.
Becky:
Yeah. The only option was to come into town and sit in the car and use Wi-Fi.
Brad:
Not great.
Becky:
Not great, but is it worth the sacrifice for this life?
Brad:
Oh, sure.
Becky:
You reschedule things, you move things around, you make it work.
Brad:
Every once in a while. My weirdest one, and I’m going to cheat because it’s not an on-the-road RV thing, but we were living in the RV. I once went out on my kayak in the middle of the day. I had a light schedule that day, so I was out on the kayak. I took my tablet computer out there with me in a little zip-up watertight bag, and I took some meetings out there, fishing in my kayak.
Becky:
I had no idea you did this.
Brad:
Yeah. It was amazing. I want to work permanently from my kayak. I’ve told my boss this and she thought it was hilarious and she wanted to try it too.
Becky:
You know there is walk-and-talk therapy. I wonder if I could do… no, I don’t want to be in a kayak, but boat-and-talk therapy, that would be interesting.
Brad:
It was amazing. I sat out there and took my meetings, did some emails, did my thing all with the fishing line in the water. I didn’t catch anything, but it was worth a try.
Becky:
At least you kept your tablet.
Brad:
Do we pack up our entire office space when we move?
Becky:
I do, but that’s because I pack up my office space at the end of every day anyway.
Brad:
Yeah. She’s got the system down for packing it up.
Becky:
I have a little portable setup. I actually bought it as sort of the first experiment, seeing what’s going to work and what’s not. We can put a link to it because it’s a great little setup. It’s a little portable lap desk kind of thing that’s set up for mobile office work. It doesn’t give me quite enough space, but it makes a great place for me to put everything. If for some reason I did have to go somewhere, I could just take everything with me and I’d have a setup with lights and charging cables and all the things. For me, unless I’m going to work downstairs more than one day in a row, which sometimes happens, I pack everything up at the end of every day.
Brad:
You should tell them about your first — our first — attempt for having you work upstairs. What that looked like.
Becky:
Ohh.
Brad:
Do you remember?
Becky:
Yeah. I had bought one of those pillows that has the armrest and the backrest and it folded up like a little chair thing. I was going to use that with a backdrop or something behind me. I don’t even remember what we had behind me. Then I was going to have a little lap desk on top of that. Yeah, that didn’t work.
Brad:
Yeah. She did it for a couple of days, sitting on the bed with a table kind of over her legs and that backrest chair thing.
Becky:
I did it for a couple of days. Thankfully, that was when I was doing training for my job, so I wasn’t actually seeing anybody at that time. But yeah, it was not a long-term solution.
Brad:
So much of this life is try it and maybe it works, but probably it doesn’t, and then try something else. Eventually you figure it out.
Becky:
Yeah. The setup we have now, I think, works really well.
Brad:
I think it does too. I don’t pack up my entire office space. My goal with everything in the RV is, as much as possible, make it movable. We’ll talk more about how I’ve done that with pictures and things like that. But with the office, I’ve literally bolted my display monitors to the desk. They move around a little bit, but they’re not going to fall over or anything. I don’t have to take monitors down. I’ve got a desktop computer that I use, so it just sits underneath the desk and doesn’t have a problem. The little stuff we have to move like the mouse and keyboard, but it’s not a big deal at all for us to pack up the office.
Becky:
No, it doesn’t take very long at all.
Brad:
Yeah. Nothing, knock on wood, has gotten broken with that setup.
Brad:
Have we ever had to skip fun things because of work? I feel like everybody has to miss fun things because of work. Can you think of anything, like being on the road, that’s limited what we’ve wanted to do?
Becky:
Not really. I mean, I suppose there probably is, but the thing is, my work schedule, I work four days a week. So I have three days off at a time. I just try to schedule things on those days off, which also coincide with the weekend, so that makes it nice. I don’t feel like we’ve missed a lot because of work. There have been times when it felt like we should be on vacation, like maybe we’ve gone someplace that we don’t normally go to or we’re visiting family or something like that, and it feels like, well, I shouldn’t have to be working. So I might not be able to do all the things I want to do. But I don’t think so. What about you?
Brad:
You know, I have two thoughts related to that. One is that we don’t miss a lot of things because we’re on the road, but I feel like we know about a lot of things that we can’t do because we’re on the road. Like you’ll be in a town and you’ll see a sign for a play that’s going to be there next month, and you’re like, oh, that would be amazing to see. And then you think, we’re going to be 300 miles away from here by the time that comes around. So there’s a little bit of that. But that’s not so much being on the road, that’s just knowing about stuff you aren’t going to be around for.
More than that, and we haven’t run into this much because we don’t travel as much as some people do, but it definitely is harder when it’s time to take a vacation, like to get on a plane and go somewhere. It’s another level of complication to figure out. We’ve got our house — where are we going to put our house while we’re gone, and is it going to be safe there? That’s something we haven’t come up against yet, but I’m sure that day is coming where we’ll have to figure it out.
Would you leave your house in a storage lot like this and fly away? Yikes.Becky:
And you don’t just lock the doors and walk away.
Brad:
Right. Yeah, we could just leave everything there before when we were stationary.
Becky:
We did, but we were stationary at the time, so it wasn’t a big deal. You could just leave, lock things up, and secure things, and then you’re good. But yeah, now that we’re on the road, I don’t know what that looks like.
Brad:
Most parks have rules against not occupying your trailer while you’re there. So it’s not like you can just say, oh, well, let’s rent an RV spot for a week and just leave the RV there without being there.
Becky:
I mean, some have storage spaces and stuff. We just haven’t encountered it yet. I’m sure it will be something we talk about at some point when we actually have to do it.
Brad:
Yeah, for sure. It’s not nearly as easy as, “Honey, did you lock the front door?” and heading out for three days.
Becky:
Right. Or stop the mail for a few days, or whatever.
Brad:
Yeah. You’ve got to find a home for your house while you’re gone and a safe place for it to be.
Brad:
So in more general terms, what are the best parts of working from the road?
Becky:
The ever-changing view. That’s probably the thing I like the most. Even though we spend a huge chunk of our time on the coast, the seasons change, the weather changes, the view changes. Sometimes we get ocean views out of our front window and sometimes we get trees and sometimes we get mountains and sometimes we get other RVs. It’s always changing. The other thing is the absolute flexibility. One of the things that can be tough in what I do is when you are stationary or when you live in the town that you work in, it can be tough, especially if that town happens to be small. You run into clients, you run into people, and so the space is good for everybody, I think.
Brad:
Yeah, for sure. I wouldn’t have thought about that one, but you’re right. There is something nice about going places where you don’t know people. I’m sure a lot of people would miss that, and there are times that we miss being close to family and things like that. We’ll talk about that another time, how we stay connected that way. I think for me, and I’m going to get a little weird and abstract here, it’s actually something that I talk about in my writing classes that I teach. It’s a thing called defamiliarization. The idea of it is that we become familiar with things we see, hear, or experience all the time. Think about the day you moved into your current house, that first drive to work. You noticed everything along the way. You noticed the color of that house, or how bright the trees looked, or little details. But the more you make that drive, the more familiar it becomes, and you stop noticing.
When we lived in Newport, there’s one of the most beautiful stretches of highway along the coast there, and I’d drive it so much that there were times I’d drive that road and not even look out there anymore because it just became background. It’s become familiar and it’s not new every time. I love the ability to stay awake to the details of the world around me by mixing things up every few weeks. Every time I drive out of a new park, not only do I not know where I’m going half the time, but I see everything because none of it has become familiar to the point where I just tune it out. The ocean is always amazing, the trees are always amazing, the colors are always amazing.
Becky:
Right. It’s not just background.
Brad:
It’s such a great way to stay connected to the world, to be moving around in it.
Becky:
Yeah. I like that. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah. Other than you randomly ending up in completely the opposite town you’re supposed to be in.
Brad:
Yeah. The little town of Reedsport for some reason is like a magnet for me. We don’t even stay there, but somehow whenever I get lost, I end up heading toward Reedsport. I don’t know why. Maybe we need to spend some time there.
Brad:
Alright, so what are the downsides of working from the road that nobody talks about?
Becky:
I think as much as I like the transition of being able to close up and put everything away, I do sometimes miss having a dedicated office space. I have books and reference materials that I don’t access anymore or I’ve had to find alternative ways to access them, like electronic versions. There’s something about having that traditional office space that I miss a little. But would I trade it? No. That’s probably the only thing, and even that is not a big deal. I don’t really miss it because I like that I don’t have to go to an office every day. I like that when I close up my stuff at the end of the day, I’m done. I don’t have a big commute ahead of me. I don’t have to fight traffic. If I want a cup of coffee in the middle of my day, I walk downstairs between appointments and get a cup of coffee. I can switch the laundry between appointments. Whatever. Even though I say I kind of miss a dedicated office, I don’t think I really do.
Brad:
Yeah. It’s all about tradeoffs. The good things come from sacrifice, and that’s why we sacrifice. I think for me, it’s just the literal work of moving so often. It would be less in certain situations, and if we had a Class A motorhome, it might be less work. But our fifth wheel takes more effort. The physical moving days can take a toll and be really hard sometimes, especially if we’re moving in a horrible rain and windstorm, which we’ve definitely done. Those are not great days. They’re a challenge, but at the end of it is a new place we’re going to live for a while.
Becky:
And new adventures. We’ll probably still have days like that for sure.
Brad:
Do we ever miss the stability of coworkers and office life?
Becky:
No. And that sounds terrible because I do have coworkers now. We just don’t hang out in person. I’ve gone to some events and meetings where I’ve been in the same physical place as some of my coworkers. If I need to talk to somebody, I just get online and say, hey, who’s out there, and we connect. But no, because I’m not a huge fan of office politics and office drama and all that kind of stuff. My officemate downstairs pretty much does his own thing. Occasionally my dog is under the desk and will snore like a freight train, but she’s cute. So no, I don’t miss it.
Brad:
Yeah. My office life, if you want to call it that, came with a bunch of students. My day was spent with students, teaching them one-on-one, and there are definitely aspects of that that I miss. But I’m the same way. You sacrifice for the life that you want. There are some good things that you have to leave behind. I still get to work one-on-one with students, it’s just in a different way. It’s not thirty or forty students at a time now; it’s usually more one-on-one work, which has its benefits too.
Brad:
This one isn’t so much about work, but since we’re talking about connection… what do we do to stay connected with friends and family while we’re on the road?
Becky:
I think it’s the same thing people do in brick and mortar houses. You call, you talk on the phone, you text, you email, you get together when you can, you travel to see each other. All the same things. I don’t actually think it’s that different. In some ways, it’s actually kept us more connected, especially with our kids, than we might have been otherwise. Now we can be within a few hours of at least one of them when we want to. I think you just have to be mindful of it and make an effort to stay in touch.
Brad:
Yeah, I think so too. I was thinking back to when we lived really close to my parents — literally in the same small town — and how rarely we saw them because we could see them anytime. They were right there, so we never went. Not never, but rarely. Then when we moved farther away, we actually talked to them a lot more because we had to be intentional about it.
Becky:
That’s the thing. It’s intentional with whoever you’re choosing to stay connected with, whether it’s friends, family, whoever. It doesn’t really matter if you’re living in a house or living on the road. You have to make the effort.
Brad:
Yeah. We’ve found technology that works great for that. We use an app called Marco Polo — you might want to check that out if you haven’t. It’s a great app for keeping in touch with people. We use it a lot with our kids. We’ve also started doing basically a monthly Zoom meeting, although it’s hit and miss sometimes, where we invite the larger family in from all over the country just to hang out for an hour and catch up. It’s been great.
Becky:
It is funny because that started not even because of us being on the road, but because of the pandemic. That’s where a lot of families, I think, got creative, and some of those things have stuck around. It certainly has for us. So yeah, I think you just have to be intentional.
Brad:
Is there anything you wish we’d known before jumping into working on the road that we didn’t?
Becky:
I don’t think so. I feel like we had both owned our own businesses before and worked independently before, so not going into an office wasn’t something that was unfamiliar to either of us. We knew what that would look like.
Brad:
Yeah.
Becky:
I can’t think of anything big. Maybe if we’d known ahead of time exactly what our work life was going to look like, we might have chosen a different style of RV. Maybe something with a bunkhouse or something we could have converted into a separate space. I don’t know.
Brad:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Becky:
Something like that, maybe. But overall, not really.
Brad:
I think mine isn’t necessarily connected to working, it’s more about RV life in general. I wish I’d known how complicated some things would be that seem like they should be simple — like getting your mail, establishing care with a doctor if you’re moving all the time, even proving residency. How do you prove you’re a resident of a state when you don’t have a permanent address? Or how do you get a car loan when the bank wants to know where they can find you? That kind of stuff gets really tricky. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, there are answers to all those things, but I wish I’d researched those parts a little more ahead of time.
Becky:
There are answers to those things, yeah, but they don’t really affect work so much.
Brad:
Right. We’ll talk more about all of that in future episodes, I’m sure.
Brad:
Let’s end with the question I think we ended with last time. What advice would you give somebody considering right now whether they should take an online job, hit the road, and work from an RV?
Becky:
Do your homework. Make sure you’re a self-starter because that’s the other thing. If you’re a person who can’t keep yourself on a schedule or can’t stay motivated, maybe that flexibility isn’t a good thing for you. Maybe you need the nine-to-five, clock-in, clock-out structure. If that’s the case, then maybe this isn’t for you. But if you’re somebody who’s owned your own business before or you’re already doing work that lends itself to this kind of lifestyle, just get curious. Jump in. You’ll figure it out. And if it’s not for you, then you go back to brick and mortar and do something different. It’s not a sentence. It’s just a choice. I would say do your homework, but then go for it.
Brad:
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. The thing I would add is don’t assume you’re going to save a ton of money without any tradeoffs. You probably will save money compared to living in a traditional house, but there are expenses you don’t think about. One of the big ones is Wi-Fi. Be prepared to spend a lot more on getting cell signal and Internet than you expect, because you’re probably going to need multiple options. It costs money to stay in parks, it costs money to keep everything running, it costs money to buy propane and things like that. So it’s not like you’re going to live rent-free and never have a bill again.
Becky:
That’s important. It’s something people should know. A lot of people say, “I’m doing this to save money,” or, “It’s going to be so much cheaper,” but there are a lot of hidden costs. You can’t just jump into it and assume it will all work itself out. That’s probably a whole other episode we could do, honestly. We still have expenses. We still have all the same things other people have, we just happen to take them with us in a fifth wheel everywhere we go.
Brad:
Right. Just being fully honest here — we have a loan on our RV, a loan on our truck, and we’re paying off our Thousand Trails membership. All of that combined is still nowhere near what we’d pay for even a small two-bedroom apartment right now, but when you start throwing in Internet and everything else, it starts creeping up. It’s still cheaper, but it’s not free. You have to be realistic about that.
Becky:
Exactly. It’s a different way of living, not necessarily a cheaper one in every way.
Brad:
Alright, folks, I think that’s going to wrap it up for us. We’ve got one more week here in Newport and then we’ll be headed somewhere new. I’m not going to tell you where yet, but you’ll find out when we get there. Our goal is to drop an episode every Monday. We’d love to hear from you if you’re out there listening. Shoot us an email — it’s brad@jicyw.com or becky@jicyw.com.
Becky:
Yeah, shoot us a message. Your thoughts and opinions are welcome, no matter what.
Brad:
Even if you disagree with us. Maybe you’re a huge Nomad Internet fan and you want to tell us why we’re wrong. We’d love to hear about it.
Becky:
Or if you’ve got something you think we should check out. One of the great things about the RV community is that people share information back and forth. We’ve learned so much from others, so we’d love to keep doing that.
Brad:
Absolutely. Also, check out the website — I just added a bunch of pictures to the first episode. On each episode page, you’ll find a little synopsis of what we talked about, a full transcript, and some extra links or pictures that go along with the conversation. You can find all that at jicyw.com. We’ve also set up a discussion board there where you can comment and connect with us without having to email. We’d love to hear how you’re working in your RV or what your plans are.
Becky:
Yeah.
Brad:
Alright. Thanks for wandering with us, and we’ll see you…
Becky:
We’ll see you next time.
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