RV Podcast 240: How to RV fulltime as a family

It’s estimated that there are a million plus fulltime RVers out there, traveling North America and living pretty much fulltime in their RVs. And those ranks are growing more and more every day. Jennifer and I have noticed this in our travels. We are meeting more fulltimers on seemingly every trip and many of them are families. Mom and Dad work from the road, the kids are educated on the road and the families are thriving, seeing all the wonders of North America, together. Does this idea intrigue you? Then stick around. We talk to an expert who has helped hundreds of families discover the joy of fulltime RVing. She’ll tell you who this is for, who it is not for and how to test if out for you and your family. Also this week, your RV Lifestyle questions, RV news of the week and a great off-the-beaten-path report from the Burketts. Show Notes for Episode #240 May 1, 2019 of The RV Podcast WHAT MIKE AND JENNIFER ARE UP TO THIS WEEK JENNIFER April showers bring May flowers. Well, now that it is May we're sure hoping the steady dose of cold, wet, soggy weather we've had in the Upper Midwest lately will indeed give way to May flowers soon. MIKE Especially Tulips as Holland, Michigan and its famed Tulip Time Festival is where we're headed next week.  JENNIFER This week, we're still outfitting and organizing our RV for the summer travel season. People can check out our Thursday video on the RV Lifestyle Channel on YouTube for an update on just what we've been doing. MIKE What are we doing here? Catching up, mostly. I’m editing, writing and organizing all the video photos and stories we’ve collected in the road over the past four months. We have family to visit and some yard work to do to get our home up here ready for the warm weather. JENNIFER I’ve been trimming rose bushes. Mike’s been trimming trees… largely so they don’t scrape up against our new RV, which we just purchased a few weeks ago. We’re also hard at work in our next Seven Day Adventure Guide eBook, to join the ones we’ve already done on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the southern part of Utah. MIKE The next guide should be ready in the next two weeks. It’s about one of favorite places to explore by RV… Colorado. Like the others in the series, it will suggest seven must see attractions, tell you routes to follow to get there, where to stay and what to do in the area. We price these guides very low, at just $7 each and being eBooks, they not only give you a curated guide for the trip, but they link to all sorts if other resources that will help you in your RV journeys as you visit the area. Colorado will be the next one. And we have a whole bunch mire planned. RV LIFESTYLE NEWS OF THE WEEK  JENNIFER A woman at Grand Canyon National Park last week falls to death - fourth such death in a month Another visitor fell to death last week at the Grand Canyon National Park, bringing to four the number of deaths there since late March. Officials are warning visitors to stay on clearly marked trails and not get too close to the edge. MIKE Baby birds discovered living in a nest in the front of a Winnebago  RV after family stopped just 3 weeks to camp  A family making their way north from southern Florida had quite the surprise last week when they made a pit stop in Naples, heard sounds from the front of their RV and discovered three baby birds in a nest in their grill. The family spent three weeks camping around Homestead, which apparently was enough time for the parents to build a nest in there, lay eggs and the eggs to hatch. JENNIFER Man spends $10,000 on RV but never given title, says he was duped A man in Arizona says he paid $10,000 to an RV dealer and drove off the lot with his purchase, but never given the title. Now five months later, he still has no proof the RV is his. The dealership went out of business and without the title he can’t get the RV permanently registered. He’s hired an attorney but the owners of the now closed Scottsdale RV dealership in Phoenix are nowhere to be found. MIKE What you need to know before visiting popular Zion National Park this spring If you are heading to Zion National Park soon, be sure to check to see what parts of the park are open. An unprecedented number of trail and canyon closures mainly due to weather related issues is squeezing the park's numerous visitors into an increasingly smaller space, rangers say, causing new challenges. If you are planning to head to Utah this summer, be sure to get a copy of our Seven Day Adventure Guide to Utah…. It’s an ebook you can instantly download. It only costs $7 and gives you great tips in seven awesome places to visit in Utah, including Zion. Go to https://rvlifestyle.com/utah for more info.  This part of the podcast is brought to you by RadPower Bikes,an electric bike manufacturer offering direct to consumer pricing on powerful premium electric bikes. Now with free shipping   LISTENER QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK Hi Mike and Jennifer, My wife and I are heading to do the UP tour (we bought your guide) around May 16. (just happens to be my birthday)  We are from Wisconsin.  How do we find places where we can dump the black tanks? What is your advice for finding dump sites when your traveling?  Tom and Barb We suggest the AllStays Camp and RV App, which lists Campgrounds, Truck Stops, Rest Areas,  RV Dealers and service Wastewater Treatment Plants where RVers can dump. RV INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK Time now to talk about fulltiming in an RV as a family. No longer is the fulltime life something just for retired RVers. More and more people in their 30,s, 40s and 50s are doing so, many with young children. It’s a dream that a lot of people have. So much so that our guest this week is not only a fulltime RVer with her family but she and her husband, Nathan, both work from the road, all the while educating their young kids as they travel across the country, hiking, sightseeing and exploring everything from big cities to remote wilderness areas. She is Ashley Logsdon, a blogger, podcaster and  family coach devoted to helping families live out their dreams, by coming up with a real plan that will allow them to live fulltime in their RV. Ashley Logsdon If that description sounds somewhat familiar…how to live the life of your dreams … it may be because some of that is what we talked about last week in episode 239 with Dan Miller, the self-help business entrepreneur and New Your Times best-selling author.  If you missed that I urge you to go back and listen to it. Well, this week, our guest, Ashley Logsdon,  just happens to be Dan’s daughter and she also works for him…from the road…in an RV. Ashley joins us now to help us understand just what fulltime family RVing is all about. Here’s the full transcript of the interview with lots of links and resources listed at the end: Mike Wendland:         Tell us about your life right now. A husband, kids and RV; you're a full-time RVer. What's your RV in? And walk us through that, and then, how the kids are educated? How old are the kids? Introduce everybody to your family. Ashley Logsdon:          Wonderful. Okay. Well, we are originally from Nashville, Tennessee. And in October of 2016, we decided to hit the road full-time. My husband and I have been married for 15 years this June and we have three girls. They are 12 just turned 12 last weekend, 12, 9, and 6. They have been homeschooled since the beginning; and when we hit the road, we really moved into that unschooling model. And unschooling is one of the many different variations of homeschooling that's out there, but essentially means, that when you ask our children, "Where do you go to school?" They say, "Everywhere." And we say, "Who is your teacher?" They say, "Everyone." And we believe in a lifelong learning approach for the whole family. So, we are learning right alongside them. Ashley Logsdon:          And in the two and a half years we have been on the road, we have hit all 48 states. We still have Alaska and Hawaii, and we are making plans, at least for Hawaii, next. We're holding off on Alaska. We're ready for a lot of warmth, and we're a little bit more limited with the Alaska travels. But yeah. We hit all 48 states before our two year nomadaversary on the road. Mike Wendland:         The nomadaversary. I like that. Ashley Logsdon:          The nomadaversary, yes. And we've had a blast and we have met so many families, full-time families, just like us along the way, which has been really great, too, because this is something that RVing is not just one demographic; and at one point, it was kind of that understanding that it was more the retirees. And with my generation, you have a lot of people that are saying, "I don't want to wait for one day to do these things because I know that one day doesn't always come." There are those relationships that are severed, or the health that's declined, or you just forget how to have fun. And we want to incorporate that. Mike Wendland:         Tell us what kind of an RV you're in. I would suspect you're in a towable. Are you in a towable? The family's travel trailer RV is in the background. To Ashley's left is the truck camper that goes on their tow vehicle that she uses as her "office" when working and that the family uses as a boondocking, tailgating base when exploring Ashley Logsdon:          Yes, we are in a 29 foot travel trailer, and we were in a Jayco White Hawk. 2012 Jayco White Hawk, and it's a bunkhouse. So, we've got the four bunks in the back of it, and then we actually also added, ours is a little bit of a unique setup here because we have a travel trailer, but then we also have a pop-up camper on our truck. And so, that's what I'm in right now. This is my little mini office so that I actually do have a place that's separate from the family for doing things like this, and also something that we can rent out, and do some quick boondocking, and more off-roading things that we can't take our travel trailer on.