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Frequently Asked Questions

rev December 2018

Recent questions from readers include these:

What do you do about jury summons? (let's hope this doesn't happen for awhile)

How do you get your mail? is the #1 most asked question.

Isn't your truck getting long in the tooth?


Let us know anytime you have a question.

Click on any of the frequently asked questions below to go to the answer text.

How long do you stay in a place?

What are the pros and cons of different camping spots?

What makes a good campground?

Liability insurance for full-timers, what's this about?

Why'd you buy a gas-powered truck instead of diesel?

Why a GM truck instead of Ford or Dodge?

Do you have and use a generator?

What are the pros and cons of caravanning?

What about KOA campgrounds? Or, are other private campgrounds better?

How do you get your mail?

How do you get internet service?

Are State and Fed Parks the way to go?

Once at the campground, how do you pick your spot?

How did you come up with this idea of full-timing?

Is a 25 foot trailer large enough to live in full-time?

Is yours a new Airstream trailer?

Do they still make Airstreams?

Why did you ever think you could go full-timing in a travel trailer?

When will you come back home?

Have you made a list of the places you want to visit?

Where will you stay?

What did you do with all your household possessions?

Did you really sell your house to go fulltiming?

Weren't you too young to be quitting work?

How long will you be full-timing?

How do you get your laundry done?

How long have you been full-timing?

Who is writing the website?

How did you first become interested in Airstream?

What do you miss most about your house?

What's the biggest challenge you've found?





Those are really great questions, aren't they? Please give us more questions, we promise to try to answer them. This is supposed to be frequently asked, and answered as we have time. You can email us at as4822@gmail.com


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How long do you stay in a place?

It depends. After living "on the road" since 2007, we've pretty well figured out what we're doing. We've been very fortunate not working and being able to afford volunteering since retirement. We tried five months in one really great spot one year. At the end we left wondering why we'd stayed so long. Well, we knew why we had stayed -- we love the people and the programs and the place is pretty darned nice. But we're travelers -- we love traveling and seeing things and learning as we go. We're not likely to again voluntarily spend five months in one spot.

The next winter we tried moving around throughout the southwest and southeast during January and February. Much better -- we're trying do the same in subsequent winters. So the longest we plan to stay anywhere is two months. Otherwise, we like one to two week stays. Our ten-year average length of stay is only five days because of the number of times we "reposition" our rolling home across the continent. Two weeks is long enough to find our way around, not long enough for us to tire of the area.



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What makes a good campground? What are the pros and cons of different camping spots?

This is a personal choice. Our wants and needs may not be yours. A good campground for us depends upon where we are, what we plan to do, with whom we are traveling, and how long we're to stay. We don't need a bunch of hookups to like a campground -- we are more interested in quiet, nice ground cover (leaves or pine needles are fine), and a little space between sites and from the campground loop so we aren't touching the cars and trucks as they drive the loop.

We want walking paths or trails in or very near the campground. We would like tennis courts nearby. A laundry is nice, provided it isn't too costly to use the machines. A drying yard is wonderful (often found in FL, not so often elsewhere). We like a small paperback book exchange so we can swap books we've read and pick up a few different ones. The best one was in Haines AK because they had not only books but also books on CD and a very interesting variety of books.

The same campground in Haines AK had the very cleanest showers we've found in any campground anywhere. We were favorably impressed. Another big plus for us is campground location. This can be difficult -- we like walking or short driving access to local amenities but also prefer quiet settings. Sometimes one cannot have both -- it just depends.

We don't need electricity, water, sewer, cablevision, phone or any other connections to really like a campground. We can, with decent sunshine, totally forgo electrical hookups indefinitely. Our limiting factor is our 19 gallon black water tank, good for up to ten days if we are very very careful. Fresh water and rinse water tanks of 39 gallons each are ample for at least ten days. Dry camping in the Arizona desert and in a beachfront campground between LA and San Diego were very different from each other but both possible for us because we are happy without any hookups.

A really gorgeous campground in a British Columbia provincial park between Prince George and Clinton provided us a view over the lake, a nice fire-ring, and the weather was primo. No hookups at all, but great walking, nice people, not too crowded, and so pretty. This is a nearly perfect campground for us.



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Why didn't you have full-timers' liability insurance coverage?

We do now. We conducted two to three full-timing seminars annually in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. We think we learned as much as the attendees at these seminars. Our fellow panelists invariably surprised us with some of their solutions, and our attendees bring up the darndest questions.

Some years ago a panelist and good friend asked, "Do you two have liability insurance for full-timers?" We thought she was nuts. We checked with our agent who told us, "Nope, your truck coverages do NOT apply to the trailer when it is unhitched from the truck.

Hmm, Hunter was right (of course!). We really liked our Allstate agent -- she always took such good care of our issues, renewals, questions. And this time she recommended we check with other insurers for this coverage. Allstate did not offer the coverages we were seeking.

Several years before we had a little run-in from a driver insured by Progressive. Progressive was over-the-top wonderful in handling our claim. Then we started seeing their cute adverts. Hey, who knew about Progressive Insurance before this? Suddenly we were hearing about them everywhere. You may need to check them out.

We checked a couple of companies for liability coverages and Progressive won. Now if our RV rolls back and knocks over a section of campground fence, we might have ready help from our insurer to cover the loss. Doesn't really make us feel much better, but hopefully this is prudent and reasonable.

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Why'd you buy a gas-powered truck instead of diesel?
Every now and then diesel prices again creep under regular gasoline prices. Maintenance and first costs are still considerably higher for diesel than gas engines. Some diesels are evolving to quieter systems than even ten years ago, so this could become a non-player. Then again, diesels now are mostly going to the diesel exhaust fluids (DEF), pricey stuff. Gas engines? Not so pricey overall.

We've read or heard the payback for diesel could be less than 100,000 miles. It depends upon two primary items: first cost and the other costs. First cost for Chevy K2500HD diesel is a $10,000 list premium over the gasser. We think the payback is well up above 150,000 miles for us. We weren't sure we'd have our truck this long. We decided not to bother with the maintenance requirements and the first cost. If we buy another truck and the market's right for us to buy a diesel we'll decide then.

Diesel engines are unquestionably stronger than even our huge 8.1L gas setup. Way stronger. We've often climbed lengthy (+/- 6 mile) 8 and 9 percent grades. We were, at times, down to 40 or 45 miles per hour. So what? Gas is good enough for us, and our operating costs are almost assuredly lower. At 230,000 miles, we've had no breakdowns. We replaced the radiator and coolant overflow tank for a very small leak; two front hubs, four shocks, the mass air flow sensor and shift lever (a broken wire in the assembly).

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Why a GM truck instead of Ford or Dodge?
The 2500HD, GMC or Chevy, is a fine towing vehicle. A Ram or Ford would be fine too. We think we're brand indifferent. We prefer the extended cab since we only 1 percent of the time would need the rear seating and admire more the proportions of extended cab. We eschewed the 8' long bed because (1) we don't want to carry more than we can stuff in the 6.5' bed, and (2) the longer wheelbase creates a frustrating response delay in the trailer's turns when backing.

Our Chevy 2500HD is powered by an 8.1 liter (496 cubic inch) gas engine with an Allison 1000 six-speed transmission through a 3.73 rear end. We added an ARE tonneau cover, replaced the hitch receiver with a big CURT 15208, and replaced the 26 gallon fuel tank (what in the world was GM thinking?) with a Transfer Flow 45 gallon tank. Oh yeah, and we installed antenna mounts through the cab roof, the very best mounting for mobile radios (CB & 2meter ham) for several reasons.

Our first tow vehicle was a 1993 F-150 ext cab long bed. Bed too long, engine already severely worn, but we were just fine with a Ford. Finalists for second truck, beefy enough for our conversion from 22' weekending Airstream to 25' full-timing Airstream, were Ram, Ford F-250, and Chevy 2500HD. We had multi dealerships for each brand in our hometown, so easy to shop all of these.

Friends with the 6L gas engine in GMC or Chevy do just fine with 31' trailers, so the loss of the 8.1L engine appears to be no biggie. You would have a 4.10 rear end and the higher gearing will spin your engine a little faster, better within its power curve. Fuel economy on the 6L is at least as good (it could hardly be worse) as ours. The only apparent benefit of our largest engine might be a longer life, since engine parts are spinning so slowly much of the time. We'll see.

UPDATE 10 Dec 2012: We bought and installed a nice pair of manual folding towing mirrors for our 2500HD. Turn signals in the glass, heated glass, electric adjustment of the big glass, and a nice sized convex mirror at the bottom. These are what we were wanting! Price -- $250ish. The only shortcoming is loss of the electric foldaway function, so we fold ours manually when desired. Other than ham radios, I don't think we've done other upgrades.

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Do you have and use a generator?

We have a Yamaha® portable generator, 1kw 120vac gas-powered, 27 pounds of electrical power, quiet, and a gas sipper. We wondered if we should buy and haul a larger generator or like some of our friends, two 2,000 watt generators. And we could use only one of the 2,000s when we didn't need so much. We figured we wouldn't need more than the 1,000 watt.

We didn't want the weight and fuel consumption and cargo space of the larger generators. Why would we need to make our own power for air conditioning? Even with the new soft-start mod on the roof air conditioners, we'd need a 2,000 for air conditioning. But we wouldn't need it for anything else. Our house has wheels so we can relocate if we need to. We bought the 1,000 watt (1 kw) generator.

After over eleven years, we have found the generator sometimes a relief and sometimes a convenience. We've repaired tires twice at roadside, using the generator to power the 120vac air compressor. We've loaned it to friends to recharge their trailer's or motor home's batteries. We charged our truck's battery once with the generator's 8amp dc output. I had drained the truck's battery and couldn't reach the trailer's umbilical to send power to the truck. After only 30 minutes I was able to start the truck. We've recharged our trailer's batteries a few times when dry-camping. Although we have solar panels, sometimes the sun doesn't show up or we're parked in total shade (like at Mora Park near Hoh Rain Forest). Lately too we've realized our batteries probably didn't need the excitement and would have been fine another day or two or three. See the Trimetric 2025 in our Home Improvements page.

The 1kw generator is small and lightweight, easy for us to handle. We store it in the truck's bed near the tailgate. We'll try to keep it there as much as we can. As a friend stated a few years ago we want to be generator snobs, eschewing noisy and smelly generator use for battery conservation and silent solar charging instead.

UPDATE 4/26/2012: Apparently we weren't testing or using our generator frequently enough and also seemed to lapse on keeping Sta-Bil® or Sea Foam® in the fuel. Our generator wouldn't start, required a trip to the small engine shop. $60 later our generator is starting and running fine and we are operating it every month to keep it so. Also, in 2014 we started only running ethanol-free gasoline in the generator. That immediately resulted in easier starts and less maintenance.

UPDATE 12/3/2017: No idea why but somewhere between Durango Colorado and Chattanooga Tennessee something went wrong in my generator's fuel train. I couldn't pull the start rope and gas had been leaking from the generator into the truck bed. I took out the spark plug and it was gas-soaked. I checked the fuel tank and it was way down. I checked the crankcase and it was full of gas. The air filter media was soaked and deteriorated. Replaced it with pre-oiled media. I drained the crankcase and put in the requisite .3 qt motor oil. Ran the generator a few minutes, drained the oil again and put another whopping .3 qt oil in. Ran the generator on load for 1/2 hour and cool down for 5 min, then opened the shroud to cool the windings and engine before storing it. It all seems good now but appears I may need a carb rebuild or more. Don't yet know why the gas tank pushed into the crankcase.


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What are the pros and cons of caravanning?

We've spent just over two weeks on a caravan and just over six weeks on another, and around sixty days each on two others. This was four caravans in six years. We liked all the caravans enough to sign up for more still.

First, the good news. We found, on all these caravans, a great advantage in having someone show us an area. Our first caravan was a short one in Alaska, with just six venues over a two weeks period. The driving days were generally leisurely, short miles, but take our time and stop a lot. They strongly encouraged us to take at least three times the normal driving time (for the mileage) to enjoy all the stops along the way. It was worth it and enjoyable, especially since they provided us guidance on things to look for along the way each driving day.

The leaders of these guided caravans do a thorough job scoping out good places to eat and stay and sightsee. We enjoyed all the dining experiences and sightseeing, and the campgrounds were as good as, if not better, than what we would have found. But the caravan's camping site budget is higher than ours. That's a good thing and a bad thing, too. Let us explain.

Airstream club (WBCCI) caravans are led by dedicated volunteers, members of WBCCI. They spend the prior year or two traveling the routes, recording the mileages, noting the scenic stops, evaluating the camping and dining places. They determine the caravan budget and manage the participants' caravan fees (the kitty). At the caravan's completion the leaders account for all expenses and refund any remainder to the participants.

We could, for less money, take trips on the same routes as the caravans. We are almost certain we would scrimp in places the caravan doesn't, and we would therefore fail to participate in many good experiences. While the caravan is more expensive than our self-guided travels, we plan no more than one caravan per year and budget for it as best we can.

The only downsides to caravans, for at least one of us, are the relentless pace and the greater expense than our normal budget. We're very spoiled in respect to travel pace, since we live together in our Airstream all year. We can knock out miles like crazy, and we try our best not to. We are perfectly happy driving 60 or 100 miles in one day and not driving again for days. But on caravans you either go with the group, every two or three days, or you forfeit the prepaid meals, activities, and camping for any days you miss. We're too cheap to want to give away much of what we feel we paid for so we go along and enjoy it greatly in the end.

The higher expenses incurred during a caravan are special, the cost is necessary for the great adventure we are on. We simply reconcile ourselves to "tourist spending" for the caravan period. It's worth it -- we're getting a wonderful experience with really neat people in wonderful areas, guided by dedicated folks who know the area well. And we try not to do caravans every year so we can recover our budget.

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What about premium campgrounds? Do you prefer private campgrounds better?

We have stayed in several pricey campgrounds, and have visited several others. Two of them we visited seemed absolutely top drawer, with great facilities and sites and location. All this, regardless of brand or ownership, comes at a price. At these, you get what you pay for.

One in Okeechobee FL seems best in class and has far more amenities than a resort we've rented nearby. A nice nine hole golf course, four tennis courts, two swimming pools, and lots of nice programs and spaces complement this pretty central Florida park. We didn't pay nearly what that CG charges, so Jim drives 15 miles to play golf and 6 miles to play tennis. Maybe it would be worth paying more to have these on the premises?

Some pricey CGs are not places we would choose to stay. We sometimes find them unattractive, too close to the highway, and they don't offer much that interests us. Or they're amazingly expensive for our budget. As mentioned in the first paragraph, you get what you pay for and our tastes are somewhat inelegant.

We sometimes eschew private campgrounds because they're almost always costlier than our budget can sustain and we don't usually care about the amenities. Our favorite campgrounds are woodsy and a little isolated, like many of Canada's Provincial Parks and National Parcs and many of the U.S. State and National Parks. We might find a lot of privacy or we might meet lots of fellow travelers -- either way, we seem to meet more people in these parks. Perhaps they spend more time outside their RVs than resort RVers?

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How do you get your mail?

This continues as our most frequently asked question, hands down. Escapees Mail Forwarding Service does a superb job handling our mail forwarding. Our return address labels and magazine subscriptions and personal mail all point to our Livingston Texas mail forwarding company's business. They store and forward our mail to us per our periodic instructions. We only get first class mail plus any special magazine subscriptions we select regardless of mail class. For example, our ARRL QST (ham radio) magazine is not sent first class and would be discarded by the mail service as a lot of advertisements (which it really is). But instead they hold and forward these with our other mail.

This works nicely because we don't get all the junk mail you likely do. No flyers, no catalogs (this is a plus and a minus, eh?), no Publishers Clearinhouse announcements. Less trash, lots less trash at our house! We generally arrange once every two weeks delivery of our mail. This is easier sometimes than others. We send a message with our planned next mail pickup location to the mail forwarder a week ahead of time. Will the Post Office in that city or town accept general delivery? Not all do, so we must look up or call the intended Post Office specifically and ask them.

Escapees Mail Service sends our mail to the designated pickup location via US Priority Mail. We walk into the Post Office and ask if they have a General Delivery package for . . . and before we can say our name they say, "You are Jim and Debbie? It's right here." We show identification and we have our mail. Not so many people do this as in years past, so some of the post offices we visit apparently just don't get much of this mail.

This costs us $8 per package (it used to be $4.80 for a two-week small package) and is charged to our revolving account at Escapees. They draft our credit card at $50 increments a few times a year as needed. In a package we'll have a few greeting cards, letters, or bills, and three to five magazines. How reliable is this?

In 2008 we had two little hiccups in the same month, one near Charleston, SC, in Hollywood, and one in Raleigh, NC. Neither was the mail forwarder's fault, both times were on us. The first one was a timing error, we didn't allow enough time for the mail before our intended departure from Hollywood. We ended up staying three extra days in Lake Aire Campground, a very nice Passport America campground. We asked our mail-order pharmacy to send meds as General Delivery to meet us in Raleigh, NC. Several days later we receive a phone call advising the meds were sent and returned to the pharmacy.

Our fault, we hadn't learned to confirm if the intended Post Office handles General Delivery. And the Post Office we had selected, near Raleigh's State fairgrounds did not. The pharmacy resent the General Delivery package to a different Post Office location nearby and we received it no problem. The post offices hold this mail for you for 30 days, so it is to our advantage to have it sent ahead of us and held. Escapees Mail Service is a great way to work this.

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How do you get internet service?

First Answer: We drive from one Tim Horton's Restaurant to another, on the chance we'll find wifi. At Tim Horton's you can always find superb coffee (in china cups) and wonderful doughnuts. Formerly we didn't so much find wifi there but you have to keep trying, don't you? Sure enough, in 2012 we found WIFI in almost every Tim Horton's we visited (and that's a lot of Tim Horton's.)

In 2012 we switched from a Pantech UML290 USB Verizon modem to a Verizon MiFi. The MiFi works very very well in most locations. We were still happy with it over four years on, but replaced it in 2017 with a new Verizon jetpack 4G LTE. Clearly faster. We rarely hit our data limit in a month and now we can do it every time. LOL

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Are State and Federal Parks the way to go?

We think State (U.S.) and Provincial (Canada) and National (U.S. and Canada) parks are definitely the way to go. We love the locations (almost never adjacent to an Interstate or big highway) for their quiet and remoteness. We feel safer in public parks, generally, than in busy private rv parks. And we pretty uniformly save money camping in public parks. So yes, we like public parks. We also greatly enjoy boondocking on BLM lands and dry-camping in Escapees (SKP) parks. The cost is low to nothing for the BLM lands we've tried and we like the wide open spaces. Dry-camping, for members, in SKP parks is sometimes only $5 and we have full use of the park's amenities.

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Once at the campground, how do you pick your spot?
We like parking in otherwise empty loops. We usually park as far from playgrounds, dogs, and generators as we can. Jim likes backing our trailer, so we are accepting of some interesting parking assignments in RV parks. Solar power is great when a park's sites have no electricity, so we try to select unshaded sites when available.

And not until 2009 did we figure out about "solar orientation" of our patio. Some things we figured out much faster than we did this one. We now try, whenever we will have a warm and sunny exposure, to aim the trailer's patio to the north (hitch to the West). The sun rises to our rear. It's nice to watch morning sunrise from the patio. The midday sun is overhead and to our streetside (with full-length awning), and the low setting sun is off our front. Our patio, on the curb side, is then full shade and pleasant in the heat of the afternoon.

It took us three months at one spot in south Florida to realize the benefit of the northerly orientation of our patio. We tried this at numerous spots throughout the year and have found we really like it. You might not always get the choice or you might find higher priority considerations. Sometimes the view is so much better the other direction and we forgo patio-solar orientation. Lots of times we just take what is available and don't worry about it. But, if we have a choice . . .

Aiming the trailer's front or rear directly west also improves our solar panel performance now that we can tilt our panels. The panels become broadside to the southern sky and get the best solar bath most of the day this way.

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What's the biggest challenge you've found, so far, in full-timing?
New in 2018, the biggest challenge became for us an acute medical care issue. We had just returned to our mountain camp from two rallies in two weeks. Jim had awful pains that wouldn't respond to painkillers. The Urgent Care and the Emergency Department weren't addressing it, apparently because it wasn't life threatening. Jim went Sunday night through Saturday morning without food and without sleeping in a bed. He couldn't lie down for the pain in his back and abs. Not until we invoked the services of our primary care provider (PCP) did we obtain effective management of his pain. They hospitalized him, reviewed all the tests results, and started him on an array of medications. Lyme Disease was the culprit. The test results didn't arrive until 2 weeks into the episode, but the docs had suspected and started Jim on an antibiotic which stopped the pain a day after.

For years we took for granted our PCP's capabilities and services. Annually we would drop in for a physical and sometimes vaccination boosters. We'd been so fortunate not to have acute care issues. We would often self-refer to specialists as needed. Once Jim needed management of care for a complicated and undiagnosed acute illness, the benefit of a PCP became very evident and critical. Our PCP had all Jim's health history and the results of the films and tests from three emergency department visits during this episode. Our favorite moment was when the doc (at the third visit) said, "Jim, we'll get to the bottom of this." The promise we needed, and they delivered. We have a strong appreciation for our wonderful docs and their staff.

Short of a medical issue for us or our family issues, we've had smooth sailing. Full-timing, even at more than ten years in, hasn't been too challenging a lifestyle at this point.

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What do you miss most about your house?
We miss being able to entertain indoors. Not the lawn cutting or shrubbery trimming, nor maintenance on the house, nor taking care of the cars, nor the city noise, nor the mortgage and taxes and insurance and utilities. We loved the beauty, the size and space of the interior, the neighborhood, and the proximity to all things Charlotte. It'd be cool to have grandchildren visit us for more than a day or two. Jim looks forward to having shop space in a basement.

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How did you first become interested in Airstream?
We addressed this question on
About Us already.

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Who is writing the website?
Jim writes eighty-five percent and Deb does the other half. Deb is a good writer but shies away from sharing as much information as Jim likes to. And he is more likely to plug in and lose himself on these pages, writing and re-writing. In fact he's doing so write now.

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How long have you been full-timing?
We hear this question or "When will you stop?" 2/1 over most any other question. The reaction when we answer used to be very consistent. The reactions were most often, "You haven't done it very long." Wait and see, we're still growing into this! We started August 2007 for nine weeks, then sold the house and jumped in with all four feet beginning of February 2008.

UPDATE Dec 31 2018: We're in our twelfth year. We have 230,000 miles on the truck and around 150,000 miles on the trailer. Still loving full-timing. No house on the property but we've contracted a fine architect to develop a plan.



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How do you get your laundry done?
We save it up and take it home to mom's house. No! Well, sometimes. We carry enough clothes for up to two weeks without washing. Within this time we find a laundromat in a campground or town. We can wash, dry, and fold our clothes in a couple hours once every two weeks. We carry detergent and softener and enough quarters (stacked in old 35mm film cans) to operate the machines. Sometimes, especially in Florida, we have use of clotheslines too. This has worked very well for us. You just can't do a couple or three loads of laundry as quickly at home (unless you have three washing machines!)

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How long will you be full-timing?
It depends. We first tried it for nine-ten weeks in 2007, then since beginning of 2008 continuously. We're still going strong, and we really still feel like we're just starting out. We'll continue as long as we love what we're doing. It been ten years; it may be twenty-three. We've met couples on the road who have been full-timing for fifteen to twenty years and are giving it up only because of health problems. We only know we haven't yet made any permanent commitments so we can change our minds at any time. For now, we're loving the lifestyle. In 2014 we purchased wooded acreage in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We love managing the wooded acreage and imagining a home on it. We spent enough time there to warrant installing electric, septic, and well systems several years ago. Some time in every season the past few years provides us good perspective on solar effect, drainage patterns, winds, and sounds. Starting to make us yearn a little for a building project but no house yet. Fall 2018 we started meeting with an architect who is developing a plan for us. We don't plan to stop traveling but think we're ready to have a fixed place we call home.

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Weren't you too young to be quitting work?
This is one of those "s'posed to issues", isn't it? No, we weren't too young. We're young enough to enjoy our health and resources in travel. We had planned to retire earlier than 65 but not at 55. However, so many people kept telling us that they only wished they had retired earlier and that we need to start traveling while we're young enough to enjoy it. We did some long range forecasts using very conservative rates to decide whether we could make this work financially. We also worked out a conservative budget and began investigating health insurance options. Health insurance costs and coverages remains one of the biggest unknowns. Fun detail - end of 2018 we were within $100 of annual budget for expenses. Way to go, Debbie!

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Did you really sell your house to go full-timing?
It sold itself, we were really fortunate. Selling the house helped alot since this relieved us of a number a major expenses. The decision to sell the house was a long, multi-step process over a period of approximately two years. We considered numerous housing plans for ourselves. We first began talking about downsizing to a smaller house in a neighborhood about two miles further from downtown. We wanted to go from our 2,900 square feet to around 1,500.

Several of our church members live in a neighborhood we liked so we put the word out to watch for houses on the market. A fellow Airstreamer who lived in the same neighborhood owned a duplex that he was selling to move to a retirement community. This appealed to us since there would be someone living in the other unit who could keep an eye on things when we were traveling. We made an offer but he had a previous offer so we decided this wasn't meant for us. We also considered condos so we wouldn't have to worry about the yard work while we were away and exterior maintenance but didn't like the idea that we would have to find off-site storage for the Airstream.

During this time we also began learning about full-timing and seriously considering this as a lifestyle for post-retirement. As we learned more about full- timing and became more interested in the prospects of living anywhere anytime, we began thinking about the issues of maintaining a permanent residence while on the road. We heard horror stories from others of water pipes bursting and coming home to several inches of water in the house. If we rented the house, we'd be sure to get calls at the most inconvenient times about the water heater blowing up or the furnace dying in the middle of the night. We gradually warmed to the idea of not having a permanent residence at all once we retired. We decided it would be most economical to stay where we were for the remainder of our working career and then have just one sale and not have to move.

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What did you do with all your household possessions?
We thought we had read in someone's book on their full-timing experience they spent one week emptying their house. What did we do wrong? We spent roughly three months. First, we tried to get our children to take whatever they wanted which was precious little. We had a few family antiques or heirlooms we placed with family members for safekeeping. Most every full-timer we talked with agreed that paying to store lots of furniture was an expensive undertaking that they regretted. For the amount spent on storage, they said they could have replaced the items they needed. Also, the furniture that we had in our large house may not be at all appropriate to whatever smaller house or condo we move into when we come off the road. Hence, we decided to get rid of all our furniture and household items through consignment shops, Craig's list, yard sales and Goodwill donations. For the pictures, records, china, etc. that we wanted to keep, we rented a very small (5' X 7') conditioned storage unit.

We're most impressed by the full-timers who took the time to scan their print photo collections before they shut down their household. It might have taken a week or two of dedicated effort and would have (1) preserved our photo images and (2) saved a box or two of photo albums. This still wouldn't have saved enough space to reduce the storage unit size. Most important is we'd have those pictures with us all the time and they'd be preserved. Instead, we will face scanning those after we unpack our storage unit.


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Where will you stay?
North Carolina is our anchor. We have special parts of Florida and South Carolina we particularly enjoy and we like visiting every year. We've not invested in shares or sites at resorts but did finally buy land in the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from Boone NC. When we find a place we like (usually because of the people we meet or know there) we're likely to return for visits. We've spent some Winter time in Texas, Arizona, California, and Florida (as well as North Carolina). They all have benefits, and we continue to enjoy the differences.

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Have you made a list of the places you want to visit?
We constantly update this list as we learn from others, or read in magazines or news, or see somewhere and want to delve into it more. Most often it happens spontaneously - someone in a rest stop says, "Are you going to stop at The Henry Ford?" We say, "That sounds pretty good, thanks for the recommendation." And we go away wondering why we didn't think of that first and are glad they told us.

In 2016 we attended a fun rally in Richmond Ontario. We asked before we left if we should head east to Quebec City or south to Toronto and Niagra Falls. The recommendations for Quebec City were just a little more appealing but we weren't sure which way we'd go when we left Richmond. The next morning we were hitched up, started the truck, and decided on the spur of the moment to head to Quebec City. It was a fabulous choice and nine months later we made it through Niagara Falls on our way to a rally in New York City. Spontaneity generally works for us.

The list of places to visit will endure longer, I think, as we begin to stay a little longer in each place. After our first year we reevaluated and decided to slow it down a little. Enjoy it a little more. Don't be rushing about. We still have difficulty controlling our wanderlust -- itchy feet or something. After more than ten years, we still feel we have barely scratched the surface in touring North America. There is so much to see and do and eat, and people to meet. This is still a lot of fun.

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When will you come back home?
Where's home? Home is where we park it. The greater Charlotte area will always be like home to us. We will always be "from N.C." Our house is on wheels behind our truck. Of course, we return to NC frequently since both of us have family and friends there and we now have our own mountain camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Why did you ever think you could go full-timing in a travel trailer?
Hey! It wasn't our idea, it's all Tom and Mary's fault for introducing us to the concept one afternoon in a discussion with friends. We didn't know we could, we just believed. This full-timing thing is still a big experiment for us. How will we know if we don't try? We haven't talked to anyone who tried it and didn't like it. The main reason people have given for quitting seems to be health reasons and age (maybe these are the same problem).

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Do they still make Airstreams?
Yes. The Airstream Factory in Jackson Center, Ohio produces approximately eighty per week. Airstream celebrated their 85th anniversary in 2016 and is the oldest RV manufacturer in the U.S.

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Is yours a new Airstream trailer?
Yep, it's a 2005 model. We bought it new in May 2006 from an Airstream dealer. To some, it still looks new. To us it looks newer than many we see. Oh wait! It is newer than many. Anymore though, we see our friends buying these very cool new Airstreams. We like ours as well as when it was brand new.

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Is a 25 foot trailer large enough to live in full-time?
This is another very frequently asked question, and we enjoy answering it.

We think our trailer's amply large for full-timing. But this is Not True according to some people we meet. Everyone says we'll be trading up to a 34 foot before long. They're wrong in our case. But some people want more space and perhaps need more things. We use the amount of space we have available. We were pleasantly surprised to find that when we loaded the trailer with all the things we needed for our first big trip, we had space left over. We kept a list of things to add when we returned home. It was a very short list. We also went through what we packed and removed from the trailer and truck a few things. We're very flexible -- we've tried this and see how it works. We're still willing to change what we're hauling. You can check on our
Lifestyles page for some of this info.

In addition to the issue of having enough space for all your stuff, there's the issue of having enough space for the two of us. People ask how we can possibly get along full-time in less than 180 square feet of space. Of course, we don't stay in the trailer all the time. We're out sightseeing, touring, shopping, playing tennis, and hiking during the day. We enjoy spending time outside during the evening if the weather is nice. The most time we spend together is in our truck when we're driving between locations. It's fortunate that we really enjoy being together. The closeness has never been a problem for us.

Finally, a trailer's size does not necessarily equate to its net carrying capacity, or the weight of your cargo. Don't assume you should fill all the cabinets and remain within your trailer's weight ratings. We weigh our trailer a couple of times annually to ensure it's balanced (between ten and fifteen percent of trailer's weight is at the hitch) and to ensure we are within our gross vehicle weight rating, or GVWR. We moved heavier stuff from the trailer's rear end (exterior cargo compartments and interior overhead bin) and placed the stuff in the truck. Lighter weight stuff (e.g. fleece blankets) replaced the heavy stuff. It's way too easy, and a bad thing, to overload a trailer's weight capacity or to overload the tow vehicle's gross combined weight rating (GCWR)


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How did you come up with this idea of full-timing?
Not by ourselves! Summer 2005 we visited Virginia Highland Haven Airstream Park in Copper Hill, VA. We invited our good friends who fell in love with the park and asked questions of the members about how to join. We listened as a couple of veteran full-timers explained membership in the Highland Haven.

Tom and Mary happened to mention they were full-timers, having sold their house 20 some-odd years earlier to their daughter. Years earlier they had started on a two month trip to explore America and just never came back home. Their daughter, after two years housesitting, bought Tom and Mary's house. We were awestruck. Who knew you could do that in an Airstream? The idea came along at just the right time for us.

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