We leave our home in Denver on July 13, 2020. The house is yet to be listed for sale, and we pull off in a 90-square-foot A-frame camper, hitting the road north for Wyoming. One month later, and we’re still chugging along.
So, how’s it going?
I began writing this week from our first morning outside the camper. We were in a quiet Airbnb outside of beautiful Bozeman, Montana, resetting for three nights after a month on the road in our tiny A-frame camper.
My dog, “Snickers” (her pen name) spent the entire morning staring out the door, apparently either longing for life on the road or really freaked out by a new dwelling, or likely a bit of both.
Now we’re back on the road, posting up outside Butte, Montana. Rolling hills of deep green pine and sagebrush are punctuated by rounded, reddish-brown granite boulders for miles in every direction. To the south, the Tobacco Root Mountains rise proudly from the plains, arcing to the southeast. To the west is a gigantic manmade hole in the ground where cooper comes from. It’s a sight, that’s for sure.
Here’s a few updates and lessons from our first month of extended travel:
Food for Comfort on the Road
Our food spending started to increase almost immediately on this trip.
We aren’t eating out more necessarily—we’ve picked up take-out food twice in a month, roughly “average” for us—but we are buying for comfort and convenience.
For instance, I started grabbing nicer items on the grocery store shelf that I would otherwise pass on. We’re finding ourselves slightly less concerned with price per ounce or other metrics that usually have me in your way when you just want to grab some F-ing peanut butter, man!
We’re buying more sliced cheese instead of big blocks. And when I get a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, by god, I’m buying the best one available. We used to make our own hummus, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it was damn good. Now we’re paying $3.50 for a tiny container of B- goo on the reg.
When dealing with life in a small space—with small errands more complicated, and ever-changing weather and wind conditions—we find great food to be worth the cost. And the easier said food is to deploy in my mouth, the better. This all sounds like a terrible weight-loss plan, huh?
Make eating easier.
At any rate, boosting our food spending is more than compensated by our very low housing costs ($0 for camping so far, more for two Airbnb’s we’ve booked).
Eating Less on the Road?
One quick note on health though: I think being on the road is a great way to naturally slim up. I haven’t weighed myself since we left Denver, but I feel leaner. I suspect part of that is the natural increase in activity, but perhaps a bigger element is the fact that eating is incrementally harder. When making a snack revolves around sliding bins in and out of the truck, you’re going to really want it.
All the effort required to eat is helping keep the “Covid 19” from our midsections.
Working on the Road is Still Hard
That’s right, we all agree, hands-down. Relying on cellular data for a job is a real pain in the ass out here.
Here’s the truth: most campsites, paid or not, have decent service at best. Many areas have no service at all. We’ve now twice encountered an LTE network that rivaled a home Wi-Fi source, and enjoying that so much, we burned though a bunch of data on our plan.
By the way, with Verizon at least, there’s no such thing as an unlimited hotspot plan. We are limited to 30 gigs. That sounds like a lot, but when Mrs. CC is pulling on it for 30 hours+ per week for her job, those gigs slip on by. And we’re not cranking on Netflix or YouTube either. We download Netflix episodes on public Wi-Fi for offline viewing, and well, I haven’t watched a YouTube video since I left home. Now we’re debating whether we need to get another personal hotspot, or boost the plan on our phones. None of these options are very close to free. Paying to work is hard for me to stomach.
Finding Campsites with LTE
The primary issue has been finding good campsites, in places we want to be, that have reliable LTE. In places that have poor LTE (Lander, for example), we were driving over an hour round-trip 2-3 days a week to get long days squatting outside the library. We could go inside, but we’re not getting Covid over a need for Wi-Fi. And finding good campsites requires an internet connection to research. It’s a giant, mangled, Catch 22!
Unquestionably, trying to work a remote job—especially one that requires a constant internet source—is (by far) the most difficult aspect of this journey. Everyone wants to know about bathrooms, showers, etc. Those challenges are very minor in comparison to the constant need to be chasing a signal.
My recommendation? Do a trip like this as a break from the working world. Trying to work and travel means you’ll do both ineffectively, and Mrs. CC agrees. Maybe someone can handle a job that can be done mostly offline, but there’s still only so many hours in the week to enjoy where you’ve found yourself.
(Related Post: The Fallacy of Happiness and Meaningful Work)
A New Rhythm to Life on the Road
We’ve slowly settled into a new rhythm; a rhythm of change.
No two days are the same, and a great degree of deliberate intention is required for any sort of routine. The constants include a need for water, power (sun for solar in our case), groceries in new and unfamiliar supermarkets, climbing locations (thanks all you great locals!), and exciting and stressful research for future travels.
My old life was so…well…monotonous. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way. Before February of 2020 (“BC” as someone recently said, which made me chuckle), Monday-Friday was almost always the same, only differentiated by whether or not I went to the gym after work. Friday and Sunday were always my outdoor climbing days, barring a bomb cyclone. We could set our watch to “Snickers’” vocal demands for all of her meals. We went to bed at 8:30-9:00 pm, rising at 5:00-5:30 am. Groundhog Day, over and over again.
Out here, our home exterior is always changing, every few days in some cases. We’ve traveled to Lander, Grand Tetons National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Carbella, Montana for the excellent nearby bouldering along the stunning Yellowstone River. We slept in a real bed in Bozeman, and now we’re back in the camper, perched high above Butte, Montana (also great, yet hot, bouldering).
We’ll soon move on towards Missoula, Spokane, and maybe somewhere else before we land at a month-long Airbnb stay we’ve booked for the buttery-sick fall temps of beautiful Leavenworth, Washington.
Water
Living on the road brings sharp focus to our need for water. In a house, we all take for granted the hundreds upon thousands of wasted gallons of water; the only barrier being the turning of a knob. Folks brush their teeth while the faucet runs continuously, lawns are watered for hours to maintain an image, and long, steamy showers are the norm.
Our water supply is born out of shuffling and man-handling three 5-gallon and one 7-gallon jugs around various towns and campgrounds, in and out of the back of our truck. Our camper has a 20-gallon freshwater holding tank, which we manually fill, 5 gallons at a time.
By the way, I thought that would make a fantastic country song:
No rhythm or rhyme, five gallons at a time.
(Copyright, Clipping Chains Enterprises, 2020)
When I have a river, I use that water to aide in bathing and dishes (environmentally responsible, leave no trace, etc). Otherwise, we rely on our own water sourcing for everything from drinking water to cooking, cleaning, etc. We filter water through at least one charcoal filter. We have another filter for any water from our camper holding tanks that flows through the sink.
Electricity/Power
As described in this post, our electricity needs are met by two AGM batteries, totaling 200 amp-hours (100 useable). We power the batteries with a 200-watt Renogy solar suitcase, which is fantastic for our needs. We love that we can move the panels around throughout the day to chase the sun, compared to a permanent mount on the roof. For 120 V power, we use a 1000-watt Xantrex inverter, which also works flawlessly.
With all the western sun, we’ve experienced virtually no issues at all maintaining abundant power. And it feels good. Those little panels are powering everything in our lives, except of course all of the gasoline for the truck! That’s another story.
We power two laptops, two iPads, two phones, a Bluetooth speaker, a water pump, an overhead fan, a couple of LED interior lights, our electric toothbrush, coffee grinder, and our Wi-Fi hotspot, among other needs. We use about 10-20% of our usable battery storage on any given day, which is easily topped off with our solar panels in a few hours of direct sun. I also have a couple of 12V USB ports on our Snugtop truck topper, useful for phones and smaller devices when we are hanging outside or worried about a couple of cloudy days.
Ice
This one is a pain in the ass. We have a propane-powered fridge, which likes to operate at either 28 degrees or 50 degrees. In the morning everything is partially frozen, and the afternoon, the heat of the day, brings questionable spoiling conditions (not really, but yeah…). I try and park with the fridge facing north, which helps.
So, we keep a cooler for vegetables, meat, and beer. Plus, our fridge is tiny, and we need the extra space.
We try and secure block ice whenever we can, which melts slower. Of course, the secret is out, and in popular areas, block ice is a valuable commodity. But at any rate, we are buying ice 1-2 times a week, which is an interesting new utility cost!
For what it’s worth, if you have access to a freezer (we don’t), a pro tip is to make your own block ice using a Tupperware or other storage container. See photos below.
Meeting People is Easy
That heading is actually the ironic title of an old Radiohead documentary from the 90s I believe, with a sarcastic Radiohead-esque woe-is-me vibe. I love Radiohead greatly, but you know how Thom could get in the 90s.
Well, I actually mean it. I told you how I was worried about meeting people on the road. Honestly, our social life has improved dramatically compared to the lockdown months of late March through mid-July.
Granted, because we’re staying off the “hip” climbing road trip circuit (think Ten Sleep, Maple, or really anywhere in Colorado), our new friends are more of the traditional retirement age. These folks are fascinating full-time RVers, some of whom have been living this way for a decade or more. The local climbers I’ve met, particularly in Montana, are incredibly welcoming and generous with their time and information about local climbing, culture, and life in general. Many thanks for that!
Most folks out here are very mindful of the pandemic situation. We occasionally gather in well-spaced social circles, enjoying a glass of wine and the discussions of life on the road. We talk shop: batteries, water sources, propane adapters for refilling those damn green bottles that are collecting in the back of our truck. There are also discussions of what makes a person want to do this; the need to touch the oven to know that it’s hot, so to speak. We all crave freedom and an ever-changing environment.
It’s a beautiful place out here, everywhere.
Summary and Path Forward
I think it’s fair to say that we’ve worked out many of the kinks described in this post. There are no doubt days when both of us ponder the sustainability of this endeavor, yet the constant change and experience is unparalleled in a traditional living situation.
We’re committed to this life at least until mid-October (well, after a month in a rented house in Leavenworth), at which point our next destinations are still uncertain. We are eying Bend, Oregon, or perhaps the Reno/Sierra Eastside region, down to Bishop, California. And then for the holidays and early winter, we’ll likely be eastbound for North Carolina.
At some point we’d like to use the proceeds of our (hopeful and pending) house sale to buy back into the market, but we’re taking the slow-and-steady game to not only see what happens with prices, but also to make sure we know what (and where) we really want.
After all, it’s high time we start running to something, instead of running away.
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