So we’ve finally gotten our affairs in order to allow us to begin to live our Location Independent Lifestyle. It’s been several years in the planning, only because we weren’t ready mentally to make the shift. Getting past that and taking the action steps necessary to be able to go where we want, when we want, and still handle all of our personal and business affairs is very freeing. The question is…why would we ever want to live somewhere else during the year. I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with this.
Yeah, that’s definitely a part of it… 😉
So we’re off on our first extended jaunt from Minnesota in our new camper that we just purchased…in the middle of winter. No test runs for us, we’re just hitting the road and planning on everything working out. Keeping in mind that this is an extended departure, where we will still be working from the road, we packed ALOT of stuff. We learned relatively early on that we overpacked on some items, and missed some other items. Here are SOME of the piles of items we are taking with us.
Yes, that last picture includes most of my office set up…printer, paper, postcards, envelopes, etc… I came up short in having everything fully automated for the marketing of my businesses prior to our departure, so I’m having take all of that along to make sure we continue to gain business while I’m away. I won’t be bringing all of that next time though. The key to pulling this off is for all of your affairs to be able to run in an automated or systematized manner, with as little of your input needed. There’s definite improvement that we can make in this regard, but we’re done with delaying. It’s time to go.
Hitting the road…or maybe not.
We got all packed up in the 10 degrees below weather, and it somehow managed to take us far longer than I would have expected given that I thought we were pretty well organized to leave. OK, so it didn’t help that we got 45 minutes down the road when we realized we had forgotten something that we really needed. So we turned around and headed back. That was actually a fortuitous turn of events since we got back to our house and found a few other things that had somehow gotten missed that would be very handy for the road. Hitting the road…Take 2.
Our destination for the night, several states away, is…
There’s no need to actually find a full campground and pay for all the hookups if your only intention is to stay overnight and get some sleep before hitting the road again in the morning. If you’re going to be doing alot of driving about on your travels you might choose to utilize the website that we signed up for, that I’m sharing in my next post, that lists free or cheap places to stay overnight while you’re on the road. It’s also a great resource to help you stay in the good graces with the places you stay, by sharing the commonly accepted practices and courtesies related to your time there.
Day 2…it’s still cold. 
OK, it’s not that bad…relatively. Although we did wake up and we were colder than we thought we should be. Maybe the camper just isn’t that well insulated. All I know is that we slept fully clothed under all the blankets we had and it was chilly. It was much warmer when we went to bed. More on that later…
Now to hit the road. We’re making good time, even with the delays yesterday, and we have a long ways to go today. Many hours of driving ahead. Thankfully we have our schedules figured out. Kelly is an early riser, and I’m a night owl. So Kelly drives in the morning and I drive in the evening. It’s working out well so far. Day 2 was pretty uneventful. Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and stopping for the night in New Mexico. It’s definitely starting to get warmer. One of these days we’re actually going to be able to unwinterize our camper so we can use it the way we ultimately intend to. We pull in to a Camper World near Albuquerque for the night. We start to get settled but…
The heat isn’t working!!!
Yep, we can’t get the heat to kick on. It’s in the 20s and we can’t figure out the heat. Remember the feeling from this morning that we were colder than we thought we should be? Yeah, the heat stopped last night and we didn’t think to figure out if there was something wrong with it. Maybe, if we had purchased the camper more than 2 weeks before a cross country jaunt we would have taken the time to figure it all out before we left. Seriously, this blows. So we pretty much spent the night like this.
OK, so it wasn’t quite like this. Nobody was smiling. There was no beer involved. Just the two of us spooning the dog to all keep warm, fully clothed and jacketed, using all of our covers, and waking up early in the morning because we couldn’t sleep anymore. Blech… When I envisioned our Location Independent Lifestyle bringing Kelly and I even closer together I didn’t envision having it happen literally just to stay warm. Oh well, onward we go.
Vegas Bound Baby!!!
After an early stop to get breakfast and thaw out we continued our Westward trek through New Mexico, Arizona, and into Las Vegas, Nevada. I will say, if you haven’t taken a drive through the American Southwest you are truly missing out. Here are just a few of the hundreds of photos that we could have taken as we drove this day.
So after many interesting twists and turns we made it to…Vegas!!! Daisy seems much happier now. She can now go out and have everyone else pet her instead of just her two main humans.
Thanks For Reading My First Blog Post
Now why am I doing this? I want to share with others some of our own experiences and to show them that they too can get out of the rat race, the grind of the 9 to 5 for 40 years lifestyle. My plan is to post a couple of times a week. Once will be a telling of our story. Once will be the sharing of resources, tips, and tricks of living this type of a lifestyle or the sharing of ways to start to pry yourself out of the lifestyle that society says you are supposed to live. If you’re not living the vision for your life that you want to live then you are living the vision for your life that someone else has, and oftentimes that vision for your life sucks for you. I want to help you out of that, if that’s what you want.
Please read my page What’s This All About to learn a little more about what I’m trying to do here.
Also, I’m going to be spending alot of time in my Facebook Group trying to help people with this in a relatively specific nature. Although I’ll answer some questions in the comments here, I really want the discussions to happen in the Facebook Group. Please sign up for that here and engage in the conversations and start to change your life.
If you want to do some of what we’re doing, you can do it. Please join our Location Independent Living community and let us help you through the journey.
February 1, 2016 at 9:29 pm
Yah! Good for you and Kelly, so glad you did it! Love your pix of the Southwest scenery. Note to self, you can get a hotel for the night when you are that cold!
February 7, 2016 at 10:20 am
Julie, you have a point. We pulled in and stopped at about Midnight. Just felt like crashing at that point though.
February 2, 2016 at 6:51 am
Good Job!!!! You are doing what I want to do! Road trip in an RV!
tell me again why I live here?
I’ll be here helping in the blizzard we are supposed to get…
February 7, 2016 at 10:22 am
Alissa, we can help you to get to that point. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why you live where you do… 😉
February 2, 2016 at 11:56 am
Great to see you living the dream!
February 7, 2016 at 10:23 am
Thanks Chris. It’s been a great adventure so far.
February 2, 2016 at 12:28 pm
Great job on your first blog post!
Glad you made it safely to Vegas (hopefully it’s a little bit warmer there)!
I can’t wait to read all about your adventures.
February 7, 2016 at 10:24 am
Thanks Steph. Vegas was much warmer. We’re having lots of fun.
February 2, 2016 at 6:03 pm
Glad you’re heading into warmer temps! Looking forward to following the adventure…
February 7, 2016 at 10:25 am
Christina, it’s so much nicer than the cold and snow back home.
February 2, 2016 at 6:45 pm
Nice stuff. I liked that you just jumped in on RV traveling. On the job training, my favorite.
Not familiar with Face book group. Is that through Face page?
Excited to hear more!
February 7, 2016 at 10:28 am
Jeremy, we’ve definitely been learning alot. You’ll have to get on that book Face page thing one of these days. Or maybe save some time by staying off of it. 😉
February 3, 2016 at 7:42 am
Hey guys! Shoulda stopped in Santa Fe
did you get the heater fixed? Great job with the site
February 7, 2016 at 10:30 am
Doug, we got the heater situation all figured out. We thought about coming out your way, but we wound up in kind of a time crunch getting to Vegas, so we didn’t stop to sight see at all on the way out.
February 3, 2016 at 10:11 am
I love it!!
Congratulations!
February 7, 2016 at 10:31 am
Mayte, thanks. It’s alot of fun. You should give it a try.
February 3, 2016 at 10:23 am
Congrats, that is awesome news!
Also thank you for the invaluable knowledge and helping me dodge a bullet on a purchase..
February 7, 2016 at 10:32 am
Scott, no problem on helping you out with the property. I love sharing with others what I’ve learned to help them out. Best of luck finding something that will work better for you.
February 3, 2016 at 10:24 am
Sounds like lots of fun!
February 7, 2016 at 10:33 am
Thanks Paul. We’re having a blast.
February 3, 2016 at 1:37 pm
Good for you! Looking forward to reading more about your adventures!
February 7, 2016 at 10:35 am
David, thanks. I’m having a god time sharing things that might help others to be able to do some of what we’re doing.
February 10, 2016 at 11:33 am
Awesome stuff Glenn!!!
February 21, 2016 at 4:24 pm
Thanks Shaun. I appreciate all the support in getting to where we are, and heading to where we are going.
February 21, 2016 at 4:03 pm
WOW! That’s terrific!
I didn’t know that people could take vacations from January to April 15!
February 21, 2016 at 4:26 pm
Joe, I think our ability to travel has something to do with not being anywhere near the tax field. 😉 Although, if you chose to, you could work on restructuring things to allow for that to happen for you also…