18 Months of Full-Time RV Life: What We Do Differently Now

When we first brought our fifth wheel home from the dealership, I couldn't even back it into our driveway.

Seriously. I tried, failed, and eventually had to ask our neighbor, who had experience moving trailers, to back it in for us.

Before we moved into the RV full-time, he took me to a church parking lot and taught me how to back it up. That little bit of practice gave me the confidence I needed, but I was still nervous when we arrived at our very first campground on March 1, 2025.

And, of course, we arrived after dark.

It was around 7:30 PM when Vanh grabbed a flashlight and stood near the power, water, and sewer connections while I slowly backed us into the site. We took our time, communicated with each other, and eventually got everything exactly where it needed to be.

That night feels like a lifetime ago.

Eighteen months later, we're still learning. Things still go wrong. Travel days still require our full attention. But so many of the things that once felt intimidating have simply become part of everyday life.

Travel Days Don't Feel Quite So Intimidating Anymore

We've now towed our home somewhere around 8,000 to 9,000 miles.

I still take travel days seriously. Before we leave, I go through my safety checks, make sure everything inside the RV is secure, verify our connections to the truck, and make sure we're as prepared as possible for the road ahead.

What has changed is what's happening in my head.

During those first few trips, I thought about nearly every worst-case scenario imaginable. What if something happened with the trailer? What if I made a mistake? What if we found ourselves in a situation I couldn't handle?

Experience doesn't make those risks disappear, but it does give you confidence.

Today, I understand our truck and fifth wheel much better. I know how they handle. I know what to watch for. I know when to slow down, when I need more space, and when something simply doesn't feel right.

Setting up and tearing down has changed too. What once felt like a giant checklist has become a routine. Vanh and I each know what needs to happen, and we work our way through it.

We still double-check everything, but we're no longer constantly asking each other, "Did you do this?" or "Did we remember that?"

If you're curious about the routine we've developed, we go into much more detail in RV Travel Day: Leaving and Arriving Without Stress.

We Learned the Campground Doesn't Have to Be the Destination

Before we started this lifestyle, one of the things we heard constantly was that campgrounds were packed and it was incredibly difficult to find somewhere to stay.

We definitely wondered if we were taking a huge gamble.

Part of the reason we purchased the Adventure membership with Thousand Trails was because it gave us an earlier reservation window. We figured anything that gave us a better chance of getting a site was worth having.

Then we actually started traveling.

Outside of Florida's snowbird season, finding campground availability has been much easier than we were led to believe.

We've also learned that we're really not that picky.

If we can safely get our fifth wheel into the campground and have 50-amp power, water, and sewer at our site, we're usually happy. We check reviews on RV Life and generally try to stay somewhere rated around 6 out of 10 or better, but even that isn't an absolute rule.

Sometimes you need somewhere for a night. Sometimes you need somewhere for a week. Sometimes the campground isn't amazing, but the location is exactly where you want to be.

Encore Holiday Travel is a great example. It isn't the most glamorous campground we've ever stayed at, but its location in the St. Pete area is fantastic. In roughly 30 minutes, we can be at some of our favorite Gulf Coast beaches, including Pass-a-Grille and Clearwater, or head toward Tampa. We also enjoy some of the Asian festivals and events throughout the area.

We've learned that the campground itself doesn't always need to be the experience.

Sometimes it just needs to be a comfortable place to park our home while we experience everything around it.

That's also one reason we've grown to appreciate a slower way of traveling. Instead of feeling like we have to rush from destination to destination, we can settle into an area and actually experience it. We talk more about that in Why Slow Travel Changed the Way We RV. [LINK: Slow Travel blog]

We Buy Less, but With More Purpose

When we first started, we bought a lot of RV stuff.

If something looked useful, we could usually find a reason why we "needed" it.

We've become much more selective.

Now we ask ourselves a simple question before buying something:

Is this actually going to make something we already do better or more efficient?

One of the simplest examples was our giant dual-basket air fryer.

It was awesome. We could cook burgers on one side and french fries on the other at the same time.

It was also huge.

In an RV kitchen, counter space matters. Eventually, we realized that having two air fryer baskets wasn't worth giving up that much of our kitchen. We replaced it with a smaller single air fryer that takes up less space and actually performs better for us. The old one went to family.

That's another rule we've started following. If something new replaces something we already own, the old version needs to go.

We don't need to carry two versions of the same thing around the country.

That mindset is also a big part of why we've become selective about what we recommend in our Shop RV Gear section. We don't want to recommend something simply because it's an RV product. We want the things we share to actually solve a problem or make this lifestyle easier.

We've Learned How Our Home Works

There is a big difference between researching RV maintenance and actually maintaining an RV.

Before we started traveling, I did a lot of research. But experience teaches you things that a YouTube video or article simply can't.

Electrical was one of the areas I needed to understand better. Since then, we've upgraded to LiFePO4 batteries, updated parts of our electrical system to properly support them, and I've become much more comfortable understanding what's happening inside our breaker panel and power system.

Over time, we've made quite a few changes to better fit the way we actually live and travel. Some have been small and others have made a noticeable difference in everyday RV life. We share several of those in Our Favorite RV Upgrades.

The same is true with regular maintenance.

But maybe the biggest thing we've learned is simply our rig.

You learn what sounds normal. You learn how things behave. You start recognizing when something feels different. Just like any home, the longer you live in it, the better you understand it.

And when something does go wrong, you learn not to immediately assume the worst.

At our third campground, we had everything packed and ready for travel day when we discovered that our bedroom slide wouldn't come in.

The motors had gotten out of sync.

For a moment, we both panicked. Our home was packed, we needed to leave, and one of our slides wouldn't move.

Then we called Good Sam's technical support. They explained what was probably happening, helped us locate the reset module in the basement near our wet bay, and walked us through the process.

A short time later, the slide was back in and we were able to continue our travel day.

Experiences like that teach you something important.

A problem doesn't automatically mean a disaster. Sometimes you just need to slow down, learn what's happening, and figure out the next step.

We've Become a Better Team

Vanh and I had to learn how to do all of this together.

During those first few months, one of the challenges was simply learning the terminology. I had researched a lot of the technical side before we started, so sometimes I knew exactly what I meant but didn't always explain it very well.

Over time, that changed.

Now we both understand the routine.

Before travel day, we each know what we're responsible for. When we arrive, we know what needs to happen to get everything set up.

We used to check each other's work constantly.

Now it's more of a quick final glance.

Living together in a relatively small space while also traveling, working, planning, and moving our entire home has taught us quite a bit about RV life as a couple.

That doesn't mean we never get frustrated with each other. We're still two people trying to move an entire house down the highway. 😂

But we've found a rhythm that works for us.

And somewhere along the way, all of this stopped feeling like something unusual we were trying to figure out.

We stopped thinking about how to make an RV feel like home.

It simply became home.

We've Learned That Plans Will Change

One thing RV life hasn't eliminated is real life.

Weather happens.

Things break.

Vehicles have problems.

People get hurt.

Over Fourth of July, we spent a couple of weeks in Panama City Beach and had a fantastic time. On July 3, I pulled a beach wagon up a steep sandy hill and injured my right knee.

At first, I didn't realize how bad it was.

By July 5, my knee had swollen to nearly twice the size of my left knee, and bending it enough to sit comfortably in a vehicle was incredibly difficult.

For about five days of our 14-day stay, exploring wasn't really an option. I was taking pain medication, icing my knee, and staying home.

We had plans to see more of Panama City and explore some of the surrounding areas.

Those plans didn't happen.

And that's okay.

We were fortunate enough to enjoy the Fourth of July before the injury really caught up with me, and the places we missed aren't going anywhere.

Hopefully, the next time we visit, I'll leave the beach wagon at the bottom of the sandy hill. 😂

RV life has taught us that plans are important, but flexibility matters just as much.

Sometimes the weather changes. Sometimes something breaks. Sometimes life simply tells you that today isn't going to happen the way you expected.

You adjust and keep going.

The Reason We Started Hasn't Changed

After 18 months, the biggest things we loved about this lifestyle in the beginning are still the things we love today.

Freedom. Exploring. The adventure.

Freedom, to me, means being able to go where you want and experience the things you want to experience with as few compromises as possible.

This lifestyle gets us about as close to that definition as we can imagine.

We can relocate our home to a completely different part of the country, open the door, and start discovering a new town or city. We can try the local restaurants, meet people we otherwise never would have met, explore places we've never seen, and then come home at the end of the day to our own bed, our dogs, and everything familiar to us.

And our everyday life is still exactly that. Everyday life.

We both work remotely. We walk Leo and Bella. We take walks together. We make dinner. We watch our favorite shows and movies. Amazon still finds us, although sometimes the package ends up at our campsite and sometimes we have to pick it up at the campground office.

Laundry requires a little more effort now since we can't simply walk down the hallway to a washer and dryer, but even that has become part of the routine.

It's normal life.

Our home just happens to move every few weeks.

And yes, knowing everything we know today, we would absolutely choose this lifestyle again.

There are inconveniences. There are repairs. There are travel days that aren't fun. There are times when the weather doesn't cooperate or your plans get completely thrown out the window.

But experiences are part of living.

Eighteen months into full-time RV life, the biggest thing we've realized is that life is amazing when you open yourself completely to this lifestyle.

The cities and towns you'll discover. The people you'll meet. The places you'll explore. The memories you'll make along the way.

For us, this lifestyle is a reminder to keep living, exploring, and experiencing new things instead of becoming comfortable enough to simply let the days pass by.

Life is a gift.

And we're going to keep seeing where the road takes us.

Travel. Explore. Inspire.

Author’s Note

This blog is simply a reflection of what full-time RV life has looked like for us after 18 months on the road. We certainly do not have everything figured out, and we are still learning as we go.

What works for us may not work for everyone, and that is part of what makes this lifestyle so unique. Every RVer has different priorities, routines, comfort levels, and reasons for choosing this life.

For us, the biggest change has been confidence. Things that once felt intimidating have slowly become normal. We have learned to trust our experience, adapt when plans change, and enjoy the places and people we discover along the way.

We would make this choice all over again.

And we are excited to see what the next 18 months bring.