United States
An RV Trip around the US with Infant
We went on a 3 and a half month RV trip with our 7 month old around the US and it was a great experience
While most people who buy an RV do a test trip or a “shake down” before they head out on a real adventure, our family does nothing in half measures. Three days after buying our RV we set off on a three and a half month RV trip with our infant, travelling around the whole continental United States. We created a business called Horizon Seekers to document our foray into van life and create content on our adventures, and decided it would either be a great lesson or a lesson learnt.
We rented an RV for 10 days from Outdoorsy to see if the lifestyle was for us, doing a roundtrip from Orlando to Dallas and then we plunged straight in. We had canned foods packed under the dinette, tote boxes with four months of clothes for our growing infant, and a capsule wardrobe of summer and winter clothes for ourselves as we travelled through different climates.
Although we had some difficulties like our slide out breaking; getting locked out of the RV with 10 miles of gas left in our truck; and boondocking in rest stops in the middle of a heat dome, we also made some wonderful memories as a family. We used a combination of our Harvest Host subscription (a collection of campsites such as small businesses, farms, wineries, churches and private residences); Thousand Trails campsites as we had a partly free membership; and boondocked at highway rest stops and cracker barrel carparks which allow RVs to park for one night for free.
The costs of travelling around in an RV are mainly related to gas and campsites. While we were able to save on campsite costs with our memberships and boondocking, the cost of gas resulted in us dipping into our savings to pay for the lifestyle. Additionally, while at home we cooked in bulk to meal prep and freeze food, on the road we bought smaller quantities of groceries which was more expensive. There was also the novelty of buying fresh (but expensive) local produce – after all who could pass up the allure of buying fresh eggs and bread from the farm you’re spending the night at?
Our first road trip was foretelling of the connections we would make along the way when our lovely Harvest hosts in Dallas allowed us to use their water and dump our tanks for free, and sat with our son in the rocking chair on their front porch watching the cardinals. On the way back home we stumbled upon the Waco National Mammoth Monument, visiting the largest mammoth herd found in situ, a live archaeological dig. These experiences were only followed by more exciting adventures and real human connections as we began our big trip around the United States.
I think fondly not just of the sights we saw like the painted dessert in Arizona and the Catskills in New York, but the people we met along the way. One night we stayed at Vino Veritas in Cleveland Ohio, once a school but now a winery, hobby farm and RV stop. The owner’s dogs joined us for breakfast at the picnic tables and at night we dodged a family of skunks. In Idaho we stopped at a local library, and our son unfortunately bit a librarian who was carrying him. She shrugged that she had run story-times for three generations of families and was used to her tiny clients biting her. In Portland, our host, an ex-Peace Corp with two long grey pigtails would carry our son down to the river and show him the deer, clad in a tie dye print skirt from his days in Vietnam.
In every small corner of the world, there was something tying us together to the people we met, through shared pasts, parenthood, a love of travel, or simply a desire for connection on this journey. Living in an RV for three and a half months, and travelling across the United States in it, has taught us so much about living simply, making do with less, and the value of human connection.