RV NEWBIE: Lessons Learned, RVing With a Dog, and Other Questions

Where are they? They're like all the way over in front of the rig across the street. That's because they hit my van and they run. They ran 20 feet? Yes. You're not very good criminals. Hey guys, earlier this week we put out a call for questions and we were going to answer them on Friday's video. Now, I had my wording just a little off because I'm still getting used to this whole recording and then editing and posting it the next day thing. So, today's Friday, and we're recording this episode on Friday, not releasing it on Friday. So, sorry about that, but we're going to answer your questions right now. Our first question comes from our number one favorite Uber patron, Dan Glass. He asks, are there any lessons you've learned after a year on the road, and is there anything you would have done differently? So, we'll do this one thing at a time. No, we did everything perfectly. We have learned nothing. We made the decision to go bigger in the length of our RV, and I was a little worried about that when we began. Because we had initially thought we would look for, you know, something around 30 feet long, and so we could get in everywhere we wanted to, and over hundreds of going in hundreds of RVs, we were just like, we're not finding what we want to live. Yeah, yeah, we had heard a lot, and we still hear a lot of people online asking about what size rig should I get? A lot of people say like 30 is the magic number if you want to get into the national parks and a lot of state parks. They're not very big, and a lot of them cap out at 30 feet, but if you have an area that popular, we have had no trouble finding RV campgrounds nearby. So, we initially were looking at 30 feet or less, and we ended up with a 37 foot rig. We have had very little trouble with it. I mean, really the only trouble we've had is getting into places not built for RVs. So, parking lots, some friends' driveways, down some older streets and stuff. That Google told us to drive down. Yeah, Google likes to cut corners. But that's really, yeah, it's really it. I mean, we've, we don't regret going bigger at all, like not at all. Like we, when we were, we had found some rigs that were around 30 feet. We were like, okay, we could do this, but if we go bigger, we'll be comfortable a hundred percent of the time and not making compromises to get into a small handful of places. Like this campground we're in right now is the hundred and fourth place we've set up camp in the last like ten and a half months. So, if we had sacrificed and gone that much smaller, we would not have been very comfortable. I think one other thing that I was thinking of, you guys know that we're members of Thousand Trails now, and that we recently upgraded to like a full membership package, not a zone pass. You're drifting into question number two. Oh my goodness. I think we would have done differently, but yeah. Oh, okay. So, something we would have done differently is maybe, had we known more about Thousand Trails, we would have signed up for earlier. Yeah. Even right out of the gate, because we could have stayed right outside our neighborhood for a month before we left. Being down in Florida, we wouldn't have had to spend extra money on different campgrounds. We could have stayed at the Thousand Trails that were around there. However, Florida State Parks are some of the best we've ever stayed in. And city parks. Yeah. Yeah, so if we had Thousand Trails, we would not have gone to those parks. Right. But, we also wouldn't have been spending money on campgrounds, other than the cost of the zone pass. But, also in hindsight, once we got to Arizona and some of the places in Texas, their age qualified, and they they don't like it when the 30-somethings roll up with their three children. Anything else we would have done differently? Truck. You can talk about the truck. So, if you guys have been watching us for a while, you know that we are on truck number two. The first truck we got was a 2004 F-250. It was with that doomed 6-liter diesel engine. Bruce. His name is Bruce. The truck pulled great. I mean, that engine was fantastic. It towed this trailer no problem whatsoever, until it started overheating. And that's what that engine does. So, I think what I might have done differently is instead of trying to find an older truck with a lower monthly payment, we would have just gotten a truck like we have now. Like, the payments are definitely higher. The insurance is a little bit higher. But, we would have had peace of mind because once that truck started having a couple issues, they all kind of snowballed. And because we had to put that truck in the shop, we weren't able to go see Yosemite. We had to spend more time than we wanted to kind of in Central California. Though, we did get to go into San Francisco. Yeah. With a rental car. So, that worked out. Yeah, that worked out just fine. But, there were two other times that we had to have the truck towed away from the campground, and that just kind of messed with plans. And that kind of thing sucks, but that's life. You know, this is our house, and that's what moves our house. So, that's when those things break. That's just what we have to deal with. We don't have any other options. Okay. So, our next question is kind of a broad question, but we'll see how we do. This is from Lachelle from YouTube. She asked, what is it like living in an RV? For us, really, it's a lot like living in the house we were in. Because, we had a big, almost 3,000 square foot, single-family home with half an acre of yard and a fence. And, it was beautiful. All of that. And, we spent 95% of our time in the living room slash kitchen, and we only went upstairs to go to bed. And, we're currently in the living room slash kitchen, and we just leave here to go to bed. Right. I think that we had very little adjustment. Yeah. And, part of that is because of the rig we chose. You know, if we had chosen a smaller one where we had to make compromises on kitchen space, and sleep space, and storage, and all that, it might be a different story. But, as it is, we've been very comfortable with it. Next question is from Mara on YouTube. What are some tips for RVing with a dog? Do you ever feel hindered while traveling with him? If you watch the channel, we've talked about Vector, our dog, numerous times. He is not like normal dogs. No, he's very low-maintenance. He's super low-maintenance. He's super chill. He's quiet. He gets along well with the kids. Gets along well with other dogs. Yeah, so... Doesn't try to run when the door opens. Yeah, he's like the perfect RV dog. Right. He doesn't shed. I mean, he doesn't shed. He's a poodle mix, so there's no shedding. So, we're coming at this as not typical dog owners, I think, because we have such... we have such a great dog. Yeah. We do leave Vector in the rig when we go out and do things. Yeah, just like we did in the house. He would be home all day while we were at work. Sleeps on our bed. Right. But we do close all the blinds, and we make sure that he can't really see out, because if he can see out, he's more interested in what's going on outside, and he might get more anxiety about what's going on. I mean, he can hear when we pull up, and we've also talked about how we use a camera system. Blink is the system that we use, but that monitors the temperature in the rig. So, if it gets too hot or too cold, we can get an alert and know that we need to head back immediately. Yeah, we'll get an alert if it loses power, and then we know we need to get home because something's happened. Really, the biggest hindrance is the amount of time we can spend out. So, like, when we were at Yellowstone, we very easily could have left the rig at, you know, six in the morning and not gotten back until midnight, but we can't do that with him. Like, he can go about eight hours. We try to keep it around six. And he's perfectly fine like that. Like, you know, like she alluded to earlier, when we were in the house, we would be, we'd all be gone by seven-thirty or eight, would be back around six o'clock. So, that's what he's used to. He's used to ten hours in a house. He's got water. He's got a water supply. He eats in the morning, and he eats at night. He has plenty of soft places to lay. Yes, he does. You know, it's really like having a dog in a house. Now, if you had a dog that was more high-strung and liked to bark at things and needed more attention or needed more space, totally different story, but for our dog. Yeah, it might be a real hindrance. You might not be able to go anywhere without your dog. Okay, so the the last question that we have for this evening. What do you do for jobs and any suggestions or schooling needed for whatever it is we do? We don't have jobs right now. We, when we launched into this, we did that by selling the two houses that we have. We had our first house that we bought right after we got married, and then another house we moved into, a larger house, that we moved into a couple years later, and the money we got out of the sales we've been living off of, and we've been working on this YouTube channel, on Patreon, on the blog, and you know, some ways to get revenue that way. I also am a graphic designer. I have been for 20 plus years now, and I do contract jobs every once in a while. Aaron's gonna do some substitute teaching while we're here in Williamsburg, and then also when we're down in Florida. So we're doing various things right now, but we are really focusing on building this community, and we are making money off of YouTube ad revenue. It's certainly not a lot until you get a lot bigger. Right, but thanks for watching. Yes. So we're focusing on building this channel, and I think we're putting most of our energy into building our Patreon community, and if you don't know what Patreon is, it's a way for viewers like you to support creators like us. Directly support us. Directly support us. So if you go to patreon.com slash five to go like you hear us say every week, or you see down there in the description, you can go there, and you can pledge as little as four dollars a month to go towards us making these videos. It's kind of like a tip jar. It's kind of like a subscription service in the sense that you do get extra things, you do get extra content, you do get access to more things if you join our family, or you can just watch these videos, watch the ads all the way through, maybe click on a couple of them, and we'll get ad revenue, and that also supports us. And also down in the links below, you'll see links to an Amazon storefront. You'll see links to products. You don't have to buy any of those products, but by clicking on those links and then buying your normal stuff on Amazon, we also get some revenue out of that. So there are ways to support us for free, which watching YouTube, going to Amazon links, or there are ways to support us directly, which is joining us on Patreon. Those are ways that we're trying to build up this community. We're so surprised at how welcoming YouTube has been to us, you know, and you know, we're just showing our lives and what we do, and we're so thankful that you decided to watch. Thank you. That kind of wraps up the questions that we received. One other thing that we had y'all participating in this week was a poll. We had a poll out there to help us select a themed day every week. You know, we're posting seven videos a week, so we came up with five different themed days. So the winner of our poll was five on Friday, which means every Friday we're going to put together a top five style list. So that could be anything from like our top five instant pot recipes, to the worst five campgrounds we've been to, to the top five places we like to go without children, to five things we're watching on Netflix right now. You know, it really could be all over the place. And I'm actually kind of excited that this one got picked because it's very open-ended. Yeah, so we will do that one every Friday. So if you have ideas for top five lists or bottom five, middle five, side five, whatever, if you have ideas for lists of five things, let us know and we'll see if we can come up with things for Friday episodes. The other four are Monday Memories, Tool Talk Tuesday, Wellness Wednesday, and Thursday Thoughts. We'll probably do every once in a while. Yeah, not weekly. Like Wellness Wednesday, we are gonna try and start losing weight. So we might, you know, do an episode about that, you know, maybe once a month or something like that. So these other ones will pop up because they all got voted for, but it was five on Friday that won. So we're gonna go ahead and start that this coming Friday. So I don't know what the first top five is gonna be, but it's gonna be exciting. I think that's it for the evening. So we're gonna go ahead and close it out. We will see you guys tomorrow right here at 2 o'clock Eastern. Thank you guys for watching. Again, you're watching this supports us. Going down to Amazon links, that supports us. Going to Patreon supports us directly and you get to join our community. So hit us up at five2go.com, patreon.com slash five2go. Like, subscribe, comment, all that fun stuff. We'll see you guys tomorrow.