Editor’s Note: Back in May, just outside the South Rim entrance to the Grand Canyon on Highway 64 enroute to Flagstaff, I drove behind an 1989 Toyota Dolphin motorhome advertising the website thejourneywithn.com. It turned out to the be the travelog of Gregg and Anna Davis, a recently-married Mississippi couple on a cross-county journey to some of America’s greatest wilderness destinations, alongside their three dogs. After quitting the 9-to-5 grind in the finance industry, they sold all their belongings and moved out of a big house, choosing life on the road in their RV — affectionately named Nancy Extended stays include the beaches of Florida in the winter, Austin, Texas, Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, Moab, Utah, and then a swing through Arizona, California, and up to Oregon, where they’re chillin’ in the beautiful coastal parks on US 101.
Gregg and Anna are very much living the dream. A few weeks ago I e-mailed them to ask them about their wanderlust and how they decided to make such a life-changing journey. Here’s a little step-by-step guide they compiled for BroBible readers with similar itchy feet.
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Anna: The biggest step is the first step! Deciding to make the big move is the hardest part. There is no rational time to make the decision. Moving into an RV, quitting our jobs, and trusting that we would be able to fly or life would catch us when we jumped wasn’t easy, but it was worth it!
Gregg and I went to lunch one September afternoon in 2016. Gregg had been working in the financial industry for four years and had been running low on energy and passion, so I suggested we make the plunge and move into the RV to give him a break from the everyday work day grind. We couldn’t come up with a reason why we shouldn’t go for it, so we did. We left our lunch date looking at each other with apprehension wondering what we had just decided to do, but excited to begin planning.
Gregg has had this dream of living in an RV since 2011. Only this was the year we made real and we have a lot to share.
After deciding to make the jump comes buying an RV. We began by looking on local craigslist’s sites, eBay, and local for sale ads, etc. to get an idea of how much we were willing to spend. After searching with no direction in sight, we decided to go test drive a few rigs to see what size, length, and brand to get an idea of what we would want. Keep in mind we have three dogs so we needed enough space for all five of us to live comfortably. So as we would travel to near by cities, we would test drive RVs. Realizing thirty feet was too big for us, we began to look for smaller RVs.
Here are a few things to think about when looking for your perfect home one wheels:
Where will I be driving?
Will I be driving more on interstates and highways or local roads and streets
Will I be traveling up mountains and down dirt roads with wash outs and big holes on dirt roads deep in nature?
Will I want to travel into big busy cities?
Will I need to have somewhere to hook up for power and electricity or will I spend most of my time boon docking (camping without electrical hookup)?
How much will I be traveling and how much gas does the RV use?
What kind of engine do I need according to how you answered number 3.
Once you have answered these questions, you will have a good idea of what kind of rig you will want to buy. We knew we wanted to spend as little money as possible on hooking up to shore power meaning we would be boon docking most of our time on the road. We also knew we would be spending a lot of time in nature driving many terrains, but also in cities and interstates which means we needed a V6 engine. But the most important deciding factor for us was that we wanted something small, lightweight, and easy to drive since we had no experience driving an RV or anything close to an RV before. That led our search to Toyota Motorhomes. We then purchased Nancy, which is 1989 Toyota Dolphin motorhome and she is the perfect mix of everything we need in an RV.
Gregg: Once we had purchased an RV and zeroed in on a departure date, now the fun part began. We had a little over three months to downsize from an 1,800 square foot home into our 120 square foot Nancy. We wasted no time at all and immediately went through everything we owned with the mentality of “if we can live without it, get rid of it”. We quickly had an entire room in our home, including the furniture, dedicated to things that had to go. We started listing items on craigslist, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, etc. We told friends and family to come through and take anything they wanted. The hardest thing for me personally to let go of were all of my plants which occupied an entire greenhouse and then some. After we sold a good bit of our stuff online, we organized a good old fashioned garage sale. This turned out to be a blast! Anna and I, always up for a good time, made mimosas and treated the whole event like one big party. I can’t express how liberating it was for us to be able to downsize so drastically. We always knew we wouldn’t miss the majority of our possessions if we no longer had them, but now we were really starting to believe it. We stored the few pieces of furniture, art, books, clothes, kitchen ware and other various items we didn’t want to get rid in the watchful eye of friends and family and finally found ourselves in an empty house.
During the same time as we were downsizing our possessions, we were also putting a lot of work into ole Nancy. Due to the fact that she is no spring chicken, a few updates were required. Nancy and I happen to be the exact same age, so the bond was immediate. I enjoyed learning by trial and error the inner workings of what it means to own an RV through her rehabilitation. Anna has the ability like no other to turn a space into a home. Before long she had Nancy feeling like the cozy space I could have only imagined. An entire breakdown of this process can be found on our blog, thejourneywithn.com.
We and the 3 dogs moved out of our house in the beginning of January 2017 and haven’t looked back since. We are so thankful for friends and family who supported us in so many ways throughout this change in life’s direction. Without them it would not have gone so smooth. I for one continued to be amazed by how giving, loving and open armed the people we encounter in life are. If you are contemplating moving into an rv full time or any big life decision that you feel led towards, we are here to tell you to go for it. Trust and everything will be fine. Enjoy the Journey.
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