We can’t claim to be full-time RV living people, as we will eventually go home to hot endless showers and excessive numbers of socks, and more pillows than any one person should have. Right now it seems like our daily routine will always be calling out our life numbers first thing in the AM. Nearly like a role call we give the status and percentages in order….
12.3, 24, 21, 14, 74 (Battery, then in % full the Fresh Water, Grey Tank, Black Tank, and Propane)

But, we will easily transition back to a life where we aren’t counting gallons or watts or praying for sun so we can charge the computer without a generator running. We are still in vacation mode as far as living on the road goes.

Some of you might be finding the endless gorgeous scenic photos boring. Perhaps you’d like a dose of reality. Here it is.

We could sweep 4 times a day.. we probably should. We generally only do it once per day, and really go after it with the swiffers (dry then wet) about once a week. We keep a hand broom at the door and are frequently swishing stuff out of the door… Between the dog hair, sand, dust and cottonwood seed.. we never run out of things to sweep up. We have a small dog. He makes a big mess. This is daily life.

At home you might sniff the shirt you wore yesterday to see if it goes into the laundry bin. It’s amazing how many things can go one more day if you just hit them with the Heavy Duty Fabreeze. We worry that we are nose blind, so we frequently are asking the other to sniff this, that or, the other. No one wants to sniff “the other”.

Each time that you cook in the kitchen, you have to take 2 things out to get to the one thing that you want. And when you go to put them back, they don’t always fit.

Remember if you are reaching behind the drawer to get something that has been pushed off the back side that you need to pull your arm out the same way you put it in. Jim can’t hear you outside if you’re yelling at him through your laughter stuck with your whole arm behind the drawer.

Yes..that incident left a mark.

On that point.. every other aspect of daily life also leaves a mark. The rig is small.. we are not.. the dog is generally between your feet to see what you’re doing… and there are SO MANY BRUISES. Never occurred to me I could cut a finger nearly every day. Those cabinets behind him in the above picture… Jim bonks his head on one EVERY SINGLE DAY. Sometimes twice for good measure. I think a pool noodle securely fastened on the corner might be in our best interest. TBI is no joke.

Most everything ends up being a bit “spring loaded” in here. We overpacked.. we have some things we wish we’d left home… and things MOVE when you are driving. Every time you open a cabinet you get your hand ready for whatever might fall out on you.

It seems that to do one thing, you must always do another. To shower, you have to relocate the recycling bag, and maybe a dog kennel. To go to bed you pull down the bed and unpack the pillows from their zipper compression bag.. to get to have breakfast you have to make the bed and seal up the pillows again. (It’s always light when we go to bed, so that helps… so do our light blocking sleep masks.)

We have to do dishes all the time, because there is no counter space or room to even make coffee in the morning if you didn’t tackle the mess from dinner last night. Turns out neither of us actually likes to wash dishes. This is a low point of our day.

I think it might be a bit better if we turned on the water heater more often, but we have yet to test the theory. The fridge and hot water run on propane.. the salmon in the freezer relies on that propane to stay frozen. We DO NOT RISK THE FISH.

This reasoning is not sound though… as each day we push the LPG button and see that we have plenty of propane available.. and when we do not.. we go to a station and some guy with an awesome story will fill it for us.

So this leads us to the art of motorhome maintenance.

There are resources here, but we have to monitor them and then maintain. There is water easily accessible in the rig through the sinks, shower and commode.. that water has to get to the tank somehow. When we are at a spot with “potable” water.. we get out a clear glass and run it through a filter on our hose and taste test it. Some of it is REALLY gross. Often we find water that is shockingly good though.

The water goes down the drains.. that has to get out when the tanks are full or nearing full.. then we find a “dump station”. As the name implies.. they are most always lovely. I’ll spare you the details.. but know this… there are ALWAYS rubber gloves involved. I bought the biodegradable ones… in a 100 pack.

It’s a rarity that we will pay to plug all our stuffs in at a full-service RV park. Most of the time it’s just us parked and being all self-sufficient. Our little van was literally designed to do this.

This means that we are now also our own power station. We can get the juice for our house batteries through driving down the road, the sun and by the little propane generator that rumbles and shakes the rig when you fire it up.

1,000 watt invertor meant nothing to me, but now it means that you run the generator if you want to use the convection/microwave oven or if it’s raining and you need to charge your laptop. We’d also use it for the A/C.. if we ever used the A/C. While Alaska is burning and Anchorage has been breaking heat records all month, we have been very comfortble out near the ocean. I’m wearing a cardigan as I type this.

Very nearly everything you actually NEED can be done off of the batteries, but you don’t leave things plugged in, and you certainly don’t run things unnecessarily .

Turns out that internet must be a neccessity for us… we have the wi-fi extender on ALL the time.

This got really long for a boring day in the life of. Let’s get back to some amazing scenic landscape photos!!

Moose in the back yard.

Or a moose…