Re: Full Time Soon
skirk55,
How about a little different viewpoint? We sold our house and drove off in the motorhome on April 14, 2000 just to see if we would like this life. After 8 1/2 years we are still having the most wonderful time in our lives! We are work-campers, but we do the resident volunteer positions and have only been paid three times out of 24 different positions. Although we are not working for pay, we have averaged about $1300/year for RV sites over the past five years so it does have a significant impact on our financial condition. In addition to the site and utilities, we usually also have free use of laundry equipment and frequently other amenities. At times we have also been supplied with propane.
Like most people who have never been fulltimers, those trying to help thus far really don't grasp what this lifestyle really is, and we didn't either until we got into it. We do not go camping, this is our home. But unlike the other posts, if the lawn needs to be mowed, or watered and we don't wish to do so, we can drive to a place that doesn't need work. We have spent summers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and all of the way to Maine. Along the way we have traveled a great deal of Canada and most of the states in between.
If the weather gets too cold, we go where it is warm, spending our winters in Calif., Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, and on across to Florida. We have served as campground hosts only three times out of the 24 different stops. We have spent time on six different national wildlife refuges, three national parks, three state historic sites, four day use parks, a forestry center, an airfield for antique planes, and an arboretum, among others.
In addition to campground hosts, we have been tour guides, operated tractors, mowed an airstrip, lead desert hikes, done bird counts, cared for baby alligators, worked on bird banding, built two buildings, trained as a backhoe operator, done art work, performed computer research, answered phones, operated a ranger station, and many other experiences that most people can only dream of. We have learned more about birds, plants, and wildlife that we could have imagined.
Thanks to the life we lead, we have more friends than we have ever had and in so many places. On several occasions we have made friends while volunteering with them such that we kept in contact and a few years down the road we arrange to share a new work-camping experience in a completely different state. There is a freedom that comes with the adjustment to this vagabond lifestyle that can not be experienced in many other ways.
Did you ever watch the birds as the migrate north in spring and south in fall, wishing that you had the freedom to do as they do and to go not only where you like the weather, but to pick anywhere that offers good weather, even if or perhaps because you have never been there before? Well it just so happens that we have found a way to do just as those birds and we have discovered the reason that birds nearly always sing!
Let me invite you to visit the website who's URL is found in my signature as it tells the story of our past eight years and has a page with pictures and job description of each place where we have worked. There is a major down side to all of this. The problem is that the old saying "Time flies when you are having fun" has proven to be so true and the past 8 1/2 years has gone by in a blur. In a life as great as this, birthdays do seem to come much more rapidly and we often wonder where the time has gone?
I will also invite you to send me a private message and I will be happy to share my email address with you and also point you to some excellent places to learn more about this lifestyle, as well as finding people who are fulltimers and work-campers, both of the volunteer type and those who work paid positions.