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This week is the RV Household Digital Summit—a web based convention the place touring mother and father share their greatest suggestions and data on what it’s wish to journey with kiddos. I’ll be reside Wednesday, Could 12 at midday MT speaking in regards to the prices of RVing. You’ll be able to signal as much as tune in totally free right here and ask questions! 🙂
Final April, when the nation was all however shut down and we had been quarantining in place in Alabama, Ellie took her first steps. We had been there for some time, so by the point we hit the street once more, she was strolling like a professional.
And RV life instantly modified.
RVing with a Toddler ❤️
When Heath and I first began RVing, everybody requested if we’d journey with our youngsters.
And after we came upon we had been pregnant, we knew the reply was YES. We had been going to journey as a lot as doable with our youngsters.
We’ve been touring with Ellie since she was 4 weeks previous and so a lot of our favourite journey recollections are watching her see the world. Like when Ellie burst into tears of jealousy watching Heath eat gelato and cannoli in Venice.
Or watching her bounce within the waves on the Florida coast. Hike within the mountains within the Rocky Mountains. Chase birds, bunnies, deer, and each single canine at each single campground. Giggle with delight when a monkey ran proper at her face on the zoo. Climb the crimson rocks in Moab.
These moments are the highlights of RVing with a toddler.
Heath and I cherished touring collectively. However—as tacky cliché mum or dad because it sounds—there’s nothing like watching your child journey. There’s an unexplainable larger stage of pleasure and achievement.
Heath & I don’t share a lot about what RV life is like for us on our weblog. If you’ve been RVing nearly each day of your total marriage, it’s much less like “Have a look at all this cool stuff we are able to do” and extra “That is simply my on a regular basis life for the previous 2,000 days.”
I wished to share a bit of of what RV life appeared like for us final yr with a toddler as a result of it was SO completely different than our years of travels earlier than Ellie may stroll.
Ellie was 7 months previous after we moved into the Winnebago full-time and a yr and a half after we purchased our home. She began to crawl, stand, stroll, run, climb, and bounce in that RV. And we discovered lots about what journey with children can seem like. (And simply how EASY it was to journey with Ellie when she was a child!)
The general public I discuss to who’re taken with hitting the street have children or infants and are interested by touring full-time, so I need to share a few of the greatest ups and downs of our yr of full-time journey. (If you happen to really need the down-low on RVing with children, take a look at the RV Household Digital Summit streaming reside totally free this week!)
Let’s begin with the most important factor individuals warned us about earlier than we ever had children.
Staying Adventurous
In scripting this weblog, I attempted to think about a time that Heath and I couldn’t do one thing due to Ellie.
I can solely consider one: white water rafting on the Arkansas River. We camped proper on the river and watched so many individuals paddle by each day! However apparently 12 months is just too younger to white water raft so we couldn’t each go.
Aside from that, she’s come together with us all over the place.
One of many fears I hear from my adventurous couple pals is that they gained’t be capable to go on as many adventures with a child in tow. To some extent, that’s true. Ellie gained’t be rafting for an additional yr or two.
However for essentially the most half, she fortunately carts together with us on each journey. Mountaineering, snowboarding, splashing in waterfalls—she’s down.
The largest distinction is that as Ellie has gotten older, we began planning adventures round nap occasions so Ellie may make sure you get in at the least one good nap a day. (It’s MUCH tougher to get a toddler to nap on a hike than a child!)
Discovering Locations to Discover
There are some stuff you by no means count on to do in life that can occur when you’ve got a child. Like saying “Don’t eat that [insert rock, deer poop, flower, dirt, sand, grass, etc here]” a number of occasions a day.
However the greatest never-thought-I’d-do-that that stands out to me is studying Google evaluations of public parks.
When Ellie and I wanted to get out of the RV so Heath may work, a playground was all the time the best, most cost-effective choice. Most campgrounds the place we keep don’t have playgrounds—particularly not playgrounds match for a one-year-old—so I might open up Google Maps and search playgrounds close to me.
This usually pulls up any park on the town, failing to filter by parks with playgrounds. Which is why I might find yourself spending 10 minutes pictures and studying evaluations determining which park had a playground—or higher but, a toddler playground—and which of them had been simply soccer fields. (Google evaluation mothers are so detailed. The slide was too sizzling! A lot of shade however no trash cans by the picnic tables!)
I’ve been to so many playgrounds all of them mix collectively and Ellie has cherished all of them. Each city has one and it’s the proper solution to kill a pair hours and get outdoors—particularly when swimming pools, gyms, indoor playgrounds, and all the things else the place children can play collectively was closed for many of final yr.
And within the fall, we discovered it very easy to seek out actions to do with the entire household. We spent many weekends at completely different fall festivals and Ellie was fascinated when she acquired her face painted (pictured above). I believe/hope throughout non-pandemic occasions discovering extra festivals and occasions to discover with children year-round will likely be even simpler!
Making Buddies
This previous summer season, we invited all of our shut touring pals to caravan and camp with us. And we acquired to see so many individuals! Together with caravanning for a month with our pals Chris and Rachel and their son who’s about 6 months older than Ellie.
We didn’t see many different individuals RVing with a toddler and—possibly that is pandemic-specific—however individuals weren’t notably taken with our one-year-olds taking part in collectively.
If we hadn’t been capable of camp subsequent to so many pals, RVing would have been lots tougher for Ellie. She is tremendous social—final week touring in Florida she would stroll as much as strangers, wave and say hello, after which introduce mommy and daddy. The woman loves everybody. (She additionally made pals by stealing the opposite children’ toys as a manner of inviting herself to play with them 🤦♀️ She has not discovered boundaries however is at the least studying to share!)
I believe that is one thing that will likely be simpler as Ellie will get older, however as a toddler, making new pals or spending time with different households with younger children was troublesome. Particularly after seeing how a lot enjoyable Ellie had caravanning with our pals for a month, figuring out she missed out on that interplay for many of the yr was exhausting for me. Ellie and I spent nearly each minute collectively whereas touring and I KNOW she acquired uninterested in me and would’ve most popular somebody her dimension to play with.
Boondocking
In 2020, we boondocked lower than any earlier yr of RV life! We spent many of the yr in Colorado, so we had been by no means missing for mountain views or riverfront campsites. However we wanted hookups.
This was primarily for temperature causes. Within the warmth of the day, it may simply get to 90+ levels within the RV with out the A/C runnning, even when it wasn’t really that sizzling outdoors. Most boondocking websites we discovered had been in direct daylight, making it tougher to control the rig’s temperature within the afternoon solar.
However the factor in regards to the mountains is that the temperature all the time drops at evening. Generally plummets. So whereas it may get actually sizzling within the afternoons, we’d get up to 40º temps inside our rig. Sure, we are able to and did run our furnace to remain heat in a single day when boondocking, however the fan in your furnace will zap your battery life quick!
This grew to become actually troublesome for Ellie sleeping. She would nap with the generator working so we may activate the A/C after which put on fleece jammies smothered in blankets at evening. (And inevitably she would get up round 2 within the morning and climb in our mattress for physique warmth and snuggles.) A drained toddler will not be a contented toddler, so we sought out hookups for higher sleep.
The second purpose boondocking was troublesome was the quiet. Boondocking is so peacefully quiet.
And Ellie requires a sound machine to sleep. Not a lot for her sake, however in order that Heath and I weren’t compelled to additionally go to mattress or be silent at 7 PM. Usually we activate the fan or A/C within the bed room and she will’t hear a factor. However and not using a sound machine (or a field fan sound app on our telephones after we didn’t have electrical hook ups), Ellie may hear us up and speaking or hanging out and wouldn’t be capable to go to sleep.
These points in all probability may’ve been fastened if we had an RV that was loaded with photo voltaic and a bigger battery financial institution so we may have regular energy always. That’s one thing we positively need on any future RV in order that we are able to preserve the child snug regardless of the place we’re tenting.
This wasn’t a type of ugh RVing with a toddler is so exhausting type of issues, however simply one of many small methods we tailored our travels for a toddler. Ellie by no means slept effectively when boondocking so it was best simply to keep away from it for some time for everybody’s sanity. 😴
Engaged on the Highway
Heath and I run two companies on the street. It’s the entire entrepreneur a part of RV Entrepreneur. And we love what we do. It’s all the time been Heath’s dream to run his personal enterprise. It’s all the time been my dream to write down.
However two working mother and father + touring full-time to new places – any likelihood of childcare =
And after a yr of touring full-time and each attempting to run our companies, we got here to a conclusion:
It’s unattainable.
It’s unattainable for 2 mother and father to work on a enterprise full-time 40 hours every week AND have a toddler AND journey full-time.
We took it to our Fb group to see if anybody else was trying this and the final consensus was:
- We don’t each work or don’t each work 40 hours
- One particular person watches the youngsters whereas the opposite works
- We needed to “drastically change our work life”
Which is precisely how we ended up. I grew to become a work-during-naptime mother working 10 hours every week max and Ellie and I went on adventures throughout Heath’s many Zoom calls.
Heath felt responsible about lacking out on adventuring with me and Ellie. I fell manner behind on tasks, missed deadlines, and dropped engaged on my e book. We didn’t publish a podcast for six months. And all our mixed stress made us understand we wanted to determine an answer—ideally one which didn’t find yourself with me closing up our weblog and podcast and turning into a stay-at-RV mother.
This was an enormous impetus for purchasing a home and switching to part-time journey (the opposite purpose we purchased a home was Heath’s firm acquired funding from the state of Colorado with the stipulation that we transfer to rural Colorado ⛰ ).
After a little bit of looking, we discovered part-time youngster care with a mother, booked a campsite for 2 months on the town, and took the RV on lengthy weekend adventures round completely different elements of Colorado.
Then we may all journey as a household. Journey went from being this troublesome factor that we couldn’t absolutely get pleasure from to “ahhh this is why we love RVing!” And it felt like we had been all RVing collectively, as a substitute of passing off Ellie so we may get our tasks accomplished.
Half-time journey has been excellent for us with Ellie being nearly two now. She has pals she sees nearly each day. We have now constant childcare and have caught up on tasks we needed to postpone final yr. And regardless that we have now a sticks-and-bricks, we’ve explored throughout Colorado, gone snowboarding, visited Texas, hiked in Utah, and loved the seashores of Florida previously six months with out having to sacrifice our skilled tasks. I launched two programs I’ve been wanting to write down for literal years. Heath offered Campground Reserving after working towards that aim for 5 years.
We couldn’t have managed this stuff if we hadn’t been in a single place for a short while.
With Ellie the place she’s at now and with one enterprise rising and a brand new campground on the horizon(!), full-time journey isn’t proper for our household proper now. However part-time journey (which up to now has meant touring every week out of each month since we purchased our home) has given us all of the issues we wanted. Neighborhood. Time. Progress. Area. Adventures. New locations to discover.
We do plan to full-time journey once more—I’ve some BIG journey plans for 2023. I simply need to persuade Heath. And Ellie. And see if I can get Heath’s mother and father to retire earlier than then as a result of they might be useful to have round for childcare.
However with a child boy coming this fall, part-time journey is ideal for us for now. 💙