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Ask us Anything! 10 Answers to your Questions about RV Life

We tend to get a lot of the same questions when it comes to RV life, so we figured we’d put together a few of the most commonly asked questions. If your question isn’t listed below, let us know so we can address it in a future post! Without further ado – the top ten questions about RV life.

  1. Where’s your favorite place that you’ve visited in your motorhome?

    Any RVer knows this is the question you get the most. Every time, we say we can’t pick a favorite. Instead, we have specific favorite memories from different places.

    -Kartchner Caverns was a beautiful experience.
    -Swimming with the manatees was incredible.
    -Waking up on the beach on Christmas morning was unforgettable.
    -Fell in love with the picturesque area of Moab, Utah. Both Canyonlands and Arches were phenomenal.
  2. Where’s somewhere you’ll never return to?

    This is an easy answer for us. Carlsbad, New Mexico. If you want to go to the caverns, get there in the morning, and ideally head out in the evening. We were going to stay for a few days on boondocking land, but it’s one of the few places we actually packed up pretty quickly and left. There are several reasons, but the biggest reason was just the sheer amount of trash. Everywhere. It made it hard to walk the dog. When we went into town for a bite to eat, we found there was one restaurant open on Sundays. So, yeah. Carlsbad, New Mexico. We haven’t spent much time in the rest of New Mexico yet, though.

    Second on the list? Michigan in the summer: not doing it. The sheer number of mean bugs was just too intense. The only time we ventured outside was to take the dog out.
  3. Who deals with the dump?

    Ah, the glamorous question. I predominantly deal with dumping the tanks. Jeremiah does it on occasion but for the most part I do the ordinary “normal” things like cooking, laundry, dumping the tanks. Jeremiah deals with the bigger things that I can’t as easily address. We make a really good team because of that.
  4. How do you get mail?

    We have a mail service that we direct our mail to, and they forward our mail when requested. We’ve run into some issues with them so I won’t directly suggest them. If we are in a specific place for a while (like right now) we will have things shipped directly to a UPS store. They do charge for pickups: anywhere from $5 to $10 per package, but they are much more reliable than the postal service.

    Amazon Lockers and pickup counters are also one of our go-to methods of getting things we need but can’t find for a good price locally.

    Mail is a pain in the ass on the road, no lie. There’s just no clear-cut option for mail for RV life. Nada.
  5. How do you vote?

    By mail. Oregon and Texas absentee mail-in votes. I had a hiccup with my ballot this year, so I’ll be changing my Oregon residence address for future elections if I’m still on the road then.
  6. How long do you stay in one spot?

    It totally depends. When we started out, we traveled every couple of days. Then, we started staying in place closer to a week, which is a pretty good amount of time in a lot of places. Right now, due to Covid-19, we stay in places for longer periods of time since we’re limited with what we can do.
  7. Who does the driving?

    We both drive our motorhome. Jeremiah does all the city driving in the motorhome. I prefer bigger highways.
  8. Do you cook differently in an RV than you did before?

    Yes and no. We plan our meals more because we have less space for leftovers in our fridge. We still cook two to three meals a day. We aren’t eating hot dogs and sandwiches every night. (In fact, we never eat either of those, aside from an occasional Bahn mi.)
  9. What do you miss most about stationary life?

    We both love the adventure of new places, but the thrill of finding new grocery stores and hardware stores has worn off. I miss knowing where the best places are to get specific items, who to call to get work done on our vehicle, or what parks have off-leash areas so I know where to avoid.

    Jeremiah really misses having his full-size shop – just as he knew he would when he packed up and stored all of his tools. Based on how he drives sometimes, I think he also misses racing cars.
  10. What do we use to decide where to stay?

    If you’ve heard of an RV app for finding campsites, we’ve used it. Ultimately, many are very similar and there is not one single option we’d advise using. We were so frustrated that Jeremiah actually built his own app that he uses now to find places to stay – we haven’t made it public, which is kinda funny.

    I use Campendium for the reviews, specifically because oftentimes people mention what site was big enough for a big rig, which I appreciate. Getting level in a 42-foot motorhome can be rough. Freecampsites.net is fine, but be careful to really research those places beforehand. Some places are overgrown, only good for tent camping, or even on personal land that shouldn’t be trespassed. We’ve found places on Google Maps that all these other apps don’t list yet, so we often just type in “camping” into Google maps now, and see what comes up. That’s how we found the place we’re staying in now, and it’s always full.

    I like the idea of Harvest Hosts and Hipcamp, but we’ve never used them. Maybe in the future. We’ve not tried Harvest Hosts because they advertise one night stays, and if we’re only staying one night, we’ll kick it in a truck stop and move on.
  11. Bonus question – I forgot about this one! What do we do for internet? I’ve written a whole blog up about this – so you can check it out here.

Do you have other RV life questions? What can we help answer? We have a lot of blogs of various “stuff” but thought this would be a good place to sum up some of the more commonly asked questions about RV life.

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