Neither Rich nor Glamorous nor Photogenic

After watching maybe 200 or so videos on YouTube over the past couple of years on the subject of RV Travels, I've come to the conclusion that I'm never going to be a Vlogger on RV Traveling.

One thing nearly all of the vloggers I've watched over the years have in common, aside from being photogenic (which I am NOT) and being willing to open up their lives to public scrutiny, is the ability to make even mundane things appear somewhat glamorous, thereby enticing viewers to live vicariously through their videos.

I know that's an over-simplification, but I already tend to write at length in a 30-second soundbyte world.

There are families on the road, couples out exploring, and singles who have opted to live out of a van or camper or motorhome.  A few do take the time to discuss things like health insurance, and the need to have a domicile for registering your vehicles and getting your mail, but very few people have actually solved some of the problems I have encountered so they haven't helped me all that much.

Most of the YouTube Vloggers who have large followings are coming into the lifestyle from positions of plenty.  I have lost track of the number of people I've encountered in Facebook Groups, on Blogs, and on YouTube who are out of touch with the fact that not everybody lives in an RV because they want to exit the rat race and see the world.  

Not everybody can say they walked away from a lucrative job, sold the house, bought a $300K motor home and are living off their savings because they made such smart investments. If you spend too much time watching YouTube videos of RV Vloggers, however, you can easily come to the conclusion that there are no poor people living the RV Lifestyle.  

I find this rather ironic because just like the Tiny House movement has been monetized to the max, so has the idea of living the RV Lifestyle.  Poor people have been living in travel trailers and tiny houses for a long, long time, but now all of a sudden, it's sexy to live in an RV and travel, and it's a badge of honor to pay as much for a tiny house as for a large one elsewhere.

In real life, most of the RVers I've met have been working at places like Amazon not for the thrill, but because they need the money and once you get hired into Camperforce that first time, it's fairly easy to return season after season.  There's a lot to be said for the knowledge that you can always go to Amazon if your other plans don't pan out.

If I have a point, and honestly, I'm not really sure I do beyond my premise that I don't think I'm ever going to do a youtube channel about my RV travels, it's that youtube is not an accurate reflection of the real world any more than reality TV is actually real.  Real is often boring, mundane, and dreary.  Real is often hard, sad, and confusing.  Real is not rewarded unless it can be slanted in such a way as to become entertainment. 

So ... when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping ... on Amazon, of course.  Here's the obligatory Amazon shopping link to get you started.  I just like this image a lot.  It makes me think of my little sister, who loves horses the way I love chocolate and peanut butter.  The image is called "Band of Thunder" and this product is a tree free journal.  Long ago when Squidoo was alive and well, I had an entire page that was dedicated to items with this particular painting.  I always thought it somewhat unreal how many people decorated their homes and especially bathrooms with these horses.  

Tree-Free Greetings Journal, 160 Ruled Pages, Recycled, 5.5 x 7.5 Inches, Band of Thunder, Multi Color (72078)

Thanks for reading!

Essentials for Living a Nomadic Lifestyle

Although going nomadic is often the result of needing a cheaper way to live, there are some things that help a lot in making the transition, and if you have the cash to get them ahead of time, it helps a lot.  

Some things really go without saying - you need a place to sleep, something to eat, something to wear, a place to take care of your elimination needs, and a way to keep your body and clothing clean. Those are pretty much universal requisites, and there are many ways Wanderers on Wheels satisfy those requirements.  I'm sure we'll touch on most of them later on, but today I want to talk about devices that add value to the lifestyle.

A smart phone is one thing I never thought I wanted, but then when I got one, I realized it can do so much more than I ever imagined. My smartphone is a Galaxy Amp Prime which I bought in the Cricket Wireless store on sale for about $80.  It is my lifeline at times.  I use it for navigation, keeping up with my Facebook Friends and Family, using digital coupons when I shop, surfing the web, watching youtube videos, taking photos and recording videos, and there are even eBay and Amazon apps for buying and for selling.  I'm sure there are even more things a smart phone does, but those are my biggies.  Your mileage may vary. I probably use my phone for taking photos more than I use it for anything else.  I was in a Lowe's here in Campbellsville, and just loved this Dragon blow up decoration, so I whipped out the smart phone and snapped this photo. 

Something else I didn't realize I wanted or needed is a personal  hot spot, but it's another item I really don't want to live without now.  I bought the AT&T hot spot.  Here's what it looks like. 

I took it to my Cricket store and with the swap of a sim card and an additional phone line, I now have unlimited (within reason) internet access anywhere I have cell phone service for $70 a month.  It's not a perfect plan, and it's more than I wanted to spend, but we have a somewhat unique situation, and for us this was an essential.

Next to my smart phone and internet access on the go, a laptop computer is probably the next important thing.  I don't have one at the moment, having gone with a desktop all in one computer when we thought we'd be living in the apartment for more years. 

However, living in the 33 foot Argosy (pictured above) with 2 cats, my husband, and my adult son means we have to use the dinette as our "office" and so it is full of computers and the printer.  My computer isn't closeable, and hubby's got my old laptop with a plug in USB keyboard, so his isn't portable either.  However, if you plan on using free wifi in places on the road, it's very helpful if you can carry your laptop inside and enjoy a cup of coffee or a snack while you work.  

I thought I would be using my galaxy tablet more, but the battery is overheating and so until I address that issue, it's staying in the nice little carry case I thrifted awhile back.  I still want another laptop, though, because I found I really need a keyboard, and I need a larger screen than is found on a tablet, and if you are going to carry something that big, you might just as well have the whole enchilada instead of an oversized cell phone that doesn't make phone calls and only uses wifi.  Such a learning curve with electronics anymore. Mine has been steep and expensive.  But I do love the camera on my phone.  Yes, there are Christmas trees on sale in September.  I have proof, thanks to my camera's date stamp.

Well, I just learned something new - I thought I was setting this up to post automatically, but apparently I misunderstood the scheduling portion of blogger.  At least this portion of the learning curve, while steep, was not costly.

May your learning curves be flat and smooth and cost you nothing.

Preparing for the Truck Camper Life

Some time back we bought a vintage TREK truck camper off Craigslist, and have been working on fixing it up.  We then bought a vintage (1991) Chevy Pickup Truck to carry it.  Next step in the process will be to find a semi-permanent location to park the '87 Argosy so we can do some adventuring in the truck camper.

Although this woman lives in her van, her points in this video are also applicable to living in our trailer and to our plans of traveling in the truck camper as well.  I just subscribed to her channel.  Just a tip from me - most of the time when I watch talking heads on youtube, I speed them up because I can listen a lot faster than most people talk. 

I'm still downsizing, and I know there are still a lot of things I can remove from our trailer to make life more comfortable.  I am also still working on how to make simpler meals in the trailer, but I'm not cooking for just one or two people - I'm actually cooking for 4, and 2 of them are hearty eaters, so my joke is I'm cooking for ten.

That said, this is one of the things that I am putting on my list of must haves - solar and hand cranked weather radios.  This video speaks of spending $50 at WalMart, but there are some better deals on Amazon right now, more in the range of about $20 to $30.  (Note - this was written in October of 2016 - prices may have changed if you are reading this later.)

We have kept a weather radio on hand for years, ever since we moved to Texas the first time and learned about tornados, but ours is a plug in model that sounds an alarm when the National Weather Service sends out an alert.  This is as close as I could come to showing you what it looks like because I'm fairly certain it's so old that it's not being made any longer.  

With all the crazy weather we've been having, not just in Texas, I think everybody ought to have emergency supplies and a weather radio on hand.  

I'm working on getting my supplies ready - I hope you are doing the same or have already put yours together.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Fascinated by the Sugar Beet Harvest

When we did our first peak work camping gig for Amazon in Coffeyville, Kansas way back in 2011, we met a fellow camper who started later than we did because he had just finished working the sugar beet harvest up in North Dakota.  He and his wife both worked, and told us they had cleared close to $6,000 in the 2-3 weeks they were up there.  Well, dollar signs for eyes, we've been interested ever since, although we have not yet managed to get our proverbial butts up there since then.

My friend Beth Lafata worked at Amazon with us back in 2014.  That was enough for her, and she has not returned but I follow her travels in the Tin Lizzy (her little travel trailer) and she worked the beet harvest this year.  Here's one of her videos on the subject:

Another work camper who did the beet harvest this year goes by Adventure Van Man.  He lives in his van and makes videos about his travels.  Here's his perspective of the job:

This one fascinated me because this camper worked the night shift inside the lab where they do the testing for sugar in the beets. 

Given that hubby is 73 but really wants to experience working the beet harvest at least once, we probably ought to put it on our high priority list for 2017 because we sure aren't getting any younger.

For us the 2 things that will have the biggest impact on our ability to do this will be finding somebody to keep an eye on our son (adult, disabled, living with us) and being able to withstand the cold.  I'm not as worried about the cold for myself as I am for hubby.  However, there are some things I know would be good for staying warm on the job.  Here are some examples, courtesy of Amazon. (Affiliate links - if you purchase from Amazon, I get a small commission that does not affect your shopping experience nor does it increase the price you pay.) 

I imagine that after living in Texas for so long, we'll both need to buy cold weather clothes if we decide to try the "unbeetable experience" in 2017.  In the meantime, we still have another 8 weeks of working at the warehouse to get through.  

We've heard from other campers that sometimes they keep a few of us on into January or February to help do an entire inventory of the facility.  Naturally hubby has already told them we will stay.  I know staying would be a good thing financially - not only would it give us more time in a free campsite and money in the bank, it would also extend the time we are covered by the health insurance without having to pay the cobra costs.  Still ... it makes me tired to even think about it.

Time for another cup of coffee, I guess.  

OK, so it says tea - don't judge me.  It's the biggest cup I own and I need a LOT of coffee some mornings.  I bet you can relate.

A Truck for the TREK

So earlier in August, in response to a situation we felt was unbearable for a friend of ours, we jumped the gun on something we'd been talking about for a long time and bought a used truck camper.  It turned out to be a vintage 1979 TREK, which has been out of production since about 1980.  I love that star in the name.

We found a brochure for the TREK on eBay, and discovered that we have the 1050 model.

So for the past 2 months, we've been fixing it up - our friend is living in it while we all work for Amazon here in Kentucky, so it's a win-win-win situation.

Here's the TREK about half-way through the fixing up process.  We have replaced the fridge with an apartment sized one, but later it will need a real RV refrigerator like a Dometic or a Norcold.  

We also fixed the commode (which needed a new seal), installed a new water heater, replaced the propane pipes, added a microwave and replaced the lights and the covers on the outside.  Bob also did some replacement of seals around windows and trim seal to protect all the new screws he put in to replace the ones that were a bit on the old and rusty side.

So we needed a pick up truck to slide under this, and have been looking, and looking, and looking while we saved our nickles and dimes from working at Amazon.  We finally found what we wanted at a price we could afford, and took possession of it today.

This is a 1991 Chevy C2500 that appears to be already set up to tow and also carry a camper.  It has a few minor issues, but the price we paid was low enough that we can afford to put some money into fixing the little things we think it needs.  So we are super happy about this!

That's a HUGE load off my mind, because the mandatory overtime is going to start very soon, and we need to complete everything except the actual loading up and moving out before we are too tired to tackle it.

The camper came with the original stove which is a 3 burner Travlerette - and yes, that IS how it was spelled.

Pretty safe to say RV Stoves are not this brand any longer.

Among other things replaced, the new Suburban hot water tank is now installed.  

We bought a six gallon propane powered heater, and we bought the kit to add electric heating to it for times we are plugged in to shore power.  

I think it was wise to replace the old one, don't you? 

So we thought about taking Friday off from work, since Amazon has been offering Voluntary Time Off since Monday, but ... alas, the available slots are filled, so it's off to work we go in the morning.

Gotta make the money to do the rest of the things on our ever growing list.  Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

As my buddy Beth always says, "Ciao, babies".

What Has Transpired Since May 2016: An Update From Amazon in Campbellsville, Kentucky

Right after I wrote that last post, my life changed dramatically (again!) and we made some MAJOR changes.

We moved out of the apartment that was killing us financially - that was in large part because many things increased in price, including the rent, but our incomes did not increase enough to make up for the increased outflows.  It became obvious that our youngest daughter was not going to come back and live in the apartment with her brother, and so we finally made the decision to move out of the apartment and back into the vintage trailer we'd been storing for over a year.

About that time we also decided to consider working one more season for Amazon, and spent a couple of days up around their Haslett, TX location.  However, that facility was full up with workcampers, so we opted for Campbellsville, Kentucky, where we've been since the first part of August.

We spent a month in Round Rock as we finished up the cleaning and packing and donating (you should SEE the stack of Goodwill donation receipts we have now) and pulled out of Round Rock around the middle of July.  Our private joke is that for my husband's 73rd birthday, he got to turn in the keys to the apartment, and for my 59th birthday, we got to leave Round Rock, Texas.

The trip from Texas to Kentucky was probably the best time I've had in years.  We stayed a week up in a campground near the youngest daughter's new home, and then meandered our way on towards Kentucky.

Highest point of the trip was visiting the diamond mine state park in Arkansas.  We loved the campground, and actually enjoyed it so much that we opted out of another place we'd been meaning to stop in order to stay an extra night.  Digging for diamonds was very physically exhausting work, but we had so much fun, it's hard to describe why it was so much fun to work so darned hard for essentially nothing (we found no diamonds).  We want to go back and stay longer sometime in the future.

Driving through Tennessee was beautiful - I only wish we'd been touring rather than heading to a destination, because there were so many places I wanted to stop.  I think we could spend months exploring Tennessee, but that's for another time.

Kentucky is also beautiful, although we haven't seen much of it since arriving here.  Our campground is essentially a gravel field, but it's the closest one to town and is across the street from the Amazon fulfillment center.  Since we have our disabled adult son sharing space with us until we find a placement for him, we thought it wise to choose this place over the others.

Work started on August 1, and we've only had to work overtime once since we got here.  Yay!  While I know that the overtime is the biggest reason many workcampers come to Amazon for peak, we have had some other things going on that has made us appreciate the lack of overtime.  Our workweek crosses 2 payperiods, so Friday and Saturday complete one week, while Sunday and Monday start a new payperiod.  We have a mid-week break instead of a weekend, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as our days off.  Mandatory OT day is Thursday.

This experience has been quite different from our last peak in Coffeyville, though.  If it were just hubby and I doing this, we'd be having quite an enjoyable time.  The addition of our son, however, increases the stress.  Not only is it more work to cook and clean with 3 people and 2 cats in this 33 foot vintage trailer, we've taken on a second project, and are fixing up a vintage TREK truck camper, and we need to buy a long bed pickup truck to carry it.

Well, this is probably way too long for a blog post, but I had a lot of stuff to share, and I have more stuff on my mind that will have to wait for another day.

Thanks for reading and please know that I am wishing you Health and Prosperity.