Without a doubt, one of my all time favorite quotes is from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”
There have been countless times in our married life where Andy and I took the road less traveled by. In the moment, it was scary and we were unsure; but in hindsight… our lives are so much more fruitful because of it.
Our journey into RV’ing was just one of the many moments where two roads diverged in a wood. Here is that story…
Buying a camper was something we always knew we wanted to do. We both grew up camping and had really fond memories of it. We wanted to give our own kids those same childhood experiences. In 2017, we had two kids (3 and 1), one on the way, and decided to build a house and buy a new F-150.
To say, 2017 was an expensive year is the understatement of a lifetime. Realistically, buying a camper (without borrowing money) was a long way off. But, we knew it was what we wanted so we decided we’d save what we could and buy a camper “some day.”
In May, we broke ground, sold our house, and moved into an apartment. In October, we had our third kid. In December, we moved into our new house. We had a LOT to be thankful for, but when we closed the book on 2017, I hoped that 2018 would be a “boring” year. I was thoroughly exhausted by all the life change and needed a breather.
I told God my plan for boring, and He belly laughed.
In April of 2018, Andy came home from work and told me that there was a very slim chance that he might have to take a temporary assignment in Asheville, NC which I then googled to find out is 6 hours away. My jaw dropped, but I didn’t get worked up because he said it was “very unlikely.” Long story short, over the next few weeks that slim chance turned into a pretty likely scenario. We hadn’t even been in our house 6 months, and I just couldn’t stomach the idea of moving our family for the third time in less than a year. On top of that, the logistics were stressful. We really couldn’t afford our mortgage plus a house in Asheville, so our options were to sell our house or rent it out to someone while we were gone. We hated the idea of both. We needed a third option.
On top of all that, I had a job to consider as well and our oldest was supposed to start Kindergarten in the fall. Moving our whole family just didn’t feel right. Before we were married we had lived 3.5 hours apart for 3 years. We’d done the long distance thing before… could we do it again? With kids?
One Sunday afternoon, we were sitting on our front porch trying to think through logistics of how this was actually going to work. We had started looking at apartments and houses to rent in the area, but being unfamiliar with the city it seemed like a daunting task on Zillow. Andy HATED living in an apartment while we were building, so a house was really what we were leaning towards. But they were expensive.
Kind of jokingly, but also a little serious, I said “we should buy a camper and you should live in that for a year.” To which Andy LAUGHED OUT LOUD. But I pushed back… why not? We’ve always wanted a camper, here was our chance! If we rented a house, at the end of his assignment we’d have nothing to show for it but an extra 60,000 miles on his truck. If we bought a camper, we’d have something that our family would be able to use and enjoy for years and years.
Andy was still not on board with the idea, but we started looking at what was out there. What could we afford, that our truck could haul, that would work for our family long term. Each passing day he got a little more serious about the idea. A little more excited about the potential in this plan…
Keep in mind, at this point we really knew nothing about the RV community. Andy’s parents had a fifth wheel that they spent 1-2 weeks a year in, and that was pretty much everything we knew. We didn’t know about “full timers” or winter camping. We didn’t know about payloads and fresh tanks. We just had a crazy idea. And I assure you… pretty much everyone we told this idea to thought we were out of our ever loving minds.
“Wait… you’re going to live where?” “And Sam is staying here?” “With the kids?” “And she’s going to keep working?” “Where will you shower?” “How will you eat?”
My friends… on a sunny Saturday in June… two roads diverged in a wood; and I am here to tell you… We 100% took the one less traveled by; and it has made all the difference.
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