This post explains how to get started full-time traveling, and our timeline as we prepared to start traveling. When we were preparing for full-time life on the road, we wanted to talk to as many people as possible who have experienced it! For us, we only knew one family personally so we definitely picked their brains about everything. One of our biggest questions from the start was just about logistics. What did their timeline look like during the transition? It felt so overwhelming just thinking about picking the RV & truck, packing/selling possessions, and of course selling the house…all within a short period of time! Thankfully for us it all seemed to fall into place fairly effortlessly. It was one of those things that made us truly believe that we were making the right decision!

So what did our timeline look like? I’m going to go through it all, but just know that this will look different for everyone. There’s not any right or wrong way to make everything happen. The important thing is that it is happening!

2019

When the family I mentioned above decided to sell their dream home and travel full-time, we were shocked! They had four children under the age of 5 and seemed to live the ideal life. To give up that big home and move into an RV seemed, well…crazy! We had just never heard of families doing this, and it felt like a very wild thing to do. Once they left and we started to see the photos of their travels, that little green monster of jealousy really started to creep in! I started to screenshot the places they were visiting, just in case we could possibly do this one day. It didn’t take long for me to really become hooked on keeping up with them!

As the craziness of 2020 and 2021 went on, this stayed in the back of my mind. I didn’t know if it would ever really happen, but I really felt like I wanted it to.

Summer of 2021

We were all at home! The kids finished up their homeschool enrichment programs, I was working on my travel agent business, and Michael had recently started a new digital marketing firm. Then suddenly we had some good friends announce that they were going to do the full-time RV travel with their kids. Immediately I felt a huge pang of jealousy and the biggest desire ever to make this happen! It felt like it came out of nowhere, but suddenly Michael and I were discussing it and in July I purchased a book about RV living just to get an overall view of what it was like. I bought a national parks guidebook and I really started to adjust my goals toward downsizing. All of this before Michael was ever totally on board!

We did visit the Camping World near us, where it was decided that we definitely desired a 5th wheel if we were to do this. I personally started becoming obsessed with looking at 5th wheel floor plans, watching YouTube videos of RVs, and trying to educate myself on everything camper related. We found a Grand Design floor plan that really spoke to us, and at the end of the summer while on an extended family vacation , we

drove an hour and a half to a dealership that had this particular model in stock. We really loved it! Unfortunately, we weren’t quite ready to commit to purchase. We still had so much to do, and we didn’t have anywhere to store a big rig.

Michael still hadn’t even fully agreed on traveling full-time!

November 2021

By this time, we were knee deep in watching YouTube channels like Keep Your Daydream and Finding Our Someday. The more we watched, the more we fell in love with this lifestyle. It seemed like Michael was finally completely on board and when Black Friday sales hit, I started to purchase some RV items.

No, we still didn’t have an RV but I was just so anxious!

January 2022 (136 days until launch)

On January 7, Michael was scrolling around and happened to find our dream truck at a small dealership just around the corner! On a whim, he went to check it out and even test drove it to our house so that we could all see it. It was a beautiful black 2019 Ford F350 Platinum dually with the panoramic sunroof that we really wanted! We instantly fell in love with it and suddenly things got really real.

Because we needed to finance both the truck AND the RV, we were told that it would be much easier to do if we purchased the RV first and then turned around and bought the truck next. So if we wanted this truck then we were suddenly on a race against the clock! We got busy checking inventory at all of the RV dealers around us, and we found a Keystone RV within an hour drive that had basically the same floor plan we really like in the Grand Design we toured last year in Jacksonville. So the next day we packed up and drove to Scottsville, KY.

We toured the Keystone Avalanche 378bh that we had found, as well as a few other 5th wheels that they had. Ultimately the Avalanche felt like the right choice and we went for it! We were all very excited and also a bit scared about everything happening so fast, but it definitely all felt right.

We had to wait through the weekend for everything to clear, but as soon as we got word that everything was final with the RV, Michael immediately called the truck dealer and we started the paperwork for the Ford! The next day we turned in both of our

vehicles as part of our deal and came home with our beautiful new Ford truck! We were all so thrilled and it finally all felt real…we were actually doing this!!!

We finalized all of the paperwork with the RV on January 22. They were happy to let us keep it there until we were ready to come and pick it up, once there was not any need to winterize it any further. We also needed to find a place to store it.

Life went on as we started to get accustomed to being a one vehicle family. We started our preparations by buying all of the important things we needed to hit the road, I continued planning our route, and we all continued the hard process of downsizing.

March 4, 2022 (80 days until launch)

The day had come to pick up our RV from the dealer! Some great friends had graciously offered to allow us to store it on their home property, so we dropped the kids with some other friends for the day and Michael and I drove back to Scottsville for our walkthrough. We were there for most of the day learning about our RV and how to take care of it. We hitched up the truck for the first time and off we went!

We had booked two nights over the weekend at an RV park just down the road from our neighborhood, Grand Ole RV Resort in Goodlettsville, TN. We pulled in and the owners were so helpful in getting us parked, knowing that it was our first time. It was a pull-through, so it wasn’t too bad. We got set up as best we could, and then went to pick up the kids.

The first two nights of our new lifestyle were so fun! We spent time just hanging out in the RV and outside listening to live music and eating pizza on the picnic tables. We were all still just so excited for everything to come.

When the weekend ended, we took the RV to our friend’s property and droppped it there, only adding a little bit of winterizer to be on the safe side.

The next big thing was putting our house on the market!

March 25, 2022 (60 days until launch)

We had spent much of March getting the house ready for viewing. We had all of the photography done and on March 25, we headed out to pick up “Ava” (our RV’s name). This time we spent the weekend at a KOA in Lebanon, TN. It was a chilly couple of days, so not a ton of time was spent outside but we did our best! The kids still loved having a playground so close to “home”.

We ended up having about 40 viewings for our home and we received offers from half of those! We accepted the best offer and once again felt validated that we were making the best decision. Everything was just falling into place so nicely!

April 19, 2022 (34 days until launch)

We closed on our house! The offer we accepted allowed us to stay in the house for no extra cost through the end of May. The buyer also wanted to buy some of our furniture and decor. This couldn’t have worked out more perfectly. One step closer!

April 26, 2022 (27 days until launch)

We picked up the RV at our friends’s house one last time, and took it to Discount Tire for a set of brand new upgraded tires. We did not trust the tires that came with the rig, so this was a very important safety step for us. Once that was done, we took the RV to a storage facility right across the street from the RV park where we first stayed in Goodlettsville. We were getting so close!

May 2, 2022 (21 days until launch)

We picked up our rig in storage for our first full week out of town! We camped for 2 nights at Bledsoe Creek State Park (it was our first time without sewer hookup), and once we knew everything was good to go, we left for Pigeon Forge, TN! I had my annual homeschool conference to attend while there. It was an amazing 5 nights at the KOA Holiday there, and we had the perfect campsite. We were once again validated and getting more and more excited about officially traveling full-time!

May 9, 2022 (14 days until launch)

We dropped Ava off at the dealer for some easy warranty work.

May 16, 2022 (7 days until launch)

We picked Ava up at the dealer and went back to camp for our transition week at Grand Ole RV Resort! It was time to start the move! We went back and forth quite a bit this week. I won’t sugar coat this…it was a very, very exhausting week.

May 23, 2022 (scheduled launch day)

Launch day came and went and we still had a mess in the house! Obviously we needed to allow for some more time to finish up the kids activities and get everything cleaned and packed up. We had to lose a day on our first reservation, but we know these things will happen!

May 24, 2022 (new launch day)

We finally finished everything that evening, said our goodbyes, and headed south! We were a couple hours late & probably ended up with way too much in the RV, but we got it done. We were officially full-time RVers!

You won’t want to miss the video of our launch, which has been the most-watched on our YouTube channel. It involved tears and much drama!

_______________________________

Overall, the process went very smoothly for us, which was such a huge blessing. Yes, it will take some planning. Yes, there might be some hiccups. This lifestyle isn’t always easy, but after two years of traveling we can safely say that it is the most amazing experience we have ever had and it’s really so hard to imagine living a “normal” stationary life!

If traveling full-time is something you are thinking about doing but just don’t know how to get started, we hope that this timeline has helped you with a picture of just one way to get it done.

Good luck, and happy travels!

By Ashley Baker