R-Pod Diaries

When Brad and I set out to travel full time we definitely talked about what we would do if one of us became ill, but never in a million years did we take into consideration a pandemic - who would?! With the coronavirus impacting the United States more and more each day we are all feeling the effects and I wanted to share some of our personal experiences.  I’m going to rewind a few months first…Back in December I was finishing my first travel assignment in New Mexico. With 4 weeks to go I started to feel pretty terrible. I went to work on a Friday, lasted 3 hours and was in Urgent Care that evening. I tested negative for the flu and went home. We had visitors in town and my sister-in-law was staying with us in the camper, but luckily she and Brad were able to crash in a hotel with our other guest that night while I wrestled a fever, aches, chills and all the symptoms you get with the flu. The next day everyone was on a day trip and I felt wrecked but must...

This post is dedicated to a dry, hot and dusty place in Arizona called Monument Valley. Why? It’s that cool. I wasn’t aware of Monument Valley until Brad stumbled upon it scrolling through social media and requested we stop along our travels. I can speak for us both that we don’t regret it one bit.   We found a KOA (Kampground Of America) within a couple of miles of the park surrounded by the most outrageous rock formations in every direction. Actually, Monument Valley is right on the border of Utah and Arizona so we camped in Utah with perfect views of the monuments. Incredible silhouettes greeted us in the mornings and illuminating sunsets ended our evenings.    (view from our kitchen window of the monuments)   (this was taken while walking to the bathroom one morning!)   Our first day included traveling from Colorado to the KOA which resulted in an easy 3 hour drive. One of the greatest parts about road travel is sometime...

Now that I’ve shown you our renovated R-Pod and thoughts on the transition to tiny living, lets get to the fun stuff…road life! I haven’t found a single word to describe the adventure we’ve embarked on but with Brad’s help we've come up with a few to describe our first few weeks of travel in this post:   * ALLURING * We’ve traveled to 6 different states by now: Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Arizona with each one presenting a unique and different landscape that has left our jaws on the ground and the overused “wow” spilling from our lips. Imagine Dan Aykroyd in the movie The Great Outdoors repeating that word when they are trying to exterminate the bat invading their cabin - that’s us on a daily basis. One of the reasons we decided to forgo international travel (for now) was because we realized after our honeymoon that the United States offers the most grandest of lands that would kee...

Before we dive into what full time road travel is like, Brad and I wanted to shed some light on our decision to live on the road full time and our transition to tiny living. So often we see the end result which looks absolutely beautiful and filtered of all the decisions and chaos that got you to this point.   And chaos might be the perfect word to describe this situation...But lets rewind a few months. Some people thought we came about this spontaneous and wild decision overnight when actually its been a thought for quite awhile. It started officially after our honeymoon in September 2018. We spent 3 weeks driving from California back to Pennsylvania and fell in love with the simplicity and ever-changing scenery that comes with road travel. The idea of having the country at our fingertips more often than just a weekend or yearly vacation attracted us to the thought of transitioning to this lifestyle full time.    Soon after our honeymoon, I (Jenn) went...

After 2 months of sanding, priming, painting, sweating (those 90 degree humid days were killer!), nailing, building and basically completing advanced acrobatic moves to do all of the above, we are so so proud to provide a tour of our new 20 foot home on wheels! So what exactly did we do to the pod? Everything! First we chose two colors to paint: a shade of white,  called Snowbound by Sherwin Williams,  to cover the brown walls, open up the space and create an illusion that it’s bigger than it truly is. We sorted through tons of gray paint and even started painting the cabinets before changing the shade to the color Nor’Easter, also by Sherwin Williams. Not sure how but unintentionally all the colors we chose had to do with winter weather...hmm... Other updates: We swapped out hardware on the cabinets from silver to black. Sold the original couch cushions and replaced them with patio furniture cushions. Designed and created a new ottoman. Wrestled with peel and stick tile to ad...