Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Well, hi there, and welcome back to the Midlife Happiness project. And as always, I have brought another fabulous guest today. It is my new friend, Frank. Welcome to the show, Frank.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Hi, Sarah. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. So Frank is a relatively recent retiree who worked in Silicon Valley as an engineer, and he's happily married and he has two daughters who have fled the nest that would qualify him as an empty nester. And he's joining us today to talk about something that no other guest has spoke to us about. Very interesting. Myself, I know nothing about. And that thing, that thing that we always talk about with every guest, the thing that makes you happy at this really unique time in your life. And on that note, Frank, what is your thing?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Sarah, my thing is rv camping and the rv lifestyle.
We've had three rvs, so I'm not really a newbie in rvs. The lifestyle is excellent. It's part of my retirement plan. And I took it on as a retirement plan after having won and I did a trip across country. I'll talk more about that in a minute.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Wow.
That's a commitment.
The only experience I have with anything to do with rv camping is I have a very dear friend. She went to a beach town. We met her for a day. We hung out outside her rv, and that was about the extent of it. So I really don't know much about it, but I do know a lot of people are into this, especially after Covid, that much I know. But let me start with this. How is it that you discovered this rv camping lifestyle?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: That's a very interesting question.
I happened to find myself, my wife and my daughter and our cat in Fort Lauderdale. We were living on a boat for a little while and we had to get home to California. And we said, how are we going to do this? And I suggested we buy an rv in Tampa, unload the boat onto the rv and the family and drive across country. And that's the first trip we did, the first rv we had. And it was fabulous. We had such a great time doing that. That's how we got started in rvs. We started in the Florida keys and we drove up the east coast, all the way up to Boston again. We had our cat, our daughter and ourselves in the rv.
We got rid of the daughter. She flew home from Boston and we drove across into Niagara Falls, Toronto, Dakota, saw the presidents into Yellowstone National park, down through Utah, down to California, and we got home and everybody survived.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Before I let you go on anymore, I have to say, I have to ask this question for any woman listening to this program, program right now. So what you're telling me is you needed to get from Florida to California. You just spur of the moment sort of decide and mention to your wife, hey, let's buy an rv. And she says, sure, sure.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: She actually was the one.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Who helped us find an rv. Now, I, I will say this might not be for everybody.
A lot of people we know, they ask this question, what's it like to live in an rv? And they cannot do this. Now, we had lived on a boat for a little bit, so we knew the lifestyle of living in a pretty small area, small quarters, and it really worked for us. Really worked very well. But a lot of people, they don't like the outdoors that much. They don't like the cramped area. But for me and my wife, we love having our own bed, our own pillows, go at our own pace, go to fabulous places that we don't, might not get the opportunity to see otherwise.
That's when we said, this is now part of my retirement plan. In the future, we will buy more rvs until we get exactly the one that suits us very well. And we're going to go and explore America. And that's why we are doing it right now. America is fantastic. There is so much to see. And if you see it at a pace that you can relax, enjoy it, I think that is one of the best ways of doing it. And it's economical as well, too.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: I really think this is interesting because you're right. I never thought about this. But when you're an rv, you're constantly transitioning from one place to the other. And even if you have one destination, you're inevitably going to see other things along the way that you hadn't necessarily planned. And I think of the traveling we do. You know, everything is very structured. You arrive at a certain time, you leave. Everything is, has an itinerary. And so I guess with your, with traveling this way, you probably have seen and had some experiences that you had no plan for.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. And as an example, one time we were down somewhere in Utah.
We were just driving along, going from one place to another to keep, keep moving on our destination. And my wife said, turn right here. And we're in the middle of a desert. And I go, where are we going? She says, doesn't matter. Keep going along this road. And she had seen on the map the rock formation where they filmed close encounters of the third kind, if you remember the big rock formation.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Were the aliens. And we just had no plans to see it, but she saw it on a map, and off we went into the desert and stayed there that night under the stars, right underneath that rock formation. And it was incredible.
And so when we travel now, we give ourselves as much time as you need. We normally used to do about two to 300 miles a day when we were crossing America. But now, even if you stop after 100 miles, don't go fast. Take your time. If there's something very interesting, slow down, find a place to stay and enjoy it. And it really is something that works for us.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: It kind of baby steps, too, right? I noticed that there's a lot of these rentals, so maybe for the average person out there is like, I don't know if I'm ready to purchase something like this, but I do. See, we just went to Joshua Tree, and that was sensational. And we noticed that there were a lot of these rented rvs. There were a lot of people. So I guess that would sort of be baby steps.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. If you've never done it, I would say rent an rv, try it for a weekend, try it for a week.
When we use our rv, we try and get one major trip a year in now, and that trip can be a month, two months, three months, even living out of an rv, we are so comfortable with ours. We love it, and we can.
But the actual more fun part is we have a neighbor that has the same rv as us, and we might just go for a weekend over to the beach from where we live, and we just find a campsite, camp with them, have some fun. They cook breakfast, we cook dinner, and we go hiking, and then we go home. And that is a big part for us, is just, let's get out of the house, let's just go away for three days, two days, go down to the central coast, and it's been great. That's how we use the rv right now.
And for me, it's also an emergency vehicle. If something happens in California, wildfires, earthquakes, I've got another house on wheels I can use immediately and just drive down to the parking lot of Lenardi's and hang out there and watch my house burn up. Hopefully not.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: So as much as I can appreciate that it gives you this flexibility to be spontaneous and say, let's just get in the rv and go and see where we end up. At the same time, can you speak to kind of the logistics, what's involved? So you buy yourself an rv or you rent yourself an rv, you have this plan that you want to go somewhere. I assume you don't just show up at a campground and there you have it.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: No, no.
That's actually one of the biggest problems with an rv. And during COVID everybody was, oh, I've got to get out of the house.
I'll buy myself an rv. And then they found out it's really difficult to get camping spots. Sometimes.
The biggest logistic, if you want to go to a place like Yellowstone or Yosemite, Yosemite we were trying to get into, that's booked out a year in advance. And so you don't go to Yosemite. You go to a campsite outside Yosemite and then you drive in during the day.
There are a few tricks that we have learned, and one of them is, well, book ahead if you've got, if you've got the time to do that. A company called Harvest Hosts is a wonderful company that they have people like wineries, golf courses, farmers who will allow you to camp on a piece of land in there on their property. And all they ask for is a winery. Come and have a tasting of our winery. You become a member of harvest host. It's about $100 a year, and you have all these extra places to stay.
And we have met a lot of really cool people out in the middle of a field, in a winery or at a farmhouse. Some of them are brewery in the middle of town, and they give you part of their parking lot.
That is one thing about finding different places. The other thing you can do is what they call boondocking. Just stay in a place that's free.
Home Depot. I've stayed in the Home Depot parking lot. They go, of course you can stay here.
Walmart used to allow a lot of people to do this.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Just don't leave a mess, but stay and come in and buy something in the morning. And it works for, if you're a little bit inventive, you can really work your way around the country and always have a place to stay.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: So I like that. So if you're creative, resourceful, I think open minded, and you strike me as somebody who sort of rolls with things, so to speak, that this could be something that people would really appreciate.
I suspect there are things that happen along the way that you didn't plan for.
Can you share a story? Can you think of anything that may have happened that maybe didn't work out quite according to plan and maybe it wasn't the best trip ever, but looking back on it, it makes for a good story.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Well, part of the trip we did when we had our first rv driving across America.
We were in the campsite one night, and I heard this bang as if a kid have throwing a softball against the side of the rv. We end out checked everything out, and it looked okay. Everything was fine. So we started driving the next day, and at the end of the day, I noticed a noise, and one of our back tires had blown out the night before.
Now there's four tires. Okay, there's four tires on the back of the rV, and one of them on the inside had. The valve had blown out. We drove 300 miles and never noticed. But at the end of that day, we had shredded that tire completely. So then we had to stop and find a place to fix it. And that's part of, that's part of the travel lifestyle. If something breaks down, you really need to find a town and go fix it somewhere. Again, part of this, Sarah, I think, is some people, it just that lifestyle wouldn't suit them. You know, they like being, there's a hotel at the end of the day. There's a nice shower at the end of the day. Although I love our shower, our shower is fantastic on the rv. And, you know, they can go to a resort and they prefer that, but for us, and we do that, too, we go to resorts, and my wife loves certain things, going for a spa, spa treatment, but she also loves being outdoors, watching the stars. We are very comfortable with putting about a week's worth of food in the fridge heading out. We have solar panels on our rv heading out somewhere, and we actually don't go shopping for about a week. We eat out of the rv, especially if we're traveling for a month, and then we have a night out for dinner in a nice town if we see something and then carry on our camping trip. So there's a lot of flexibility in the rv world, but you just have to roll with it sometimes.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Right? And I think that's a great exercise for people, though. You know, I think people get so used to, like you say, staying at a hotel, having all their creature comforts, and that's all great. But sometimes when you push yourself to go outside that comfort zone, you know, like RV just being one example. But there's many examples of things like that where people think, I don't know, I wasn't expecting it, but I really enjoyed it.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: The other thing I wanted to pick your brain about is, and I know this is a big part of this sort of rv camping lifestyle, as you're calling it, which is, and again, this is just another component of what about this brings you happiness.
But can you share with us about sort of the social part of this? Because I do know that on these campsites, there's obviously you are hanging out with and parked next to people who've made the same sort of life choices, certainly with regard to how they spend their free time. And can you tell us a bit about that?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: It's fascinating, the people you meet just in campgrounds, but harvest host actually is one of the few places where we've met more people.
As an example, we were coming down through Montana on one trip, and we said, we found a farmyard where they hosted campers and rv people. And after dinner, they said, come to our. We had a big fireplace, a fire pit. Come to our dinner. If you want to bring a bottle of wine and share that, feel free.
And we just sat around this fire pit talking to people, what they're doing, where they're going.
And it's amazing what people are doing out there and the kind of life that they're leading. And I think this is part of our lifestyle. The rv lifestyle is actually going to different places, seeing different people and the way they live, different towns. I mean, especially coming across America, there's certain places that you go, wow, these people are poor, but they're happy.
And you might never get that opportunity staying at home or just flying to a resort as an example.
We always try and make friends.
And a lot of campgrounds now, you don't turn on your music at 1030 at night, everybody goes to bed. It's quiet time after 10:00 but we've come across some really neat people as we just drive around. But it's the different places, I think, for me, that I enjoy most.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: I can certainly appreciate this idea of getting off the beaten path. You know, even if you stay at a hotel, chances are, you know, you stay at a resort, you know, you're probably being told by the concierge, oh, you should go check this out. And you get a cab and you're doing the same thing. It's all been curated for you. Despite the fact that you think you're having this unique, authentic experience. And it's clear that doing something like this, you quite literally are curating your own trip on your own terms and embracing all the people and the things and the food and the sights and sounds that you had no idea about. But again, you're open minded about it and say, if we meet some interesting people, and here's the other thing that I have to say about sort of the social part of it, which my husband and I, we like to, when we travel, we like to think of sort of where we can go where we have a real adventure, rather than just where do we go to relax and have a nice meal, although that's clearly lovely as well. But it's this sense of adventure that inevitably takes us to places where we meet people of all ages, where we have always said in retrospect, you know, gee, where would we ever have met those people had we not done this? Because we all are in our own little communities, and you love your neighbors, and, you know, you see the same people on a daily basis. You have your friends, your social group. And I think it's just human nature that we tend to sort of gravitate to that, and that's kind of what's comfortable and what feels safe. But definitely when you get outside of that and you do meet people that like you say they might be, you see poverty in a way you never did. But at the same time, these people could be happy in their own way, doing things, going about life in a different way. It's fascinating.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: It's up to you.
My wife says I'm very outgoing. I cannot stop talking to some people. So it's very easy for me just to walk up to people and go, hey, would you have a cup of sugar? And by the way, where are you going and what have you done? And since we were living on the boat before, we got into the habit of talking to people or the people we stayed in or beside. And it was something that has gone a long way in opening up some very interesting stories from people, what they do, how they live. And it's become part of our travel routine. Ask questions, go ahead and walk next door and say, hey, would you like a beer? I'm about to sit down and have one.
And for me, that's really part of the fun, is meeting new people as well as going to new places.
It's one of the nicest things, too, is just the comfort that you take with you.
And there was one episode where I said to myself, I will never go in a tent and sleep on dirt again in my life. And that was in Yellowstone. We were gone in there in the campsite for the night. It was pretty cold. We met a french family who came in at campsite next door to us. We spoke to them. They were very nice. They were just visiting the US.
They told us where they lived and their lifestyle, and they had two kids, and they put up some tents and they went to sleep, and we said good night, and we went to sleep. And in the middle of the night we're going, what is that noise? And if it started raining and hailing in the middle of the night and I felt so bad for the people in the tents. We were so comfortable and that poor family got waterlogged and were freezing. Picked up camp at 05:00 in the morning and they left and we felt so bad. But I. That was the point. I go, I'm not going to go and sleep in the tent anymore in my life.
I'm hooked in rvs.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: So rvs, it sounds like. I mean, for, again, a lot of people listening and watching this and I have to say, I was in this boat until just recently, have no idea how luxurious some of these rvs can be. I think most people who aren't familiar think it's just a box with a bed that you pull from the wall, maybe. And there's a sink and a mini fridge and there you have it. But clearly there are different tiers.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Now. You get the little camper vans and they literally have a bed, a little sink you pull from the wall and maybe. And a toilet, perhaps our one. And we really love. It's 24ft long. It has got a fabulous shower, toilet, a fridge will you can stock for a week.
And they have the pop outs which extend the side of the rv. It moves out. That is one of the biggest things that really make it comfortable. You get all the space you need to live in it. As I said, we've lived in hours for two months at a time and we've never felt cramped today.
The amenities, we have a generator, we have solar panels, we have our own tv.
We can make coffee first thing in the morning with a Keurig. I have an inverter. And it really is something that you're taking your house with you. I often used to say I feel like a snail. I've got my house on my back. I'm not going very fast to get places. I'm just gonna move along a little bit every day and find new places.
I'm self sufficient most of the time, but then I can stop and go to a nice restaurant if I see it for lunch or dinner. And just life is good.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: One other thing, by the way, do your daughters. What's that?
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Oh, we take our pets with us too. And if you're ever gone trying to travel and you have pets, it's really difficult to find people to look after your pets. When we jump in the rv, we take. We have a dog and a cat. We put them both on the rv and they've got their places. They sleep in the rv at nighttime. And that for us is the family is going, we're off. We go for a trip for a weekend, a week, and it's like a little, again, our house, it goes with us. And that's what I enjoy a lot.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: I think this is great. And I think for the people watching and or listening to this today, the big takeaway is what I'm getting from you is if you have an adventurous spirit, if you love the great outdoors, if you love meeting new people, you're open to experience good, bad or otherwise, and you just want to embrace life and frankly, the country that this is something you should definitely consider. And I have to say, your energy, your enthusiasm, it's contagious. I can absolutely get from you that this is something that makes you really, really happy. And I think it's fabulous also that you have a life partner who's right on your same page because, you know, sometimes one, this might be too much for somebody and you think, oh, well, this is a partnership. We have to both go into this together. So I think it's great that you, you guys are both on the same page and you're definitely up for adventure. And I think. I think it's going to be really eye opening for a lot of people. Absolutely. And I am so, so delighted that you are our guest today, Frank. And who knows? Maybe one day I'll see you on the road in an rv.
I'm up for it. Who knows?
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yep. Sarah, you summed that up perfectly. It is, for me, an excellent way to do what I've talked about. See America, have a great time. I am very lucky that my wife loves to do this as well. A few things that people don't take into account. You can stop and move into a hotel for a night or two if you're just fed up of going on the road. The other thing to do is you can leave your rv in the middle of the country. You can drive halfway across the country and go, okay, I've had enough. I want to go home, park it for a month or two and then fly back out and pick it up and continue your journey.
A lot of people go, oh, I'm kind of stuck with this. But there's many alternatives to actually make the trip more comfortable for everybody and, you know, get out of the rv if that's something that is not working for both of you at one stage, no, but you summed everything up very well for me. That it's a lifestyle I think people should try. A lot of people have tried it, and then they've gone back to work. And that's okay. I've done that, too.
But again, I'm on my third rv. We found the right size that suits my wife and I and our dog and cat, and we're going to continue doing this until we can.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Love that. Well, it's been a delight talking to you. I love your energy, your spirit.
It's really exciting. I can tell how happy it makes you. And thank you again for being a guest on our show. So much appreciated. And until next time, thank you again. We'll see you for another episode of the Midlife Happiness Project.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Thanks, Sara.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Meeting Frank and hearing about his passion for road trips has led me to do a little research.
According to a survey by progressive insurance, Rving has grown by 62% over the last 20 years. And remarkably, now 11.2 million households own rvs. That works out to be one in twelve households. Also kind of surprising, half of all Rvers are 18 to 44 years old. And as more people are working remotely in this post Covid world of ours, it appears that more workers are taking to the road. In fact, 54% of all Rvers are active, remote workers.
And as an additional side note, 63% of rvers travel with their dog. Just like Frank, it is clear that the pull of the open road and the amazing sights that America has to offer is attracting more and more people like Frank to this rv lifestyle. So if you're hungry for excitement and you're open to a road trip, maybe, just maybe, an rv adventure is in your future.
Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again for the midlife Happiness project.
