When I started this blog back in June 2013 my goal was to share some things I learned as a new RVer. My oldest daughter Kyrston had been writing a blog and she walked me through how to write down my thoughts and upload some pictures. I cannot stress enough that I had no idea what I was doing. Not in writing a blog and certainly not in RVing, as we had never owned one in our life. The one thing I did know was that if I was going to write my thoughts I would be as honest as I could, even if no one ever read it.

I definitely had no idea that this new hobby would completely transform my life. That is in a relatively short period of time I would sell everything and live fulltime into a bigger RV. Throughout one of the most impactful transformations of my life I have held onto this blog. It is partly my memory keeper, partly my confessor, and still an attempt on my part to share information to others who don’t have all the answers. What is surprising to me is how well received these musings have been to other people. I will never get rich from this blog (I usually break even on costs), but every time someone reaches out and says what we wrote helped them it makes the hours I put into it worth it.

Lee and I want to sincerely thank you all very much for finding what I write interesting enough to click one million times. I wish I could do something for everyone who has hung in there with us all these years, but the best thing I could think of was to share my all time favorite posts.

1. Putting Regular Gas into a Diesel Vehicle – Arguably the most traumatic event we have experienced on the road, this post is a raw account of when Lee accidently put regular gas in our truck and killed the engine in our 1 year old truck. More than any other post I have ever written people have reached out to me about this one and many people we know now actually touch the word diesel on the gas pump before they start fueling. I know I still do it to this day and if this post helped anyone not make the same mistake this blog was totally worth it.
2. First Time in Shelter Cove – Lee and I have been so many beautiful places it is hard to pick my favorite, but if pressed I would have to say the day we drove down into Shelter Cove was overall the most beautiful. We found out about the remote location from a park ranger we were volunteering for and this isolated location was amazing. We also met a retired couple of was living there for the Park Service and I have rarely been in a place where I felt that level of peace. Check out the picture of me sitting on the tree and looking into the ocean. It really says it all.
3. Comparing the Big Five Work Kamping Jobs – After I quit my corporate job in 2015, I set off to experience all of the different work kamping jobs. After literally years of working these various jobs I was able to sit down and write a summary of those experiences. The post is chock full of detailed information and although it doesn’t have the raw emotion of some of my daily accounts I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I finished the summation. Once I start a project I will usually finish it, come hell or high water, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into with committing to working all these different jobs. Still I am glad I did it, but there were certainly days when I questioned my own sanity.
4. Eagles and Waterfalls – Not only did we spend the day with our mentors Howard and Linda, but we saw our first eagle in the wild and a gorgeous waterfall. That day for a variety of reasons really stands out in my personal memories and contains one of my all time favorite pictures of Lee and I.
5. What am I doing with my life – Speaking of sanity I have written many posts about the emotional impact of quitting my job, living fulltime in an RV, and working seasonal jobs but one of my favorites was pretty early on in Alaska. I went from a high powered corporate job to working as an admin in a small campground and did not deal with the transition well. Looking back I think those feelings given the circumstances were incredibly valid and it took some courage in those days to say them out loud.
6. Original Expectations versus Reality – Personally I am a fan of posts where I take a moment, look back and summarize my experiences. Written in 2018 I took a look at what I originally thought the life would be like and compared it to the reality. I tried to balance the positive and the negatives in this post and think I did a decent job of that. It also includes a cute puppy picture of our dog Jack which is always a value add to any post.
7. TSD Logistics Fuel Card – Because many people view individual posts from the home page it is difficult to see what the all time most seen post is, but the post with the most link hits was around using the TSD Logistics Fuel Card. In a world where fuel costs can be a prohibiting factor for travel I think this post is still very relevant plus Lee wrote most of this one. As an update we are still using the fuel card when it makes sense and recently saved 30 cents a gallon using it. If you haven’t checked out the program I highly recommend it.
8. What Lee will do to ride in a helicopter – This post was about Lee’s heart attack when we were gate guarding. I think this truly was one of the most traumatic event of our lives so much so that Lee and I were both diagnosed with PTSD months later when we continued to have issues processing it. This post is also the one that has the most all time comments and the support of the community was incredibly helpful to us at such a difficult time.
9. First Time Gate Guarding Day 27-29 – I asked Lee what his favorite posts were so I could add them to the list and he said the ones where I went out on a limb and was emotionally open. He said the comments were a good way to see how these posts resonated with people so I went back and looked and this post stood out. I have written dozens of daily posts about work kamping jobs but for some reason this one really spoke to people. I think it’s because Lee added some really funny comments to this one 🙂
10. Yellowstone – Canyon Village – We have been lucky to have had several near perfect days in our travels and it is hard to pick just one, so I will pick the most recent.

Once again Lee and I would like thank all of you for following along. This blog is truly a labor of love, but having other people find it enjoyable has certainly made it worthwhile.

We very much appreciate your support of our blog

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itunes