Nine years ago we quit our jobs, sold our house, got rid of virtually everything we owned and hit the road traveling fulltime in a motorhome pulling a Honda CR-V for secondary transportation. Our plan was to travel two years and before we got out of our home town of Louisville we had decided to travel five years. At the five year mark we had a serious discussion and decided to extend our fulltime traveling to ten years so we upgraded to a larger motorhome and since then we bought a new CR-V. We will soon be into our tenth year of fulltiming so it is time to reflect on the past and future.

To us fulltiming means living "and" traveling fulltime in a RV. It does not mean living in a RV in one place most of the year and it does not mean living in one spot in the north six months and one spot in the south six months. Our motorhome has wheels and the tires get itchy sitting in the same place month after month.

Fulltiming is not a vacation or a series of vacations - it is a lifestyle and it is not for most people. One must give up their job, their house, most of their stuff and their old friends. But the exciting part is living anywhere we want in the USA, Canada and Mexico, seeing different scenery every day, eating different foods, learning different cultures and making new friends. We have met many fulltimers who thought fulltiming was similar to extended vacations and traveled that way and failed.

One pending fulltiming couple visited us in our motorhome and asked how they can live in such a small space because they can't stand to be in the same room together - honest. If they tried to fulltime they would fail after one month because your spouse has to be you best friend to make fulltiming successful. One woman emailed me that she and her husband had planned for many years to fulltime after retirement and recently she had installed a beautiful hardwood floor in their kitchen and dining room and she can't stand to leave it. This woman asked my advice and all I could say was for her to guard that floor with her life. Don't let children or pets walk across that floor, keep a dust mop handy in case a speck of dust settles on it, don't cook because splatters might get on the floor, and above all, sit and enjoy your beautiful floor the rest of your life.

We are not wealthy and we live on a fixed income so inflation has entered our lifestyle. In the last 3-4 years campground fees have doubled, fuel has tripled, groceries and restaurants have increased and I can't think of anything that has decreased. Several months ago Linda and I had a meeting of the minds and decided fulltiming is too great of a lifestyle to give up so we will continue to travel.

I will list just a few of the things we have done in the last month. We traveled with friends from Indiana to South Dakota and spent almost a week touring the scenic Black Hills. We attended a large rally in Wyoming with many more friends, made several new friends and had outings and cookouts. We teamed up with Rich and Diane Emond and visited Little Bighorn Battlefield and Glacier National Park both in Montana. We attended the Calgary Stampede and toured Calgary.

Then we spent eleven days in one of the most beautiful places on Earth - the Canadian Rocky Mountains. While there we hiked beside rivers, drove through valleys with snow capped mountains, visited glacier fed lakes, visited icefields and walked on a glacier, hiked a canyon to a waterfalls and took a gondola to the top of a mountain for one of the most beautiful views in North America. We watched elk play in a river, watched a bear cub climb a tree and then return to mother, and watched a wolf stalk a squirrel, catch and eat it all within twenty feet of our eyes.

Yes, fulltiming is a lifestyle and we can not give it up. If we lived in a house, an apartment or condo we would see the same views every day and the same people, eat in the same restaurants and drive the same roads. To us that would be boring so we will continue to travel fulltime.