Discover a Week in the Life of Full-Time RVers - A Realistic Schedule
Find out what it’s actually like to live as a full-time RVer in this honest weekly schedule of a traveling couple who lives on the road.
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📍- Somewhere on the Road, USA
When you imagine the daily routines of people who live on the road, perhaps you think of a slow-paced lifestyle. Maybe they use the rising sun as their alarm clock, stretching as they look out their window to be reminded of what new and exciting scenery surrounds them on that particular morning. Birdsong welcomes them to the new day as they sip their morning coffee, crosslegged, on a handmade blanket atop morning dew. Not being held down by the demands of a mortgage, they have escaped the rat race and move throughout the day at a slower pace than the rest of the world.
Sorry to put this pointy little pin in that bubble of yours, but… POP!
I don’t know where the idea that traveling nomads live a slow-paced lifestyle originated from but Drew and I have been busier than ever since starting full-time RV life over a year ago. Much like life in a sticks-and-bricks home, there is always a chore looming over our heads while we travel the country, and more often than not, the views from our bedroom window are of another person’s RV.
I don’t say this to disappoint you, but rather to give you an accurate depiction of what life on the road actually looks like. I have a feeling that many people who are reading this blog are interested in transitioning into the lifestyle themselves, and if that’s you then you should be prepared for the reality of this way of life. What better way to do that than to open up our own schedules to you, and share everything that makes up a week in our lives as full-time RVers.
To set the stage, Drew and I are in our mid-20s, and travel in a 32-foot Class A Motorhome with our dog, Charlie. Drew works full-time as a software engineer for Spotify, and I work part-time as a travel blogger and freelance writer for travel magazines. The rest of my time is occupied by handling the day-to-day duties of keeping our home-on-wheels in fighting shape which allows Drew and I to explore our destinations during our free time.
As we will show you, RV life gives us amazing experiences which are only possible with a good deal of elbow grease. Some weeks have more work than play. Others are quite the opposite. The week I am sharing with you below was spent in Columbia Falls, Montana, right outside of Glacier National Park, and after we had just spent 5 days boondocking in Mount Rainier National Park. Sounds exciting right?
If I’ve managed to spark your interest, please keep reading to discover what a week in the life of full-time RVers actually looks like. You’ll find nothing but an honest depiction of our one and only week in Montana.
Everything We Did in One Week
6:30 am - We woke up this morning in a glamorous parking spot outside of a Cracker Barrel. We had left Mount Rainier National Park the night before, deciding to get a head start on our 9-hour journey to Glacier National Park. Cracker Barrel allows you to park overnight in their parking lot, so we had chosen a convenient location, about halfway through our drive.
7:00 am - I was waiting on my phone for the exact moment (8:00 AM Mountain Time) that I could purchase our vehicle permits to drive the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road for the week ahead. Like all permits in the national parks, I had a suspicion that they would sell out as soon as they become available. Indeed, my suspicion was correct. I secured our permits only seconds before all 930 spots for the day were completely gone.
7:15 am - Since it’s only polite to patronize the business that owns the parking spot we had just slept in, we took the opportunity to enjoy a filling Cracker Barrel breakfast.
8:00 am - Hit the road to head out on the second leg of this drive. We would have to locate a dump station to empty our tanks and fill up on gas at a Costco along the way.
1:00 pm - We arrived at Mountain View RV Park in Columbia Falls, Montana. We began the process of checking into the campground and began to unhook our towed Jeep, to find that the vehicle wouldn’t allow me to engage the parking brake.
This may be a bit confusing if you are unfamiliar with the process of flat towing a vehicle, but the fact that I couldn’t engage the parking brake meant that I couldn’t finish the process of engaging the drive shaft and the Jeep was stuck in tow mode. Long story short, we couldn’t start the engine and had no idea what was wrong.
2:00 pm - After fiddling with it for quite a while, I noticed that our dashboard was no longer lighting up when I put the vehicle in run mode. All at once, the circuits in my brain gained some lubrication and it occurred to me that leaving our Jeep plugged in all night the evening before must have drained the battery. Thus began the process of finding a kind gentleman who gave us a jump and finally allowed us to settle into our spot. Thanks, Dan!
3:00 pm - We finally finished parking the RV and setting up our electric, sewage, and water connections. We had plans to drive into the park this evening, but the fiasco with our Jeep put us behind schedule and we were exhausted, so we opted to start the three loads of laundry that had piled up over the past week of boondocking, and found a local sandwich shop with live music to fill our bellies and recharge our souls. It was called The Wich Haus, and they served me a delicious fried chicken sandwich the size of my face which I devoured in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
If you tell me the sight of this doesn’t make your mouth water then I simply won’t believe you.
7:00 am - Our morning routine begins around 7:00 am every day. We make coffee, do some devotionals, exercise for half an hour (hopefully), and feed the dog. On this particular morning, Drew woke up to find the news that he would be “goalie” at work, which means he is the lucky person who gets to intercept all of the direct communications from Spotify financial users and work to fix any issues they may be experiencing. It’s like unofficially being on-call and meant that he would have a lot more work to do this week than originally anticipated.
8:00 am - After a week of not being near a grocery store, we had little food in the RV, so today was restocking day! I created our weekly menu, made a shopping list, and began the weekly process of figuring out where the best grocery store would be. Lucky for me, I found a Safeway right down the road but sometimes my options are much more dismal than this.
9:00 am - We love trying local foods unique to our destinations whenever we can. Since we were in Montana this week, the land of free-range cattle, I not only grabbed all of our essentials at Safeway but also located a butcher who had locally sourced grass-fed bison so that we could make bison burgers during the week.
10:30 am - As Drew worked diligently on his end, I began some content creation computer work to automate my weekly Pinterest activity which promotes the blog. This ensures I don’t actually have to look at Pinterest every day to stay active on the platform.
12:00 pm - I spent most of the day scheduling our future travel route and reserving campgrounds for the next two months. Drew and I had made plans to fly to our hometown and visit my sister after she gives birth at the end of October. Before we actually felt comfortable booking those flights, we needed to finalize where we would fly out of and when. Thus started the long process of one of my least favorite jobs where I get to compare prices, internet coverage, availability, and location of countless RV sites along the way. It takes HOURS and I am always drained by the end of it, but my reward is getting to see a clear outline of the trajectory of our future travels.
In the end, this is what it looked like: Grand Tetons National Park > Yellowstone National Park > Salt Lake City > Capital Reef National Park > Arches & Canyonlands National Park > Denver Colorado!
6:00 pm - We had been roasting a chicken to food prep for the week and enjoyed a lovely dinner to celebrate a strong start to our week.
7:00 pm - Believe it or not, we finished our day with a few chores. We checked the tire pressure on our RV (something we like to do every few weeks because fluctuating altitude can affect tire pressure) and did a complete black tank flush (which actually isn’t as gross as it sounds but it does involve sticking a spinning hose nozzle into your toilet to rinse out all the unmentionables that have collected down there).
Of course, since we have an incredibly spoiled prince of a pup, we made sure to squeeze in some fetch before we all collectively fell into bed.
7:00 am - Insert the aforementioned morning routine here sans the exercise because my first chore of the day would be exercise enough for me.
9:00 am - Our RV and our Jeep were filthy messes from driving around the unpaved roads in remote regions of Washington state. I don’t know about you, but I am not somebody who can handle living in a mess. A messy living space equals a messy mind in my book, so I had it on my agenda to clean those suckers.
Because of the sheer size of the RV, and the fact that you have to crawl on the roof at certain points, it takes me a very long time to clean the RV. After washing the RV, washing the Jeep, and cleaning out the inside of the Jeep, the chore had sucked almost three hours out of my day!
11:30 am - On our latest drive, Drew noticed that our windshield wipers weren’t spraying out wiper fluid when prompted. We were due for something to brake in the RV (meaning it had been a few days since we fixed something else) so it was time to diagnose and cure this ailment.
After worrying it was an electrical problem, some simple digging turned up that there was simply a loose connection in the fluid line. I quickly located it, reconnected it, and secured it with some high-tech electrical tape before showering off all of these dirty jobs.
1:00 pm - Even though I had spent several hours on this job the day before, I still had to secure a few more campgrounds along our journey to Colorado. The next few hours were spent finishing up this painful chore, and beginning to research flights going to and from Denver, Colorado.
6:00 pm - Drew and I worked together to make some delicious bison burgers from the supplies I had purchased the day before. Then, after playing some fetch with Charlie in the grass, we actually took the evening off.
Maybe I’m showing off, but I almost always take a photo of the RV after it’s all squeaky clean.
8:00 am - Drew was up way before me on this day, but I saw an opportunity to sleep in a bit and I absolutely took it! I also slowed down my morning to make sure I had plenty of time to enjoy my workout and spend some extra time in my devotionals.
10:00 am - I spent some time creating a schedule for my content creation over the Instagram and Pinterest platforms. This involves combing through my videos, coming up with ideas for how to present the footage, and editing some videos that will last me through the rest of the week.
12:00 pm - It was time to send a few emails, mostly involving negotiating with several companies about product collaborations and reviews across the Discovery Detour blog and Instagram page. Aside from actually sending the emails, I like to research each company to understand their core values and make sure that we are in alignment so that I know we are a good match for collaboration.
2:00 pm - I began the process of setting up this blog that you are reading right now! Besides creating a general outline of how I wanted this to read, there is also a lot of behind-the-scenes work that makes these blogs look polished every week. This was my time to really put in that elbow grease.
3:00 pm - We FINALLY got to make it into Glacier National Park! Drew finished his work responsibilities and we packed up some healthy salad wraps for dinner, packed a cooler, and grabbed Charlie to drive Going-to-the-Sun Road, a famous 50-mile highway that bisects Glacier National Park and is generally known as one of the most beautiful drives in the world.
We anticipated it taking an hour each way, but with all of the stops we took to get out of the car and stare in bewilderment at the impressive cliff-lined valley surrounding us, it took almost TWO hours each way. It feels ironic that we drove all the way out here just to drive some more, but I would have driven way further to see this valley. It was spectacular.
7:00 pm - At the end of the drive, the sun was setting and we began to pass Lake McDonald, a gorgeous lake that runs along Going-to-the-Sun Road at the west end of the park. We couldn’t help but get out of the car and enjoy the sunset as it illuminated the lake in soft touches of lavender and marigold. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it was one of the most fantastic sunsets I had ever witnessed. It felt like we were watching God splash watercolor along the lake’s surface.
Look at how captivating this valley is! Gorgeous views like these were around every corner on this drive.
7:00 am - Our morning routine began with a bit of a twist today. One thing that we noticed since arriving in Western Montana was that there were espresso huts EVERYWHERE. Every few blocks there would be an adorable, free-standing coffee hut advertising fresh Montana espresso, and I decided that we simply couldn’t leave the area without giving it a try. The Montana Expresso hut was located right across the street from our campground so I made a quick walk over in the morning and selected a latte and an americano to sample. Latte - 8.3/10, Americano - 9/10
8:00 am - Drew and I worked to select and actually book the flights that would take us to our hometown from Denver. Phew! Something to keep in mind through this whole story is that it takes a lot of effort if you ever want to fly out of anywhere while living on the road.
9:30 am - Called around to several RV storage facilities in Denver to try and compare prices and secure a spot where we could leave our RV while we are away.
11:00 am - We are headed to a no-hookup location for the upcoming week, and I typically prepare a few meals that can be reheated during our stay when this happens. Luckily, I found a small business called GreenGo’s Homemade Meals on the Run where I could purchase some frozen homemade dishes that we could reheat for the following week. This was a Godsend because this week was already packed to the brim.
12:00 pm - I did some work assembling this blog. Essentially, I began writing assembling the story, writing the introduction section, all of the days that we had lived up until this point, and a quick outline of how I anticipated the rest of the week going.
2:00 pm - I then created and batched the visuals that would be used on Pinterest to promote this blog in the following week!
5:00 pm - Drew headed out for a haircut (always an exhilarating risk going to new haircutters around the country), and I packed up some dinner so that we could enjoy a salad while sipping on some cocktails at the nearby Glacier Distilling Company. On the way there, we even picked up some homemade Huckleberry Pie, the huckleberry being a regionally grown fruit that only grows in high elevation and must be hand-picked! Huckleberries are a Montana specialty and it was lovely to get to enjoy them while in this beautiful state. While we didn’t have time to make it back into the park today, we did get to enjoy some of the local things that make this corner of the country special.
For all my fellow whiskey lovers out there, if you ever see Glacier Distilling’s North Fork Black Label on the shelf, buy it first, and thank me later.
7:00 am - We started the day with the same old morning routine that I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about at this point.
8:30 am - Since we would be without access to a laundry machine for the next week, I did yet another laundry load to ensure we had enough underwear to last us through the next week. Is that too much information? Anyway, our closet space limits us to only the essentials so frequent trips to the laundromat are crucial.
9:30 am - I began to put the finishing touches on this blog, including adding photos, writing the SEO, and writing the weekly Discovery Detour Newsletter email that I could then set to automate on Monday when this blog will officially go live.
3:00 pm - After Drew is done with his work responsibilities we had one more opportunity to explore Glacier National Park and you best believe we took it! It was hot today, so we chose to have a peaceful swim with a packed dinner along Lake McDonald. Not only does the lake have crystal clear water, but it is also decorated with colorful stones that make its shoreline unique and instantly recognizable through a simple photograph.
8:00 pm - We return to the RV and do a few quick chores to ensure we are ready to hit the road bright and early tomorrow morning. This includes packing up our outside furniture, sweeping, doing the dishes, and generally cleaning and organizing the inside of the RV.
Unlike most glacially fed lakes, Lake McDonald is far enough downstream from the glaciers that it’s actually quite warm and makes for a pleasant swim.
4:00 am - When we have long travel days, Drew likes to get me up early… and I mean early, early. Today we face the 8-hour drive down to Grand Teton National Park and Drew drug me out of bed at 4 am. We began the process of making coffee, disconnecting all of our hookups, and connecting our Jeep to tow behind us for the journey ahead (fingers crossed that it doesn’t die this time).
5:00 am - We were now ready to hit the road and were as prepared as we ever are for the journey ahead. Along the uneventful drive Drew and I had to stop for gas several times, rest for lunch, and locate a propane filling station to refill our onboard propane. I also took some time in the passenger’s seat to research hikes and activities that we would be interested in during our week in the Tetons.
2:00 pm - We officially survived and had made it to the Gros Ventre Campground quite tired but relatively unscathed. It took a lot of work to get here, but we were excited to be in this beautiful section of the country and couldn’t wait to explore every inch of the Grand Teton Mountain Range!
Something that keeps us going is looking back on all that we’ve done in the past year. Just a week ago we were admiring the tremendous size of Mount Rainier. We are forever tired, but even more excited for the adventures to come.
We hope you enjoyed reading this realistic week in the life of a full-time, RV-living couple. Did anything surprise you? Feel free to leave comments or questions down below so that we can help future travelers together!
Thank you for joining us at Discovery Detour, where the destination is always unknown.
