Answering Your RV Questions: Internet, Pets, Gear & More

1. Do you have to stay under 30ft?

No. The 30-foot number is the length of your rig. Many people have heard that you won't get anywhere you want to go if you're not under 30ft. Is that true? Yes. In some national parks, especially the older ones out west, their campgrounds are tent campgrounds that have been converted for use for RVs, so they're really small.

However, that's fine. All of those national parks are surrounded by campgrounds. So if you can't stay in the park, you can get outside and spend your day there. So don't worry about 30ft. Worry about comfort, especially if you're going full-time.

2. Do you grill and have campfires and s'mores every night?

We've had five campfires in 22 months of full timing. We only do campfires when people come over and want to hang out outside.

We don't like s'mores, but we do grill a lot. We have lots of other ways to eat, too. We use a Blackstone, which isn't technically a grill. It's a griddle. It's fantastic because they do fajitas and eggs and stuff you can't do on a grill.

3. How do you get the Internet?

We have an old grandfathered-in AT&T plan that has unlimited data on a hotspot device. After they discontinued this plan three years ago, we got it a month before we started. That's what we have.

There are a lot of resources out there about how to get the Internet online or on the road, and it's one of the hardest things.

4. Do you need all that extra gear you just bought?

A new RV, sewer hoses, water hoses, all of the stuff that we make videos about. Do you need all that? Yes, you do. You can't do RV comfortably without all of it.

Your RV will come with a power cord, and that's it. If you've watched any of our videos on campsite setup tips and setup mistakes, all that stuff is used daily to make life easy.

5. Is Thousand Trails worth it?

Absolutely. I do not know how people full time without it. Other than our friends that boondock all the time, if you like to stay in parks, you have to get Thousand Trails. I mean, you have to.

We are not boondockers, so since we started using Thousand Trails in Las Vegas in April 2018, as of tomorrow, we will have used 334 days at $0 a night. We pay a membership fee monthly, but it is way cheaper than anything else.

6. Why do you change your residence domicile?

When we left, we were Virginians, and we changed our domicile to Texas.

From a monetary perspective, Texas and Florida both have no income tax and no personal property tax, whereas in Virginia, every six months, we'd get a tax bill on the cars we've owned for five years. There's none of that in Texas or Florida.

We chose Texas originally not only for the homeschooling stuff but because registering vehicles is super cheap in Texas; otherwise, we would have picked Florida. We switched to Florida last week.

7. What do we need to know to travel with pets?

So we have one dog, but as far as pets are concerned, take them to the vet and update their shots.

Make sure that the rabies shot is up to date. Get the three-year one. Make sure you have a paper that says they have the rabies shot. Some RV parks ask for that. When you take your pet to get groomed, they need that documentation.

We also use a Waggle RV pet monitor to keep our pets safe.

8. What do you wish you had known when you started?

We have a laundry list of what we wish we knew and mistakes to avoid. Don't use the crappy, awful Walmart RV toilet paper. Use anything that's one-ply. Anything that says septic safe. Just use a lot of water.

Buy Turkish towels. Oh, my goodness, get them. We've got five towels on one towel bar that dry fantastically.

Use quilts, not comforters. We have found that having a quilt is so much easier than having a big poofy comforter. They wash and dry faster, especially if you use a little tiny washer-dryer combo unit.

Get an induction cooktop. This is kind of a new thing for us this time around. It's fantastic. It's a great way to cook inside using free electricity because it's included in your campground rent. It also does not introduce a lot of heat into your rig while you're cooking. They are way more efficient.

Bring a good vacuum. Last time, we had a little Dirt Devil kind of thing. Trying to get up hair or anything stuck in the rug is nonexistent with the Dirt Devil. So bring a real vacuum. If you can fit a real vacuum with spin rotors, get that.

Don't treat full timing like a vacation. If you need to spend all day inside, it's okay. You don't have to be out and about daily while you're full-time. The main thing I like to tell people is this is not a vacation vehicle. This is our house. We move it where we want to go.

Do get the second AC unit. If you're buying a rig, add the second AC unit. We didn't have one in the first rig. We have it in this one. It's like 100 degrees in Florida, and we're fine inside. If you have the option, add it.

Finally, do not be afraid to customize and make your rig comfortable for your family. Change out furniture, change window coverings, and put things on the walls, using Command stuff.

More RV questions?

The full-time RV life is a learning experience. What RV questions do you have? Drop them in the comments below for experienced RVers to answer.