Hi,

For years, I looked with envy at the solo female traveler who had the courage to GO (I was an early fan of enigmatic nomadic and, later, CRVL). 

I just had my 50th birthday. I simply cannot go on being trapped in the culture of MORE and the demands of a corporate job. My daughter passed away suddenly a few weeks ago; Living on the road is something that I NEED to do to save my soul.   I spent years climbing the ladder and, in the end, it was all so meaningless. I have no one to leave my "things" to now. 


I am in the process of selling/donating my possessions in preparation for a life on the road. I have money to sustain me for years if I live simply (monthly expenses averaging $800-1K). I also have the ability to make money working remotely in my field on a consultant basis if unexpected expenses arise. I will be starting in SUV that I own (no payment). I want the ability to park anywhere. And a travel trailer is not something I want to deal with right now.  Whatever I decide on long-term, it will be called Rabbit ... for my daughter. Her name was Jessica. She was a beautiful redhead. (i attached our pic together) 

Please share resources and words of encouragement. My friends and family think I am losing it. In reality, I am getting closer to the life I have truly always wanted. I want to see you all at Quartzsite!  

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Hi everyone! I'm a researcher at the Allard School of Law, and we're looking into the experience of people living in vans and RVs in Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver. With COVID, we're interested in how all the new policies have impacted people's living situations.

If you're in Montréal, Toronto, or Vancouver and you're interested in sharing your experiences, would you be willing to fill out this survey? https://forms.gle/zMBnGevKiWQnbdRV9

It should take less than 15 minutes, and doesn't require any personal information (although you can choose to share your email at the end if you want to do a follow-up interview). There are also more details on the first page of the survey itself, which you can check out without committing to doing the survey.

I'm cross-posting this to a few different forums, but if anyone has suggestions for other places to circulate this, I'd appreciate it! 

Thanks!!

Looks like they shut down overnight parking

https://drivinvibin.com/2021/06/08/cabelas-rv/

Can post your services here

https://rverjobexchange.com/candidates/

Thought this could be useful

https://rverjobexchange.com/jobs/

check your smart phones for your max picture size and let me know and i will bump up the max attachment size so folks can post pictures easier,right now the jpeg,jpg are set at 3mb max

Figure I might as well contribute a tip



My partner recently gave me a school bus as an early birthday present. Together we are going to build it into an RV. One of the biggest challenges facing so-called skoolie builds is getting the whole rig legal. Many states present a bunch of red tape to cut through, but there is one state that makes it easy. They’ll even mail your new plates to your current address. Yes, Vermont will register almost anything, even without a title.


https://jalopnik.com/my-bus-has-plates-b...1845700048

Ok, this is one of main reasons I joined this forum the other day.  I need to pick your brains.

Way back when, around 20 years ago, I did what I call a "controlled descent" into homelessness(see my intro post for more details).
Anyways, before I wound up buying an old RV, I had seriously considered just buying a full size van to live in.  Problem?  I had called
several insurance companies, and none of them would insure the van for me to live in, telling me that it was technically illegal to live in your vehicle, UNLESS it was an RV.  OhhhhKayyy, so much for THAT idea.   

I then looked into RV insurance, which turned out to be no panacea, either.  First off, I was told I HAD to have a 2nd vehicle, that I CANNOT have the RV as my ONLY vehicle.  Again, OhhhhKayyy, inconvenient and expensive, but not an insurmountable obstacle, in and of itself.
But WAIT!  There's MORE!   I told the insurance company that I planned to live in it F/T(ok, no problem), and just leave it parked at work, (PROBLEM).  They said I cannot take it to work or even just park it at work unless I got *commercial* RV insurance.(ok, I was willing to pay the rather substantial increase in insurance premium, if that's what it took).  Problem? There was NO SUCH THING as *F/T* commercial RV insurance.  Talk about a Catch-22!

So, not wanting to get into even a whiff of potential allegations of insurance fraud, here's what I did: I got regular F/T RV insurance, picked up the RV near Buffalo, drove it back to Long Island, parked it in my employer's fenced-in yard, took the plates off, turned them in to DMV, mailed the receipt to my insurance company, and took the RV off the road - about 1 month after I bought it.  A few weeks later, a spot opened up in a commercial storage yard next door, and I parked the RV there so my employer could no longer hijack me on my day off.  I wasn't allowed to live in it at the time there, but by that time, I had sold my moped, and bought a Ford conversion van - you know, not an RV, but had a comfortable electric bed in the back, so I lived in that on the street for a few weeks.

That was about 20 years ago.  Has anything changed?  Has the insurance market adapted by offering a specialized product tailored to non-RV van dwellers?  You know, like insurance companies now offer reasonably-priced add-ons to your regular car insurance if you're driving for Lyft and Uber?  And if you're F/Ting it in your van, what do you use for a garaging address?

Just joined this forum the other day.

You could say I'm on hiatus from vehicular living - I've been living in (more or less )"normal" housing for the past 6 or so years.
My entry into the wild world of vehicle dwelling actually began about 20 years ago, and was more an act of desperation than anything else.
Let's put it this way: "Ya had to be there".  It's actually a pretty harrowing tale, involving ebay, credit cards, ebay again, more credit cards,
Amtrak, (passing out from exhaustion and almost accidentally winding up at the Canadian border without a passport), a return trip via a
`73 Dodge, 19' class C RV in unknown/questionable condition, a stop 60 miles east to pick up the *required*(by my insurance company) 2nd
"vehicle", an `83 Suzuki class B moped, and finally, the long, nail-biting, woozy-from-lack-of-sleep trip "home", back to Long Island, stopping WAY too many times for gas(turns out this little piggie got only 4mpg!), praying my credit cards kept working(they did), praying the RV didn't break down(it sorta did, but it was super-minor and by that time I had made it to Nassau County, LI), and in general, praying the trip would be uneventful(uhm, not quite - a gentle encounter between the right side of my RV - where the humongous, built-in propane tank valve was located, and a guard rail at about 50mph caused a stream of sparks, which I could see in my right-side mirror in the night).  Fortunately, nothing Bad happened.  I was woozy from being up for 36 hours and counting, and would've stopped in one of the many rest areas I passed on the way down, but it was quite cold, I only had the coat that I was wearing, no blankets, and couldn't grep getting the heat going in the RV, so just chose to keep going.  Turns out, the propane heater didn't work(same with the fridge), but the propane tank was full, and if I had the presence of mind at the time, I could have simply fired up 1 or 2 of the burners on the stove, and caught some ZZzzzz at a rest area.  Live and learn I guess.

Anyways, I made it back to Suffolk County, relieved to be back in home territory, tempered by the realization that I was now, Officially homeless for the first time in my 40-something years.

The "adventure" didn't end there, though.  "Part Deaux" was just beginning.

Anyways, I'm rambling and will stop now.  My name is Paul and I'm currently on eastern Long Island.

Hi all. I hope I am doing this right, I don't know much about proper forum etiquette. I am an older women - retired - and should have left years ago. But living in my van is on my bucket list so I can leave a bad relationship and head from the east coast to the west coast. I want to boon dock in my current state (upstate NY) first, but unsure where I can park (free) on state land that would be legal. DEC website isn't crystal clear about this, I don't want primitive camping I just want to park at night & stay in my van. I live 25 miles north of Binghamton NY in Chenango county - plenty of state land but the parking "privileges" I need don't seem to exist according to the DEC website or they just don't provide the information for "vehicle camping". Is there anybody familiar with my territory? Thanks