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RV Living

Beets a Bust

November 12, 2019 By Mike Leave a Comment

When we started this 90-day trial we knew we were taking some huge risks. Sandra and I have worked for other people at 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. jobs our whole lives. It hasn’t really gotten us anywhere. Anybody else have the same sentiments?

You would be surprised how many people in this country do something called work camping. They take seasonal jobs in the winter to make enough money to hold them over for the summer while working at a campgrounds. You have no housing expenses, so if you have additional income producing strategies you can literally live very cheap.

One of the jobs we decided to try was the Sugar Beet Harvest. I want to start by saying the people at American Crystal Sugar Company are some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to work for. They were courteous and fair, but this was a complete bust for us financially and forced us to come home three weeks early due to uncontrollable weather conditions. We should have made around $9,000.00, we actually made about $600.00.

The job itself was not hard physically, you are working on a piling station with this huge machine that unloads dump trucks of beets that are being harvested from the fields. We would take the ticket from the truck driver, put our site number on the ticket and watch as the machine did its job. Then we would pull the trucks forward and dump the dirt they produced through a conveyor back into their truck and direct them around the piler. It was easy, but it was 12 hours on your feet non-stop work. If I ever do it again, I will invest in some memory foam boots. Also, it gets cold in North Dakota in October, so you are wearing 20 lbs. of extra clothes, it is not a job for the faint of heart. I think I forgot to mention we started at 8:00 p.m. and worked until 8:00 a.m. Ugh!

The weather was the real factor in this being a bust for us. We arrived in North Dakota on September 23, 2019 and attended orientation the next day. We should have started October 1, 2019. It rained for three straight days and flooded the Red River Valley that week. All in all, we worked one full day over the two week period. The day we left, Tuesday, October 8, 2019, I had to make a judgment call. A storm that dropped 24 inches of snow in Montana and Wyoming was making its way towards us camping in North Dakota. I knew if we got that much snow it would destroy the crops and we would be snowed in for two weeks or more. I woke Sandra up after our one and only day to work and told her to start packing we were leaving. She was not happy with me, but I knew this could get bad for us.

It took us a few hours to get everything loaded, after letting American Crystal Sugar Company know we were leaving and would not be working anymore this season, we departed the campground at 5:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. We drove south as fast as we could, and judging by the wind speeds we were facing we made a good decision. Towns in North and South Dakota are few and far between, and If you have ever owned a diesel truck you know that gas gauges are a best guess situation. We were climbing a steep hill in South Dakota only 27 miles from the next gas station when it happened. The truck sputtered, then begin to die. The gauge said I had almost a quarter of a tank, but I knew it was probably running out of diesel. I could see the steam rising off of Sandra’s forehead, then I reminded her that I had a five-gallon gas tank in the back full of diesel, so in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere and freezing to death I poured the last bit of diesel into the truck hoping this was the problem. I hopped into my seat and said a little prayer; the truck cranked and we made it to the next gas station. Thank God!

About two o’clock that morning we stopped at a rest area and climbed into our camper and locked the doors. We slept until we were awoken by a dog fight between our two pups, Smiley and Mac. Mac has a bit of a temper, and apparently Smiley stepped on him in the middle of the night. Nothing like waking up in a rest area too dogs freaking out. After some screaming and whipping dog butts, we started driving around 5:00 a.m. because we weren’t out of the path of the storm yet. We drove until we pulled up in our campground in York, Nebraska about 9:00 a.m. What a night, but we escaped the blizzard.

The next part is the saddest part of the whole ordeal for me. Many of the friends we made stayed, and they were basically stuck. I think they may have worked two more days in the season. The harvest was a big loss for the American Crystal Sugar Company. They had to finally quit harvesting with much of their product still in the ground. This article from the Miami Herald explains the situation, American Sugar Ends Red River Valley Sugar Beet Harvest.

Things that I learned, or was reminded of, during this ordeal were:

  1. We should appreciate farmers in this country more than we do. Every time a kid driving a dump truck, who couldn’t be older than 16, would dump a load at 3:00 a.m. trying to help his parents farm get there crop out before the storm made my heart sank. These people work hard to make sure we have food and products on our tables and in our pantries.
  2. I miss my Father in Law, not many people know this, but I farmed with my father in law, Robert Davis for a few years when Sandra and I first were married. He poured his life into me for a short period and instilled a work ethic and can-do attitude that I still have today.
  3. Life is about making hard decisions, and no decision is actually making a decision. My wife was furious at me for leaving with no notice, but looking back we both laughed this morning about how glad we are we got the hell out of there. The town we were living in, Grafton, North Dakota, received over two feet of snow in the blizzard.
  4. Look for the Silver Linings – When we got to York it dawned on us that we were back in time for Davis’ birthday. We had celebrated in September before we headed North, but we were actually able to stay for two weeks and watch him play soccer. It was awesome!
  5. New Friends – We decided to stop in Bentonville, Arkansas on the way home. I have always wanted to check out the area, so we camped outside of Bentonville. We explored Bentonville and Rogers, that is where we found the Ozark Brewing Company. I love to go to local breweries. We met the most awesome couple there that we will be friends with for life, Pam and Hal from Little Rock.
  6. When you got to an half of a tank in a diesel truck you better stop and get gas.

I am sorry the length of this post, but I needed to catch everyone up on the adventure. We have been home now for three weeks, and we are struggling to adjust, but the Traveling RV Fools will be headed out on our next adventure soon.

Thanks for reading our stuff,

The Fools
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Filed Under: RV Living Tagged With: Finding Freedom, life in an rv, Mike McDade, Nomad Life, RV Life, Sandra McDade, Seeing the Country in an RV, Sugar Beet Harvest, The Bad Side of RVing, Traveling RV Fools

Six Things I Dislike About Living In An RV

October 15, 2019 By Mike Leave a Comment

Poop BagI wrote a blog almost a month ago called Six Reasons Living in an RV is Better. Now I am writing the counterpoint to that position, the yin of my yang if you will. Living in a camper definitely has benefits compared to normal 8:00 am to 5:00 p.m. life. Less stress, more exercise and spontaneity are just a few, but there are some big pains in the ass as well. I don’t sugarcoat life, never have, so here we go six things I hate about living in a camper.

  1. Bad Weather-Sitting in your cozy living room in your house when a thunderstorm rolls through is no big deal, a little lightning and thunder maybe, but in a camper, it is an adventure at the least. It literally feels like you are enduring a 7.0 Earthquake on the Richter scale. In one of my first blogs, Shaken, not Stirred, I shared a story about one of these adventures. Allowing yourself to relax during bad weather in a camper is not easy. Our dog, Mac shakes like a leaf on a tree until the event is over.  Sandra won’t let me dump any of the tanks before a storm. I guess she thinks the extra weight of the water serves as a good anchor to keep us on the ground. Probably not my top answer, but in the top three for sure.
  2. Bathroom Duties-Our main bathroom is right beside our living room in our camper. We have used quite a few cans of Lysol trying to spare each other the odors that have fumigated directly into the living room. My wife said she is taking me to the doctor when we get home because something’s dead inside of me. I told her, “I didn’t even know you f_____, and we have been married 35 years.” You can fill in the blank. This could be a flaw in our camper purchasing skills.
  3. Washing Clothes-I hate washing clothes! I despise washing clothes, and now I am having to go to a laundromat or campground washer dryer room. I haven’t had to do this since some time in the eighties. Loading up clothes in a basket and taking detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets to a laundromat works hard against my masculinity. You tend to wear your clothes much more than at home with the convenience of a washer and dryer. If it passes the sniff test it makes it another day. My next camper will have a washer/dryer combo.
  4. Washing Dishes-I put this one on the list just because of how convenient having a dishwasher would be. It sucks at times, but washing dishes has never really bothered me that bad, but Sandra has said the next camper will have a dishwasher somehow. This is number two on her list.
  5. Need My Space-Sometimes I need to be alone. I didn’t really need to be alone until I got older, but sometimes I need to decompress. Sandra has always needed her space; that is not a secret, so in the camper sometimes this can be a problem with two dogs and two people. I am at the Starbucks writing now just to get away for a minute. I know Sandra needs it today so she won’t kill me. I would hate for you guys to read about my untimely death in the Nebraska news section of the USA Today.
  6. Picking up Poop-Most campgrounds expect you to pick up your dogs’ poop. I get it, no one likes having dog poop on their shoes or where their kids are playing, but for the love of God can’t we have a little place sectioned off for poop to sit where it lies. You try your best not to squish it when you pick it up with your little blue poop bags, but sometimes you just can’t help it. I threw up a little in my mouth as I wrote that sentence. Then comes the worst part, you have to walk around with the bag in your hand like some kind of poop trophy. P.S.: it is kind of nice in your pocket if it is cold outside. This one is my biggest reason for hating life in a camper. Sandra just won’t let me put the dogs to sleep.

If the items above wouldn’t bother you in the least you are ready to hit the open road. I absolutely love living in my camper, but our trial is coming to an end. I hope you have enjoyed our blogs. We scored some Guns and Roses tickets for tonight’s concert, so I wasn’t sure I would be up for writing Wednesday for our normal blog day. We love you guys,

The Fools

I also decided to share a few blogs I found on this subject. The first one is hilarious.

I Hate Camping Especially with Kids by Scary Mom

9 Reasons You’ll Hate Camping-Never by Traveling Mom

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Filed Under: RV Life, RV Living Tagged With: Finding Freedom, life in an rv, Living in a RV, Mike McDade, Nomad Life, RV Life, Sandra McDade, Seeing the Country in an RV, The Bad Side of RVing, Traveling RV Fools

How Are We Making a Living on the Road?

October 3, 2019 By Mike Leave a Comment

I would love to tell everyone we are financially independent and don’t have to make a living on the road, but that would be a lie. I would love to tell you that we are making a living off my writing, but we are not. We need additional income streams to survive while on this adventure, and that is the scary part about RV living.

So how are you making a living then?

      1. Savings-We knew we wanted to give this a 90-day trial. There was never a question about whether we were coming back to Clinton. The real question was when, so we saved enough money to pay our bills until we get back in January.
      2. Our main source of income during our trial is something called the Unbeetable Experience. We are working for the American Crystal Sugar Company harvesting sugar beets. We are working 12-hour shifts from 8:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. It is not for the faint of heart. It is labor intensive work outside in a wide-open field in North Dakota. Sandra and I are both tough, so we know we can make it through the season which usually only last around three weeks. This is a work camping gig that many have tried, and we wanted to experience it to see if we could do it. If you decide to signup, please put us as a referral.
      3. Affiliate links on our website is another income stream that we are working on as we speak. We have signed affiliate contracts with Amazon, WP Engine, Vintage Trailer Supply, Outdoorsy and Siteground. If you order products from these affiliate companies by clicking the red links in this article or the ads you see on the side of our website, we get paid a commission. We received $148.00 our first month from commission sales. So please when you order something from Amazon click through the ad on our page before you order. It doesn’t cost you anything and it supports our dreams.
      4. Arbonne International is a company that we have loved for a long time. We love their products and their emphasis on healthy living. I am drinking a shake made with their protein mix right now as I write. If you click on this length Sandra McDade-Arbonne my wife gets credit for whatever you buy. Better yet email me at mike@travelingrvfools.com and I will get you the information to sign up and sell the products for yourself, they have great commission plans. We love Arbonne.
      5. We are also selling T-shirts through a company called Sunfrog. We have actually sold two shirts over the last month. You can look at our current collection by clicking this link, Traveling RV Fools T-shirt Collection.
      6. We also highly recommend Harvest Host. We are planning on staying at some wineries on our way home from North Dakota.

     

    Now you know. I am currently working on my first eBook as well. I haven’t decided how I will market it, but I have found a good way to keep me on task while I am on the road. I should be finished with it sometime in the first quarter of next year.

    As you can see it takes a lot of different streams to make a living while on the road. Click on the links in this article and explore the products we are recommending. Many people we have met are retired, so they have pensions and retirement accounts, but if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone you can survive living the RV Life.

    Thanks for all your support We love you guys!

    The Fools

    P.S.-Don’t forget to order your Amazon stuff through the ad on our webpage. Christmas is coming fast!!

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Filed Under: Freedom, Reasons for Choosing RV Life, RV Life, RV Living Tagged With: Finding Freedom, life in an rv, Living in a RV, Mike McDade, Nomad Life, Road Warriors, RV Life, Seeing the Country in an RV, Traveling RV Fools

Six Products I Wish They Would Have Told Me I Needed – Living the RV Life

September 16, 2019 By Mike 1 Comment

I can remember the day the doctor handed me my oldest son. Congratulations, “It’s a boy”. I remember this feeling of inadequacy flooding throughout my body and soul. I wasn’t ready.

What do I do with this?

How do I take care of him?

Fast forward 25 years to the day I picked up our camper, April Fool. I grew up in a camping family, mostly when we were young, but we camped frequently in a pop-up camper. She was nothing like April. April has a shower, a stove, a refrigerator and even a television. She has her own bathroom, and I am sitting in my recliner as I write this blog.

When we picked her up those same feelings of inadequacy flooded back.

Are you crazy?

You don’t know anything about camping or taking care of a camper?

You don’t know anything about living a nomad life?

You have never even pulled a trailer behind a truck (Technically not true, but you see where my mind was headed).

What I realized after a few months, that everyone had advice, but not many people had practical experience. Even the salesman at the camper place’s knowledge was limited.

So just like everything else in my life, I began to ask questions of people who have been living this life for a while. I got some good advice and some not so good advice, but through this knowledge transfer I came up with a list of things that you must have before you take off in your new camper for a weekend or a month.

Products I Wish They Would Have Told Me I Needed

1.Both places I have lived in my life have had extraordinary tasting water. That is not the case in many campgrounds, so the first one is the Camco 40043 TastePURE RV/Marine Water Filter with Flexible Hose Protector It protects against bacteria and reduces bad taste, odors, chlorine and sediment in drinking water.

These are the extras filters that you can order separately. We have changed ours out every three months –Camco 40045 TastePURE Inline RV Water Filter,(2 Pack).

2. The next piece you have to have is leveling blocks. No one explains at the dealership that campground spots are not always level. Your camper has to be level to use your slide outs. These Camco 44515 Fasten Leveling Blocks with T-Handle, 4X2, Yellow 10 Pack work great.

3. The third item I don’t even own but is the first purchase on my list of things to get when we start making more money with our blog. It is scary when you unhitch your camper from your truck, and it moves back six inches because of the incline you are on. I have other plastic chocks and bricks in my truck, but I have had more than one full timer tell me these Ultra-Fab Products 21-001095 Super Grip Chocks are a must have. After my scare, I have to agree.

 

4. The next item is pretty obvious to me because I have lived in houses that used septic systems, but there are a lot of people who have not. In a camper you have multiple tanks of wastewater. You have gray water and black water tanks. I am sure you can figure out what they are far. These tanks have to be emptied, and they following item does not usually come with your camper. You will need something like the Camco RhinoFLEX 20-Foot RV Sewer Hose Kit. Includes swivel fittings and a transparent elbow with 4-In-1 Dump Station Fitting. It also includes storage caps. It sounds kind of gross, but everybody has to go sometime.

I also recommend purchasing an extension for your hose. We have found any many spots 20 feet is not long enough to reach the dump station hole. This is the one we have, Camco 39863 RhinoEXTREME 10′ Sewer Hose Extension Kit.

5. If you have ever had to hold the sewer hose while your wife lifts it up to get the last remaining bit of water out of the line and you got black water all over your hand (Think-Robin Williams-RV) then this next item is a must. It keeps the line flowing without having to get out and handle it every time you empty tanks, Camco 20ft Sidewinder RV Sewer Hose Support. It is made from sturdy lightweight plastic and holds the hoses in place.

6. The last item protects your plumbing in your camper. You never know what kind of water pressure you will get in a campground, and you can easily blowout one of your lines if you are not careful. This Camco Brass Water Pressure Regulator with gauge will do the trick. It helps protect RV plumbing and hoses from high-pressure city water. It is an absolute must have device.

I hope these items help you when you purchase a camper and begin your camping life. I wish someone would have told me in the beginning I needed all of these things. Of course, you will other items: flashlights, matches and a good coffee pot, but those things are obvious. This list is not. Thanks for reading our stuff and please click the links through this post to order these items. It helps us to keep writing while helping others along their journey.

We love you guys,

Chief Fool, Mike

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Filed Under: Freedom, RV Living Tagged With: Finding Freedom, I love RV Life, life in an rv, Living in a RV, Nomad Life, Road Warriors, RV Life, Traveling RV Fools

Six Reasons Living in an RV is Better

September 10, 2019 By Mike 4 Comments

I woke up this morning and walked outside to a brisk 62-degree Nebraska morning temperature while sipping on my first cup of coffee. It was early; I always wake up earlier than everyone. My mind has not completely bought into the fact I can relax yet. Smiley (my lab mix) and I walked the campground listening to the early morning sounds when it dawned on me, we never have time to walk together at home. When I got back to my chair in the camper, I decided to write a list of why life is better in an RV.

You Can Follow the Weather

I despise hot weather. Nothing can make me grumpier faster than sweating as soon as I walk out of the door of my house, which is crazy because I have lived in Mississippi most of my life. This morning as I walked, I was reminded of how much I enjoy fall-like weather. A cool breeze in your face is a refreshing way to wake up. You can follow cool weather.

You Can Find Things

This one is personal for me. I have a tendency to put my phone, keys and wallet down wherever my ADHD mind decides too that day. In the camper you only have so many places they can be. This is awesome. Sandra thinks this will give her back over six years of wasted time over her remaining life span. I actually have a hook that is right in the door where I hang my keys and I have done it consecutively for two days. Woo Hoo!!!!

RV Life is great for people with ADHD!!!

Cleaning Up is a Breeze

We timed it Sunday. It took us less than 20 minutes to clean our camper from top to bottom including making the bed, washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the floors, mopping the floors and taking out the garbage. This gave us all day to explore in Lincoln. We had time to go to a wonderful car show and have dinner at my favorite restaurant in Lincoln, Lazlo’s Brewery.

No Yard Work!

At home I have 6.5 acres of yard. We have a $5,000 lawn mower to cut grass and weed eating is a daylong event when it gets done. I love my yard now, and I have not sold my house in Clinton, MS, but it is nice not to have to work in the yard. I don’t miss the sweat dripping from my brow, the dust and grime all over my body or the number of limbs I have to pick up every time before I mow! Ugh!

You Get to Choose Your Scenery

This has to be my favorite. Our first night we stayed at the Osceola RV Park in Osceola, Missouri. We just needed a place to lay our heads, but we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Truman Lake. The sunset that afternoon was gorgeous and was a fitting end to our first day of living in an RV.

Spend More Time with the Ones I Love

Walking with Smiley, having dinner with my son and eating breakfast with my wife this morning are just a few of the things that make living in an RV special. I can’t tell you the last time we sat and ate breakfast together without one of us rushing out the door because we were late to be somewhere. We are sitting together now as I write. I love this!!

I am sure there will be more to add to the list. I could write a list of fifty things associated with work that are better, but that list will be in another blog post. Thanks for reading our stuff! I think I could get use to living the nomad life.

We love you guys,

The Fools

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Filed Under: Freedom, Reasons for Choosing RV Life, RV Life, RV Living Tagged With: Finding Freedom, Nomad Life, RV Life, Seeing the Country in an RV, Traveling RV Fools

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