The long road home

It’s not often that one can spend an entire summer in a nomadic state. Being able to take your house with you is as equally liberating as it is limiting. For example, you can sleep almost anywhere, but that is dependent on others. You must hope they aren’t trouble makers and call 911 to report a "suspicious" vehicle or that they don’t run their car through the side of your home. Taking your home with you involves a lot of blind trust.
When parked at campgrounds one must tolerate the drug fueled fights between meth addicts right outside their paper thin walls at 4 am. There is nothing you can do about it. It just happens...AND IT HAPPENS A LOT.

Summers are hell without proper ventilation or air conditioning. I spent a month with an alarm set to wake me up every 2 hours and finally just ripped out a window and stuck my A/C unit in the hole and cut a piece of plywood to size and screwed it directly into the window frame. It was over 100 that day and the average temperature inside with all windows open and a fan going was well over 130. Within 10 minutes of installing the A/C I had the interior down to 75. I did not shut it off for even a minute for the next 3 months.

At first it seems like an easy life, but there is a steep learning curve. The hardest part, as I've mentioned before, is other humans. If they sense that you are not on vacation, they will go out of their way to make your life a living hell because nothing can satisfy an ego like ruining someone else's life.

The hardest thing by far is keeping food expenses down. Everything takes more time when you live in a camper. You have to take extra steps to bathe, clean, cook, sleep...and you must work longer hours because you take your house with you unless you can afford to pay the $750+ a month to park your trailer at a campground while you are at work.

Having pets with you in a small camper is next to impossible. They need room, so if you have them it is just for a few days at a time.

The plus side is that you can take your free days for granted and pretty much do whatever you want without having to worry about paying for a hotel.

The hardest part, again, is cooking. Keeping expenses down is very difficult. Even if your kitchen is packed with food, you don't have the room to store it in sealed containers, and cooking it is very expensive and even more so if the gas appliances were removed decades prior and one must rely on car batteries, power inverters and electric appliances.

You will learn quickly how far a Karen will go to make your life worse than it already is if she sees you using a small camp stove to cook your ramen after a 14 hour day of being screamed at by her fellow Karens. They won't even let you have a cup of coffee. I even had one call 911 because I made myself a cup of coffee...from her $250,000 RV while parked next to me in a Walmart parking lot and she chose to park next to me!

Again, a reminder that you can go where you want...as long as nobody finds out you are there.

I found out from facebook groups that the way I was living was referred to as "glamping" or glamor camping. The stigma was present in those groups as well. If anyone even had a suspicion that you lived in the camper and were not retired, you were subjected to harassment and eventually banned from the groups. So in essence, I am banned from most RV/Camping groups on facebook. It's just as well. Nobody in those groups had any answers that didn't involve you calling a business owned by their friend/brother/uncle/neighbor and/or paying thousands of dollars or buying a $45000 RV from them. They didn't know the answers and it was obvious. Still, it's odd to me that they looked down on me for doing what they were openly wishing to do.

Saving money became an art form. I had to trick myself into saving because it was tempting just to order takeout after working 12 hours, waiting 45 minutes to use a shower, and getting back "home" with only 5 until the alarm wakes me up for the next day. I hid money from myself everywhere.

I spent about 3 weeks in a nicer place, though far from work, until one morning at 4am I was woken up by drug addicts slamming each other into the side of my home, and then my car, and then police came to break up the fight and decided that I was somehow in some way involved because I lived in my camper.

Again, more proof that you can go and do things that normally aren't readily accessible because you can park at the end of a row of semis and go to sleep...if you can save enough, don't mind the noise of 20 idling trucks and have accepted that the earth shattering noise of a truck driving past you is probably the last sound you'll hear as he runs you and your house over.

It wasn't all bad. I had a few nice neighbors, and by nice I mean that they ordered delivery every few days for an excuse to tip their driver well so he could afford another week parked next to running water and hot showers.

Eventually the opportunity arose to improve my housing situation. I applied at a lot of apartments but was denied or ignored for all of them. Summer was ending and the nights were beginning to get cold again, so I upgraded the immediate situation and moved from 12 feet of useable space to a 26 foot long behemoth (probably well above the tow limit for my vehicle) with working appliances and most importantly, a toilet that didn't have to be dumped daily. Within a week of purchase, I found an acceptable apartment and signed the lease. My time as a nomad came to an end and I again slept on a carpeted floor and was grateful for the opportunity to do so.

I finished off the year with a trip to a campground at the northernmost point of Wisconsin. I found out at midnight on a 32 degree night that the blower motor on my heater had stopped working since late August and had to settle for a ceramic space heater.

I'm used to the cold so it wasn't a big deal. It was actually enjoyable to be able to vacation like everyone else again.

The hardest lesson overall was that when you live in a country of privileged, vindictive assholes, you must hide from them or they will make up lies, twist your words and try at every turn to weaponize police against you to entertain themselves with your untimely death. It was still well worth the experience.

All images are the sole property of the author and not to be used or reproduced without express written permission.