We mostly camped in rest areas on I-5 through Washington; conveniently, the state has a nice map of all of the locations, though there are slight inaccuracies in which stops have RV dump stations (there are more than shown on the map). As with California, there is an 8 hour time limit on rest area stops, but I never saw state police enforcing the rule (and once at a more desolate rest stop in Oregon, we saw a couple of people breaking down tents early in the morning, which definitely crosses the line into “camping”). I prefer rest areas when traveling, as they’re usually a bit quieter than truck stops, and trucks rarely leave the engine running when they stop in rest areas.

Somewhere along the way we bought another TV at one of the Walmarts where we overnighted (I like Walmarts almost as much as rest areas, because I can stock up and sleep with only one stop, and the lots are huge and easy to park Hugh in). While we were camping out in Kiki’s neighborhood in Palo Alto, we’d returned the prior Samsung we’d bought at Costco just didn’t take well to being mounted, and the front panel kept trying to separate from the TV. The new TV is a Vizio Razor LED 22″ model, and it is absolutely perfect. Doesn’t shake much even when the roads get rough, and looks really good at the front of house.

We crossed the border late at night in Sumas, after a panicked day of trying to line up Gidget’s paperwork. Dogs need a certificate of vaccination from at least 30 days prior, which I didn’t have. I called Adobe in Los Altos, where she’d had her shots and checkup just before we hit the road, and they heroically faxed over a certificate the same day. Totally awesome service, and one of the benefits of having a big vets office like Adobe (someone is always there, and in this case, the vet who’d given her shots also happened to be in the office even though it was after 7PM when I called).

Crossing took about 30 minutes, and included a pretty predictable interview as well as a cursory search of the Hugh Laurie. They mostly seemed concerned that I might want to stay in Canada permanently, which is an absolute riot; I’m a weather wuss. I don’t live in cold places. They couldn’t pay me to come to Canada during the winter. There was also concern that I might be selling my three guitars and sneaky not paying taxes on them. I explained that this was the bare minimum number of guitars I could possibly survive with…and this represented my collection after a *severe* purge of instruments. One acoustic, one electric, and one bass. How could I possibly travel with less?

Once we crossed, I rushed to the Rogers store to attempt to get a SIM card and service so my G1 phone would work in Canada. I was thwarted in this first attempt by the fact that the wireless folks we only in the store until 6PM. Apparently Rogers Plus is like a Blockbuster, that also happens to occasionally sell wireless phones and stuff. Weird. I didn’t know video stores still existed. Who rents DVDs anymore?

Since it was late, we camped at the Walmart, and stocked up on frozen foods and such for the long road ahead. Canada thins out fast when you drive north…it only takes a couple of hours of northerly driving to be in very sparse territories with 50 or more miles between towns.

The next morning, I tried again to get Rogers service, but was thwarted by the rules for getting data service. I would need to buy a SIM card for $10, activate an account for $35, and then in a month pay a cancellation fee of $30. This probably adds up to less than using T-Mobile’s roaming rates of $10/MB, but only by a small amount. Insane in either case for something I would only need for a week or possibly ten days (remember, we’re in a hurry to reach Alaska, we’ll take our time in Canada coming back down, as weather allows).

So, on to Costco (did you know Canada has Costcos? It’s true…I was more surprised by the number of Walmarts, actually) to buy a GPS. We bought a Garmin 265WT, which I am deeply ambivalent about. It works, I guess, but it’s slow. Slower than Google Maps running on the edge network (and much slower than Maps on 3G). It’s also incomplete. It doesn’t know of the existence of about 50% of places I ask it about, even when I *know* I’m asking for the exact right name. Like Google Maps, it also has no idea of rest areas, park information centers, and other stuff that is extremely relevant to RV travelers who love their Inter-agency Annual Pass and its sweet ability to get them into any federally managed chunk of land that has a fee (best 80 bucks an RVer can possibly spend; I made that back in about two months). I’ve grown accustomed to the quirks of the UI and the insensitivity of the touchscreen, but I still find a have to repeat a lot of actions, due to typos and mis-clicks. Its one redeeming quality is that it works without a network of any sort. Google Maps has left me in an uncomfortable and confused position on more than one occasion due to becoming useless once off network (I’ll frequently plot a course *to* a national park, and then once I get there, I can’t get a course back because parks rarely have wireless service).

At our first stop for gas a few hundred miles into BC, but before the Alaska Highway, I talked to the attendant who brought out a Bell’s Alaska Highway guide, which turned out to be my most-consulted reference along the way. It provided exactly the information I needed most for almost every city we passed: Where to get information, where to get Internet, where to dump/refill, and where to get gas. Sure, it’s advertiser-supported, and so is missing a lot of details and competing options, but those bits of information were incredibly useful. I was excited when I got to Alaska and found the Bell’s Alaska guide, but it fails to provide all of those vitally important bits of information, and so is pretty much worthless. There are pretty much no Internet and dump station listings in the Alaska guide, whereas nearly every city in the Alaska Highway guide had both. So, huge thumbs up for Bell’s Alaska Highway, and a big “meh” to the Bell’s Alaska guide.

Most of British Columbia is a blur, but I remember Prince George has a city ordinance preventing overnight parking at Walmart, which means I kept driving until I reached Dawson Creek, which proved friendlier to my kind. (Note to city governments: Most RVers don’t take these signs to mean “Go spend money in an RV park or motel instead.” we take it to mean, “You aren’t welcome here. Keep driving.” and that’s exactly what we do, taking our grocery and gas and propane money elsewhere.)

Dawson Creek is the start of the Alaska Highway, and it has the feel of a busy port city (though it’s not actually a port). There are hundreds of RVers in Dawson Creek, either coming from or going to Alaska, on any given day during the summer. We spent the night at Walmart, gassed up, checked tires, stocked the fridge and pantry, bought lots of water, etc. The highway turned out to be very civilized nearly all the way to Alaska, so preparations were mostly unneeded, but it doesn’t hurt to be over-prepared. I asked for advice on food at the visitor center, opted to ignore the advice as the fellow clearly seemed confused by a request for “a good vegetarian friendly restaurant”, and ended up eating pretty bad Chinese at The New Dragon Palace. Service was friendly, but the buffet was rather pitiable rather than “deluxe”. I believe there were three (mostly, though I discovered meat in the chow mein toward the end of the meal) vegetarian items on the buffet, and none were particularly great. Henceforth, I’ll remember to always *ask* if a buffet is vegetarian friendly in the future. I’ve just never met a Chinese buffet that wasn’t, even in small towns, and many even have helpful labels with little vegetables and fishes and cows and such to indicate what’s in the dishes. I like that sort of iconography. It’s comforting.

After a night in Dawson Creek, we drove through Fort St. John, stopping only briefly for WiFi and lunch, and on to Fort Nelson where we spent the night. We met a couple at a rest area before near Cache Creek who recommended Liard Hot Springs, and then I met another couple later who also recommended it, so it rose to the top of our “must stop” list. I planned to get there early enough to visit the springs and take Gidget for a nice hike, so we left Fort Nelson soon after waking and drove mostly straight through.

The springs were all they’d been hyped as. Definitely hot and springy. I also saw a bear on the way back from my first visit to the spring, and kicked myself for not bringing the camera. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to a wild bear. He or she was a juvenile black bear, probably 350 pounds, and was about 20 feet away from the boardwalk. I was pretty much exactly perdindicular to him on the boardwalk when I heard him and spotted him. He saw me about ten seconds later, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. Making eye contact with bears is not recommended, so I kept walking, and reported the sighting to the park staff, as the bear warning signs in the park requested. At $21 per night, Liard Hot Springs is a bargain. There’s also a full-service campground across the street, but I didn’t see a “Free WiFi” sign, so I opted to stay in the park itself (hookups are almost superfluous to me, and sometimes I don’t even bother to hook up when I’m just staying a night, since the solar panels and water tanks provide all I need; if I want to get a shower and they don’t have nice looking showers, I will plug in power, so I don’t burn propane unnecessarily).

The hot spring fed swamps are fascinating in and of themselves. There are fish and other animal species that have evolved specifically *for* those particular swamps, and are unique to those swamps. To me, that’s just amazing, and awesome to behold. Also, did I mention being 20 feet from a bear?

The day after Liard Hot Springs was incredibly eventful, as well. The day started off with seeing a larger bear on the side of the road (I saw it, pointed it out to Gidget, so she looked everywhere except where I was pointing, and stood in front of me for a bit excitedly looking at the wrong side of the road, so I couldn’t see). The highway meanders in and out of Yukon Territory a few times along the way, so I don’t recall exactly when we really made it to the Yukon or whether the remaining sightings were in BC or YT.

A few hours later we saw the first and biggest part of a herd of buffalo that now roam in northwestern Canada. I didn’t count them, but a couple who stopped at the next rest area at the same time I did did, and the count was 63. I took a lot of pictures. Baby buffalo are ugly and cute. An hour later we saw a smaller bunch, and they walked even closer to the RV. Gidget thoroughly enjoyed both encounters, and made Chewbacca noises in her excitement, while balancing right on the edge of the dash trying to get as close as possible to the open window in order to sniff the delicious buffalo smells.

Many times along the route we saw goats. Usually standing in the middle of the road, and leisurely moving off the road when we arrived. The signs always said to look out for sheep, but these were goats, I’m pretty sure. Maybe I just don’t know the difference between a Canadian sheep and a Canadian goat. Gidget was equally excited by the goats, but I’ve seen goats before, so I wasn’t as excited as by the buffalo and bear. I bet a Canadian goatsheep says, “Eh?” rather than “Bah!”

We camped in a provential park campground on a nice little lake somewhere along the way. As in the US, government campgrounds tend to provide no hookups, vault toilets, and some beautiful scenery for a few bucks a night. In the case of BC and YT campgrounds, they are usually $12/night.

On our last day in Canada, I underestimated the drive time, or overestimated my waking time, and wound up spending the night at a rest area (which seems to be verboten in Yukon Territory, based on the “No overnight parking” signs, though people do it just as in the US and in BC). It was a lovely location though, next to a lake. The next morning the sound of bees outside the RV was a literal roar. Kinda scary actually. Also, mosquitoes. So many mosquitos up here. I thought the cold was supposed to keep them in check.

We crossed the border early in the day, since we’d stopped so close to it the night before. Unlike the Canada crossing, it took about 30 seconds, with a significant portion of that being the border crossing agent giving Gidget cookies. Gidget loves crossing the border now. The interview consisted of, in an incredibly rapid-fire manner: “Who owns this motorhome?” “I do.” “Are you carrying any cash over $10,000?” “No.” “Did you buy anything in Canada?” “Groceries.” “What brings you to Alaska?” “Vacation.” “Welcome to Alaska. Have a nice day.”

We made it to Tok while everything was still open and the sun was still shining (sunset was at around 9:45PM, so lots of daylight hours still). We filled up, for dramatically less than filling up in Canada, and bought groceries and stopped in at the visitor center to pick up maps and such.

Since I’m travelling in the summer, I don’t have to worry about freezing to death. And, because I’m travelling in a huge motorhome, I don’t have to worry about dying of starvation (assuming I stock the pantry and the fridge before we leave civilization). But, I do have to worry about the reported 100 mile (ahem, 160 kilometer) stretches of no phone service and no gas stations, so the worst case scenario is having Hugh give out on us, for whatever reason, 50 miles away from working phone or services.

So, here’s what I’m checking and doing before I leave civilization and hit the Yukon Territory and Alaska.

Vehicle stuff:

• Full tank of gas (60 gallons, or 600-750 miles)
• Full tank of propane (I don’t expect it to get cold at any time during my trip, but propane keeps the fridge running, and makes hot tea in the morning possible)
• Valid insurance. GEICO insures in Canada, but you have to get a special visitor insurance card. I picked one up at the very friendly GEICO office in Bellevue.
• Freshly changed oil and filters. I’m approaching 20,000 miles anyway, so it’s right on schedule. Changing the oil is easy on such a big/high vehicle, though I’m not sure I’ll have a place to park to do so between now and reaching the border. May have to take it to a shop.
• Engine passes OBD-II diagnostic with no issues. My dad loaned me his ScanGauge II when I was RV shopping, and he’s let me keep it and it’s been priceless for keeping up with gas mileage. Running self-diagnostics takes a bit of time, but it’s very useful in spotting engine trouble early. And, I’ve been able to repair engines in the past using engine error codes, so I’m a total believer. My engine fan is squeaking a bit at the moment, so I’m going to have a look at that when I do the oil change.
• Extra motor oil for both the engine and the generator.
• Tire pressure normal and tires look healthy.

Emergency preparedness:

• Bike in good working condition, bike tool, extra tubes. In the event the Hugh Laurie quits on us, and we don’t have phone service, I can reasonably bike 50 miles in a day (25 over hills) to find either phone service or civilization. I’ll be sore for a week afterward, but if I can’t hitch a ride, I can definitely bike it.
• Canadian phone service. Rogers reportedly works at up to 2G/Edge speeds with my G1, and has coverage around Vancouver and up the highway north through Prince George and a bit beyond, so I’ll stop at a store in Vancouver and sign up for a pay-as-you-go account. T-Mobile has a roaming agreement, but the data roaming charges are so outrageous that I wouldn’t be able to use Places or Maps, which are tools I find invaluable when in new towns.
• Paper maps or a standalone GPS or CoPilot Live on the G1 or all three. I’ve learned the hard way that Google Maps simply will not work at the times you need it most (when you’re in the middle of nowhere, with no one to ask for directions and nowhere to stop for gas or other services). The developers have known it’s a problem forever, but it seems to be a very low priority.
• First aid kit.
• Jack and jack stands for changing a tire. The Hugh Laurie has a spare tire somewhere underneath. I have roadside assistance with Good Sam, but if the phone isn’t working, and one of my old tires gives out…well, I’d rather not have to bike up to 50 miles.
• Flashlights and plenty of batteries.
• CB radio, and an antenna if I can find a decent one for a reasonable price somewhere along the way (I probably won’t be parked anywhere long enough to order online, otherwise I’d buy one that I could use for wireless signal boosting, as well).

Border crossing paperwork:

• Passport
• Insurance and registration for the Hugh Laurie
• Certificate of vaccination for Gidget

Staples:

• Food. Well-stocked fridge and freezer, plenty of cold and hot cereal, fruit, frozen veggies, rice (turns out the rice cooker only needs 2 amps for about 30 minutes, so I can run it off the batteries/solar without trouble!).
• Water. Full fresh tank (40 gallons) for showers, washing dishes, etc., and five gallons of drinking water in bottles (I could drink from the fresh tank in an emergency, but I’d prefer not to, as it gets a little stale, and it’s been a few months since I did a drain/sterilize/rinse cycle; though I might do that if I stop in a campground between now and then). I know from experience that we go through about one gallon a day of drinking water.
• A big bag of food for Gidget (she has food allergies that means she has to eat a very particular diet, which can be hard to come by outside of cities). We usually buy the small bags so it’s fresher, but a 20 lb bag lasts about three weeks, so we’ll go with one of those. Treats and chews for her, as well.

I’ve got a couple of maps for the first leg of the journey opened up on my laptop, so I know how to find the Rogers store to get maps on my phone working in Canada, and how to get to an RV park should getting the phone working prove troublesome (I’d want to have WiFi to figure out alternative plans, just in case). My phone will probably work for the first few minutes of driving over the border (and I can go to roaming, in an emergency, as T-Mobile has roaming agreements with Rogers and a couple of other carriers in Canada; the data roaming rates are outrageous, but it would be worth paying five bucks to pull up a map if I were lost).

And, finally, I’ve got a Kindle with international wireless support. I’d kinda forgotten that the Kindle has a browser, because using it is like browsing the web in 1994, including being on dialup (and the web is no longer designed to work with browsers from 1994 on dialup). But, Google and Wikipedia works fine, so I’m sure in the event of a “Joe’s really lost now” situation, a solution could be found. Unfortunately, images, particularly images with lots of detail like maps, on the Kindle are useless because you can’t zoom or pan. So, I ended up buying a paper copy of Frommer’s Alaska, since the maps in the Kindle version were illegible. I tried samples of all the travel books available for BC and Alaska and they all exhibited the same issue: Maps are illegibly small and the “zoom” option is laughable (it makes the image maybe 10% bigger in most cases).

Alright, next post will hopefully come from the great white north.

Post-Alaska Highway edit:

The Alaska Highway is an extremely civilized drive. All the hype is completely overdone. The stretch of west Texas on 290 going into Austin is more desolate and has longer stretches of no phone service and no gas stations than at any point on the Alaska Highway (it’s also about as rough). And, there are definitely stretches of secondary highways in the desert in New Mexico and Arizona that are longer without services. the highway going west from El Malrais National Monument, for instance, is like being on another planet, it’s so deserted.

Anyway, the Alaska Highway has gas stations every 150 miles or so, at least during the summer, though reportedly about half of them close during the winter. Plenty of rest areas and campgrounds along the way, and Walmarts in most of the bigger cities along the route. Highlight of the trip was Liard Hot Springs just past Watson Lake.

A fellow named Noah, who is also wanting to try out living in an RV for a while, sent me an email yesterday asking about how long it took me to buy my RV, and whether 30 days would be enough time. I rambled quite a bit on the subject, and figured it’d be worth posting that reply to the blog, as well. So, here’s how I replied, with a few minor edits and additions.

I gave myself a deadline of one month.

It was a pretty hard deadline, too…I gave my 30 day notice to my landlord, though I ended up staying an extra two weeks because moving and getting rid of stuff took longer than planned. I maybe did this faster than is rational. I decided to do it at the end of November, gave my notice a day or two after, and had purchased the RV by the end of December. There wasn’t really any “think it over” phase for me; it just clicked as being the right choice for me right now. I’ve blogged about why I’m doing this and what triggered my decision, so I won’t go into that much.

One month would have actually been plenty for just buying an RV, but I got side-tracked for about two weeks trying to get a loan for a slightly newer/nicer RV than what I ended up with (now I’m really glad I couldn’t get the loan, as the one I did get is still bigger than I need), and I mostly stopped shopping during that time. It was also around Christmas which meant many dealers were closed and individuals weren’t available to show their coaches. If you plan to get a loan, you should talk to a lender early in the process; I couldn’t figure out how to get a pre-approval without having a seller and a vehicle model/year, but I think if you deal with a loan broker, you can get some sort of pre-approval before shopping. Knowing how much you can/want to spend can narrow the field way down.

I did have to do some serious driving to find my RV; densely populated areas don’t have RV dealers or RV storage (where you’ll find RVs being sold by individuals, in many cases), and I have a flexible schedule, so I spent maybe 10 days driving from dealer to dealer, all over San Jose, Roseville, Sacramento, and several other places, and checking out promising eBay/craigslist listings. Find the area with a lot of RV dealers, and you’ll also find that a lot of individuals are also selling around the same area. RVs tend to cluster around service centers, RV parks, etc. and so that’s where they’ll be for sale, either on a lot or in storage. I found my RV in Sacramento, and when my deadline arrived I drove to Sacramento knowing that I would own an RV by the end of the day, even if I couldn’t get the one that I wanted (I had three lined up for checking out that day, and happened to buy the first one as it had no major issues).

Here’s some advice that I heard before buying, that I wish I’d taken more heed of: Your first RV will not be the perfect RV. You’ll make a list of all the things you want, size, class, and all that stuff, and then you’ll find that it doesn’t perfectly fit the way you end up living in your RV. I heard this over and over again, but I thought I knew my own tastes and needs really well (we clever software developers think we know everything and can figure out any problem by searching the Internet). So, when you have a chance to spend less or get a better deal (one that is well below NADA), while still being a reasonably good fit for what you think you want, do that. Don’t stretch your budget to get into a super awesome seeming rig…buy one you can afford to treat as a learning experience. I ended up being forced into doing so by the inability to get a loan, so I was lucky. Now, when I sell this one, I’ll have less depreciation (cheaper/older rigs depreciate less each year, assuming no major problems crop up during ownership), and I have no debt to get paid off before buying another rig. This one also happened to be a slightly better deal than the “perfect” coach on a pure NADA price comparison (87% of low NADA retail vs. 90%), though the other one was in somewhat better condition.

Another bit of advice: Don’t buy a fixer-upper. You can’t afford it. No matter how cheap it looks, the cost of repairs and refurbishing an old RV are astronomically high. Everything in an RV is a specialty item, and costs two or three times what the same thing in a permanent home would cost, these big chassis/engines are really expensive to work on, even replacing the tires costs well over $1000. So, if you have to replace any major appliance or perform major engine or chassis work, you’re already in the hole (possibly deeply). RVs already have a ridiculously rapid depreciation rate (20% first year, 10%/year, or more, in the first few years; it’s like cars, only moreso), so you almost certainly can’t buy an RV in need of repairs that is a better deal than one in perfect working condition. And, of course, shit breaks all the time, even on an RV in great shape to start with. I just did a slew of minor repairs and my RV stayed “perfect” for about two days a couple of weeks ago, and then shit started falling apart again. I’ve got four or five outstanding repairs right now.

I seriously considered getting an old Airstream Argosy motorhome and fixing it up, as they are beautiful and I’d located one nearby for a few thousand dollars with reportedly no chassis or engine issues. I’m pretty handy, and don’t mind getting my hands dirty, but when I started doing the math on refurbishing an old coach, the costs simply exploded. It would have cost more than a much newer/larger unit to bring it up to modern standards, even without counting my time in the equation (and, these days, my time is pretty expensive). I had to remind myself that I needed a place to live, not another project to work on.

Also, I found that a lot of dealers haven’t accepted that RVs aren’t selling very fast right now…so they’re still charging high end of NADA retail, or even more, and they aren’t negotiating. A few were downright haughty when I asked about their lowest price, and pointed out that they were asking several points above NADA retail. Walk away from those dealers. There are incredibly good deals to be had right now…and, since I’ve decided that I want a different RV, I’ve continued shopping craigslist, and the deals seem to continue to get better. Don’t pay more than low-mid NADA retail (pay mid for a flawless coach, less for anything less than flawless), and you’ll be fine. The trend I noticed in my area was that dealers that mostly carried new inventory were less willing to deal on their used inventory (I guess because it would make the new inventory look really expensive…which it is, and they make a lot more on a new sale than a used one), while dealers who only sold used tended to have good prices to start with, and were often a bit more flexible on price.

Anyway, I set myself a deadline because my cost of living in Mountain View was so high that I could afford to make a mistake of up to a couple grand and still come out ahead by buying more quickly. Since I was paying $2145/month for the house, plus a couple hundred in utilities, and I knew RV living would be dramatically cheaper, I just trusted that even if I really screwed up the purchase and bought something that needed work, I’d still come out ahead over staying in the house for another month or two. If my housing were cheaper, I might have taken longer. I was also going stir-crazy living in Mountain View, and it was cold and dark, and I hate the cold, so I also rushed for that reason.

So, to distill this down to some bullet points:

• Spend less, accept that the first is a learning experience and not your forever RV
• Do your research; NADA provides retail price information for free
• No fixer uppers; you probably can’t afford it, and it’s hard to live in a place that has been gutted for refurbishment
• You’re going to have to drive to get a good deal, unless you happen to live in an RV-dense area
• Loans are hard to get for RVs right now; so line up credit in advance, if you plan to get a loan, because it can take days to get an answer, and sellers won’t hold a coach if you don’t have some sort of pre-approval

I wrote about the costs of living in an RV a while back. Now that I’ve actually been living on the road for a while, I’m a bit more confident about the costs.

In some ways it has been more expensive than I expected, but in most regards, it has been less so. So, I’m going to revisit all the ways I was wrong. If I don’t mention it, you can assume the old article proved correct.

RV Parking: $25/night (and dropping)

As mentioned in the previous article, RV parks along the coast of California are among the most expensive in the country. So, I spent a lot more during my trip down the PCH than budgeted. It averaged about $51/night for the first couple of months.

Once I reached San Diego, however, things flipped in the other direction (actually, the tide started turning in Venice, when I got comfortable with boondocking). Multiple parks in the area accept Passport America or Happy Camper, and boondocking in a friend’s neighborhood proved comfortable, quiet enough for Gidget to be left alone for a few hours at a time, and free of legal hassle. So, for the last month I’ve spent less than $20/night, on average, for parking.

With Passport America, I parked during the week at Mission Bay RV Resort with full hookups and cable TV, for $22/night, and then moved to my friend’s neighborhood for the weekend. There’s a price at which I’d rather have the convenience of full hookups (plus slide out and jacks down), even if there is no concern for getting cited or being bothered by traffic noise, and I think it’s about $22. That said, sometimes parking near where things are happening is even more valuable. It was really convenient to park the house near where the Derby Dolls Party bus picked up and dropped off, since one does not leave a party bus in an appropriate state for driving.

I’m currently parked at Slab City (AKA The Slabs) near Niland, CA. This is hundreds of acres of federal land that permits (or turns a blind eye toward) camping at no cost and for unlimited time. Free camping on BLM and Forestry Service land is not hard to find…but it mostly has time limits. This is also nearly unique in being heavily populated; during the winter Slab City hosts hundreds of RVers, and even now that it’s started to warm up, there are at least a couple hundred RVs and several dozen tents and vans and cars.

At Slab City, there are no hookups, dump stations, or fresh water, but the RV is level, and the slide and awning are out, and it’s simply beautiful out here in the desert. The people here are also seemingly universally friendly. Gidget has made several new friends, as well, and she’s having a blast being able to go off-lead out in the desert with other dogs around (I worry about some of the dogs that run loose all the time, as there is a road nearby with very rare, but often very fast, traffic). I can only stay a week this visit, but next year, I might stay a month, and drop my average nightly parking cost for the whole year by a few bucks.

In short, RV parks are going to be less than $35/night in the long run. It looks like I’ll average about $20-$25/night for the whole year.

Propane $40/month

As expected, now that I’m out of the cold, propane is lasting longer. But, another element is that I’ve realized that keeping water hot takes a lot of energy. So, now, I only run the water heater for an hour before taking a shower, or when I need hot water for some other purpose (dishes wash fine in cold water, but the dog doesn’t). My water heater was also leaking up until a couple of weeks ago, which hurt its efficiency a lot, as well.

When I’m in RV parks, I shower in the provided restrooms, which allows longer, and somewhat more comfortable showers (though the RV shower is actually a pretty nice experience and lasts long enough even for me, and I love a long hot shower), and doesn’t require any propane.

So, I’ve been filling up about once per month, but I’m finding I only need a little more than half a tank each time, so it’s costing about $35-$45.

Laundry: $25/month

I completely disregarded laundry last time I talked about money…I hadn’t had to do laundry yet. In the house, I had a washer/dryer, but now I have to use laundromats. I go through clothes pretty quick (I have a serious clean socks habit, and I go through two or three pair per day; also Gidget requires frequent drying and lots of washcloths now that she’s getting in the ocean and such), and so I do three or four loads of laundry every two weeks.

Fuel: $200

So, this one stayed the same, but I did want to mention a few additional bits of data. I am running the generator slightly more often than originally expected, since I began boondocking a lot more, though it’s still a negligible amount of my total fuel consumption.

Interestingly, on the last highway trip the RV averaged 12.2 miles per gallon, according to the ScanGauge II my dad loaned me. This is the same device that gave me the 7.5-10 MPG figures I was seeing on the way down the coast, so I think it is wholly believable. This leg of the trip was from San Diego to Slab City, which includes a huge 4000+ foot elevation climb. I believe the primary difference is that I paced the drive more slowly than previously…I ran about 55 downhill and on flat stretches, except when a downhill would let me go faster just by coasting), and 45-50 on the big climbs. While I’m not renowned for leisurely driving, I think it’s probably worth adding 10-15% to my travel time to save 20% or more on gas.

Internet: $70/month

Since the last post, I’ve added an additional internet cost to my budget. Millenicom offers the SprintPCS network with an unlimited data plan for $70/month. It’s a no-brainer for a full-time RVer. They also offer the Verizon network in a 10GB plan, but I did some comparisons of a few dozen places I plan to stop and found that SprintPCS has 3G in more locations. I’m getting 3G service pretty reliably here in the middle of nowhere, so I think I’m comfortable recommending the Sprint network, and Millenicom.

Repairs: $50/month and a whole lot of time

I didn’t factor minor repairs into my original budget, and it’s definitely worth mentioning. Stuff breaks all the time in an RV.

This month the following has needed work:

• Water heater pressure relief valve leaking
• Water heater drain plug leaking
• Closet hanger rod ripped its screws from the wall when I reorganized and removed a pile of stuff in the closet (that was apparently holding everything together)
• Bed side table drawer broke loose and needed rehanging
• Leaks
• Window curtain pulled loose from wall
• Door window dropped down in frame, leaving a 1″ opening at the top
• Oil leak in generator (I’m still stewing on this one, and haven’t repaired it yet…hoping it will be minor and not require a trip to a professional, as that’ll blow the budget badly)
• Climate control knob in the cabin broke (this one is also still outstanding because it’s not made by Ford, and I have to go to one of a few dozen repair centers in the whole country that sell Evans Tempcon parts)

All of this stuff was reasonably easy and cheap to fix. The most expensive was $18 for the water heater pressure relief valve, but it only took 15 minutes to replace once I had the part. If you’re handy, or willing to get handy, the costs can be kept low. It’d be a lot more expensive to have an RV repair person do the work, though there are RV handymen that will visit you in an RV park, making it a little less of a hassle.

The Big Picture

While there have been some unexpected expenses, overall I’m spending a lot less than I originally budgeted. The dramatic decline in parking costs over the past month are the biggest factor here. This was always marked as “optional” in the budget, but I’m finding I care about being in an RV park less and less the more comfortable I get with finding good places to park free and finding ways to safely and legally keep the RV leveled and even putting out the slide and awning, when parking for free. With a fully self-contained rig, it really doesn’t make a big difference. I don’t need cable, my batteries store enough power to keep my laptop running all day, and I can run the generator if I need (a lot) more power. With my 40 gallon tanks I can take two or three showers and live for about four to five days between visits to a dump station, so I don’t feel like I’m constantly having to stop for refilling water.

Venice is full of full-time RVers. But these are not your typical, independently wealthy, retired or semi-retired, older folks in newish $100k+ rigs towing $30k+ cars that you find amongst the RV park set. Most of the RVs in Venice are twenty to thirty years old, some are converted school buses, others are simply vans with a bed thrown in the back. It’s a mishmash of hippies, soul-searchers, down-on-their-luck working families, and the recently unemployed. And, they’re in the middle of a sort of war with the more gentrified elements of Venice society.

I’d heard that one could boondock legally, and for very cheaply, around Venice beach…but this is not entirely accurate, though many people do it, anyway. Unlike most beach towns around the area, it is actually legal to park an RV overnight on several city streets within Venice (north end of Venice Blvd, 3rd St. west of Rose, and a few little spots scattered around the city), but it’s technically not legal to sleep in an RV overnight. I spoke to one RV owner, an underemployed fellow named Kenn that lives in an older RV with his wife, who had been regularly warned by police against long-term parking around the city.

The key element, then, for me, was to move regularly. I spent each day parked on Venice Beach, either in the lot at the end of Venice Blvd. or at the end of Rose Blvd. Both are charming spots, with the Venice Blvd. location being more quiet and the Rose Blvd. location being more exciting and right on the edge of the majority of Venice Beach activity. Parking for an RV in these city lots costs anywhere from $8 to $18 per day, based on the day (weekends cost more) and when you arrive (before 9AM is several dollars cheaper). This seems to be the modus operandi of many RV residents, as the lots had numerous RVs parked in them each day, many arriving before 8AM to setup shop on the boardwalk selling crafts, artwork, busking, etc.

Each evening, I would leave the park around 10PM or 11PM (closing time seems to be midnight, though the Venice Blvd. location was usually completely empty by 10PM, but I wasn’t bothered by the police who routinely drive by when I stayed until nearly midnight on the night I locked myself out and had to wait for a locksmith to arrive). There were a few RVs that seemed to be permanently parked in each of these Venice Beach lots. I suppose the Venice police are somewhat sympathetic to the plight of these folks, and perhaps as long as they’re quiet and otherwise obey the law, they get away with bending the law a bit. I had no desire to push my luck, and my RV is completely road-worthy, so driving out each night to a quieter and less scrutinized area was no problem for me.

I then spent the night a few miles away, mostly on Culver Blvd., between McConnell and Centinela, on the other side of the walk/bike path median, which provided the perfect balance of space, so neighbors wouldn’t be fighting with me over limited parking space; quiet, because the fast side of Culver Blvd. was across the big grassy median; and safety, because it is in a well-lit residential and commercial area with frequent activity and people driving by all night over on Culver Blvd. I’d wake at 7 or 8 AM, and drive back over to one of the beach lots to spend the day. A number of RVs were parked in the vicinity, but not enough that I think it would offend the neighbors, and most left early each morning to go to the beach or elsewhere for the day.

Dockweiler State Beach, a few miles up the road on Vista Del Mar, provides dump station and fresh water access for $10, and I stopped there once during my several day stay in Venice Beach. Culver Blvd. is near a number of shopping centers, including a grocery on making it easy to pick up groceries and fill water bottles at the drinking water vending machine.

I won’t say that this is a fool-proof way to visit Venice in an RV, but I did have a lot of fun, met a lot of interesting people, and was never cited or approached by police during my several days there.

One more little interesting story about my time in Venice Beach, and more evidence that the residents of Venice are not all pleased by the presence of RVers in their community: When I locked my keys out of the RV and called a locksmith, he nearly hung up on me when I told him I was in an RV in a Venice Beach lot. He simply wouldn’t come out for the typical RV dweller in the city. I had to explain that I was a software developer from the San Francisco area, and was in a rather new, and rather expensive, RV, before he’d agree to come out. To give him credit, he came out quickly, and was apologetic about being rude earlier, and explained that he’d been cheated by RVers in the past, and that, as a group, they don’t have the best reputation for straight dealings in the area.

Seems like there are two sides to the story in Venice, and while I tend to side with the RVers (they just want to exist in Venice, and can’t afford to exist on the usual terms of society, so they’re scraping by the best they can, and the ones I met were genuinely nice and friendly folks who were doing what they could to support themselves honestly), it’s no excuse for cheating folks who provide services, or breaking obviously beneficial laws like dumping laws (there have reportedly been issues with RVers dumping illegally, which is a serious health hazard and extremely disgusting).

So, I’ve been giving my tethered G1 a real workout for the past few weeks. It provided slower-than-dialup edge service when I was parked on Old Rincon highway (beautiful view, but without Internet, I had to move on after one night). It worked OK at Dockweiler State Beach until a big diesel RV parked between me and the tower and caused it to drop to edge service, but it was still usable for email. Golden Shore in Long Beach had Tengo Internet (which seems to be the most common third-party WiFi service at RV parks around these parts, and they actually seem to be competent at delivering good service) and at a good price of $1/day. I was then at Huntington by the Sea, where I had a pretty decent 3G signal, but even so, speeds are in the 500Kbps range, at best, from my G1, and not good enough to even reliably watch short YouTube videos.

I did a bit more research and asking around, and found a service called Millenicom, which provides access to the Sprint network, with no contract, and an unlimited data service plan, for about $70 per month. My device arrived a few days ago, and I’ve had a chance to try it in a few locations.

At Huntington Beach, speed hovered around 1.2Mbps with ~150ms latency, which is about twice as fast as the G1 at the same location, though latency was similar. This is fast enough to watch videos on Hulu without hesitation or pauses for buffering, though I didn’t try to watch HD format videos.

I’ve been beach-hopping around LA for the past few days, along with some night time stops in Culver City and El Segundo, and I’ve seen bandwidth of the Millennicom connection range from 129Kbps up to 1.2Mbps, and with latency ranging from 120ms to 180ms, with the average in bother cases being somewhere in between. I’ve never been unable to connect (but, this is a very densely populated area, and I’d be surprised if either my phone or the new device couldn’t get 3G connectivity).

Equally importantly, the device from Millennicom (a Franklin CDU-680) has Linux drivers, making it dramatically more useful to me. Android devices can be tethered and used from Linux, but I found it tedious and cumbersome to do so. So, having supported drivers is a huge win.

A couple of notes on Millennicom as a company (rather than the network, which is provided by SprintPCS, or the device, which is made by Franklin):

They offer a number of devices on their website, but they ignored my order for a different device and sent the Franklin CDU-680. So, if you actually want a device other than the Franklin, you’ll want to do the Bring-Your-Own-Device plan rather than renting. I don’t have any serious complaints about the Franklin, and it does support Linux, but it does seem to be less well-reviewed than a couple of the newer devices. The device also seems to be a power hog. I’m pretty sure it cuts my laptop battery life by at least a third, possibly more.

Shipping was fast. They claimed delivery in five days, and it came in three. There were no disks or anything to fiddle with: the device has drivers on a USB drive built in, and they installed without a hitch. I’m a little annoyed that Windows pops up the file browser every time it returns from sleep, though, and the auto-run seems to make it happen a second time, making it doubly annoying. I’m not sure how to turn either of those “features” off, as I’m kinda stupid when it comes to Windows. So, I’m annoyed 6-8 times per day.

Another quirk of the device is that initialization is really slow. It takes about a minute for the computer to recognize that it’s plugged in after recovering from sleep or booting up, and then another 30 seconds for the Franklin connection manager software to recognize it, meaning I twiddle my thumbs all that time waiting to connect. It’s like in the olden days when one had to wait for the modem to dial and connect before doing anything. I can almost hear the dialtone and modem connection screech in my minds ear, as it plods along finding the device and connecting.

The service worked as soon as I hooked up the device, and with no hassle. It works for every protocol and port I’ve tried (I use 10000 for Webmin, 22 for ssh, 80/443 for web, and IMAPS and SMTPS for mail). Some WiFi in parks has restricted some ports, so it’s good to know I have a reliable means of working.

So, I think Internet has been sorted out properly, at least as long as I’m in the US.

I have now learned my lesson. If it can possibly fall, it will, and it will fall in the most damaging way possible. One less thing to carry around, I guess.

The RV: $33,500 ($469/month)

Obviously, the biggest expense in this is probably the actual RV. Someday I’ll write an article describing the process by which I came to decide on the type and size of RV I wanted and how I narrowed it down and got a pretty good deal, but for now, suffice to say I bought exactly what I wanted within my budget.

My rig is a 2003 Four Winds Hurricane 33SL, which is a 33′ class A motorhome with one “super slide”, which is a slide-out wall that expands the living room width by about three feet, making it nearly 50% wider than when the slide is in. “Class A” is a term that describes a class of RVs where the entirety of the vehicle is part of the living space, including the drivers and passenger seats. A class A motorhome looks, on the outside, kinda like a bus, rather than a van (class B) or a pickup with a cabin built onto the back (class C). Class A motorhomes tend to provide more living space, but lower sleeping capacity per foot of length, than class C motorhomes. Class B motorhomes tend to be much smaller, and look and drive like big fancy vans. Obviously, bigger vehicles are somewhat more difficult to drive and park, and there are limitations on where you can go in a class A that do not apply to class B and smaller class C motorhomes (ask Tynan about the advantages of a smaller RV). Gas mileage of class B motorhomes tends to be better than class C and class A; the class C and class A motorhomes are all built on the same Ford Triton or Chevy Workhorse chassis and so get roughly the same mileage.

My Hurricane is a “value” brand of class A motorhome, manufactured by Thor, and is built on top of a gasoline engine truck chassis built by Ford. More expensive motorhomes are built on diesel bus chassis.

I bought my rig for $29995 from American Motorhome in Sacramento (I can recommend them; they were honest, only had really clean good looking coaches on the lot, and had the best prices for miles around on less than ten year old coaches; for older coaches, you might look elsewhere, though, as they’re a bit higher than retail on their 1999 and below models). With taxes and registration it totaled about $33,500.

I initially had my heart set on a 2005 Hurricane 34N, which is a 35′ coach with three slides, making it a living space of over 300 square feet, and driving it would be very much like driving my 33′ coach. But, it turns out my “good credit” (mid-700s) isn’t good enough to get an RV loan. So, I had to pay cash, and luckily the 33SL showed up on the weekend before the Monday on which I absolutely needed to make a purchase.

Since I plan to spend at least a year on the road (probably more, but let’s be conservative in our math), I can amortize the depreciation on this coach out over 12 months. At this age and in this price range, RVs lose about $2500 per year, with exceptions for high mileage and excessive wear and tear. Earlier in their life, they lose more per year in value, and right now there are a huge number of late model coaches available for sale because buyers found themselves upside down on the loan and out of work, and so they let the bank have it. Mine was a bank repo, as are the vast majority of late model coaches on the market currently.

This is, frankly, the best market in years in which to be buying an RV, used or new (but, especially used), as long as you can scrape together the cash to pay for it. Getting a loan is hard, but getting a good deal is pretty easy, even from most dealers. The market for older coaches isn’t as depressed, as people who want RVs are simply buying older and cheaper, due to the low availability of loans. Nonetheless, in my searches I saw several nice 10-15 year old, technically sound and low mileage, class A RVs for under $20k, and a few for under $10k.

So, my monthly cost on the RV is $208 ($2500 in depreciation divided by 12), plus registration of $30/month, and sales tax of $231 (which is a one-time 9.25% cost, and will amortize more attractively the longer I live in the coach; if I’d thought ahead, I would have setup my domicile in a lower sales tax state before buying the RV; California has hatefully high taxes and registration fees, the highest in the country, as far as I can tell). So, I’m already spending $469/month just for the RV, if I only stay in it for a year. Pretty pricey for a loophole, eh?

Since I only paid about 90% of the low NADA retail for this coach, I’ll probably resell it for about what I paid (not counting taxes and registration), or maybe a bit more with the solar panels and other upgrades I add, but again, we’ll be conservative rather than wishful when pulling numbers out of the air. If I were to trade it in rather than selling it personally, I’d probably take the full depreciation hit, and then some.

Fuel: $200/month

A 33′ class A motorhome is not a fuel-efficient vehicle. It makes a Hummer look like a scooter (actually, no, it doesn’t…it looks OK when compared to a Hummer; that’s how idiotic driving a Hummer is: I can haul around my whole house for not much more gas than driving a Hummer). I’ve been getting about 7.5 to 10 miles to the gallon in my travels thus far, depending on terrain and speed, averaging about 8.5 MPG. The mountains that separate Mountain View from all of my destinations, so far, have been a killer on gas mileage. Level highway mileage is much better, and I’ll be away from these mountains before too much longer. I’ve been told that mileage depends more on how you drive than on how long the coach is; so a 25′ class C built on a Triton chassis like mine would, according to this logic, get about the same gas mileage. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I’m certain a class B will get better mileage, since it’s usually on a lighter-weight van chassis and has a smaller V8 engine.

The 5500W Onan generator also runs on gasoline, and reportedly burns about half a gallon per hour of use. When I am operating without being plugged in, and until my solar panels arrive, I run the generator for about two hours each day, in order to charge my laptop and house batteries. But, until I get the solar panels, I don’t plan to spend more than a day at a time unplugged, so I can safely say I almost never use the generator, and disregard it in my budget. It’s my understanding that generators get more efficient the larger they are, in terms of how much electricity they generate, but they also burn more fuel the larger they are. So, I would think getting the smallest size that provides the necessary electricity to charge your batteries as quickly as they can safely be charged is the way to go for efficiency sake. I haven’t done any math on this, but 5500W is the average size for class A motorhomes of this size. Air conditioning requires a significant amount of AC power, and so the generator would have to run if I weren’t in a park and it were hot out. I may need to add generator fuel usage to the math in the future, when I get to hotter climates, though I plan to follow the perfect weather south and then back north, rather than run heat or air a lot.

I’ve budgeted $200 per month for gasoline, though I suspect I’ll actually travel less distance than that. I expect, at this point, that I will drive one day per week, for about four to six hours, and park the rest of the time. There may be small side-trips to visit customers or carry stuff to trade shows for setup, but I think it’ll all fit in this budget.

In the time since I bought the RV three weeks ago, I’ve spent about $240 on gasoline; but that included the trip back from Sacramento after purchase, plus another round trip to the dealer to have new awnings installed (they were on order when I purchased the RV, and I could have just left it there for the few days until they arrived, but I needed to start moving out of my house immediately). It also included a round trip to Monterey as a trial run; I won’t be doing round trips very often in the future; I will go from place to place and loop the whole country or region before getting back to the starting point again. I currently have 3/4 of a tank of gas in the tank, so I won’t need to gas up again for another few hundred miles.

Obviously, staying in one place costs nothing in gas (except running the generator, if needed), so if I were to find myself on hard times, travelling shorter distances, or not at all, is always an option.

Propane: $60/month

I’m guesstimating on this one, as I’ve only filled up once. Everything that gets hot (and one thing that gets cold) in an RV runs on propane. Mine has a 15 gallon tank, which costs about $60 to fill from almost completely empty. Furnace, stove, oven, refrigerator (when not plugged in or running the generator), and water heater all run on propane. Smaller RVs will require less heating, and have a smaller refrigerator, though I’m not sure how much difference that makes in propane usage rates.

I have a little electric radiator, as well, that I’m going to see about using with the solar panels, once installed, which may conserve some propane during cold weather, though I hope to get out of the cold and stay out of it. Air conditioning might be an issue, and I may need to install more solar panels to address it. (Edit: The radiator takes a minimum of 460 watts on its lowest, single element, setting, according to the Kill-A-Watt. It obviously will not be running on solar panels, since the most I plan to put on the roof is 320W. Looks like the little radiator is going to Goodwill.)

Reading on the Internet indicates that RVers refill propane as frequently as every week or as infrequently as once per year. So, it’s hard to say how often I’ll need to refill, but looking at my gauge and how fast I’ve been using, so far, I think once per month is about right. (Edit: I’m not quite two weeks into my propane usage from full, and I’ll be filling up today. My tank is, I believe about 1/3rd full now, so it looks kinda like in cold weather, I’ll use a little more than one tank per month; probably 20-25 gallons, or ~$80 worth. I hope to be in warm weather soon, which should make it stretch much longer.)

Mobile Service: $73

I have a G1 Android phone with T-Mobile service, and I can tether it to my laptop for Internet when I don’t have access to broadband of some sort. It works OK, though T-Mobile 3G is spotty. I almost never use the phone part of my plan (I use maybe 30 minutes per month of 1000), but I probably make up for it in data usage.

I’ve been told that Verizon has better high speed data coverage, so when the Nexus One is usable on Verizon, I’ll pick one up. That will add $59 per month, I believe, for a data only plan.

RV Parks (optional): $1050/month

The civilized way to travel and live in an RV is to park in a well-equipped RV park. They provide electricity, water, sewer, and cable TV hookups, making an RV just like a little house. You can level it, put out the slide, hook up to the utilities, and put out the “Welcome” mat. WiFi also seems to be widely available at RV parks these days.

In the pricier parts of the country, like most of Northern and coastal California, RV parks can cost a lot more than the $35/day I’ve budgeted, but with membership in a few discount clubs (Happy Camper, Passport America, Good Sam, KOA, which all adds up to a couple hundred bucks per year, but will, I think, save several hundred more) I believe it’ll average out to less than that over the year that I’m doing this. I expect to park free, at Wal-Marts and on quiet streets near friends, quite a bit on the weekends, when I don’t need to work as much and don’t need good fast Internet, which will bring the average down even in expensive areas. Some parks have lower cost partial hookup options; usually low amperage electricity (like 15 or 30 max) and no sewer hookup, so you have to drive to the dump station once a week or so. Where I’m currently parked, you can save $5 a night by staying in a spot without sewer and cable TV hookups, bringing it down to within budget.

This is where having a smaller RV would be a major benefit. A 22′ class B can park pretty much anywhere, since it’s just a big van. My 33′ provides a bit more flexibility than a 40′ diesel, but not by a lot. So, if cost of living is a primary concern, a smaller RV is a good choice, and not just because they cost a little less than a big one. I can’t park in most driveways, but a smaller coach (even a 25′ class C) could.

Mail: $19/month

Having no permanent residence introduces some interesting problems for running a business, or even just staying legal with taxes and such. There are a number of services that provide mail forwarding, mail scanning, etc. for full-time RVers and boaters. There are hundreds of mailbox services that will hold and forward mail (most local mailbox places provide this service, even), but you’ll want someone that specializes in mail for full-time travelers. I wanted one that provided scanning in addition to forwarding, since I really don’t want to have to wait around in one place for mail to arrive. This narrows the field to just a handful.

I chose St. Brendan’s Isle, which is $12.95, plus a few extra bucks for scanning service. They’ve been very helpful and responsive, so far, and they provide a lot of information about the process and legal requirements. You have to provide a signed, notarized, form that permits them to receive mail on your behalf, so you’ll need to get setup a couple of weeks in advance of hitting the road.

The other option I considered was Paperless Mail, but they weren’t responsive when I asked about business mail and whether I could use a personal account for business mail (they have a “business” account, but it costs an order of magnitude more, and provides way more services than I would need; Virtualmin only receives a couple of pieces of mail per week, far less than I personally receive).

Honestly, this is one area where I think my life is more convenient than before I hit the road. Most of these services will shred and recycle all of your junk mail for you, for free. You just check a box, and it’s done. I hate junk mail, and even when you ask nicely, beg, plead, yell angrily, etc. some vendors (J. Crew, I’m looking at you, you twice-weekly junk mailing bastards!) just won’t stop sending junk mail.

Solar Panels: -$62.50/month (plus labor)

I’m installing two 80W solar panels as soon as they arrive from Amazon, which cost about $850, including charge controller, wiring, mounting brackets, and a small inverter. The interesting thing about this is that solar panels add resale value at a rate much higher than the cost of solar panels. This will adjust over time, as solar panels get cheaper, more common, and the resale market adjusts, but for now, I’ll actually make money when I resell by installing solar panels (though it’ll take me a day or two of somewhat hard labor to get them installed; and if you’re not handy with tools and electricity you’d want to have a professional do the work).

I plan to assess my electricity usage over the next couple of months using a Kill-A-Watt for my plugin devices, and keeping an eye on my battery condition for the house lights and fans and such, and figure up how much solar I actually need to completely run from solar. I strongly suspect it will be more than 160W, but I don’t have cash for more panels right now. It costs about $800 for each additional pair of 80W panels, and I have room up on the roof for a half dozen panels and the charge controller supports up to 30A (~500W). Tynan has, I believe, 320W of solar on his roof, and reports it is “enough”.

RV Full-timer Insurance: $51/month

Living full-time in an RV means that I have to have vehicle insurance and “home owners” insurance coverage on the RV. I checked with three providers, and GEICO was the cheapest at $51/month, with a significant amount of extra coverage for personal items. It would be $48/month with the standard $5000/month of personal items coverage. This is not much different than renters insurance for the house.

Total: $1808.50/month

So, I believe that’s all of my monthly living expenses for the next year; at least it’s what I’ve budgeted for. I’ll re-asses as time goes by, but I think it’ll probably be pretty sane.

I’m not covering the regular stuff; groceries and such, that I spend no matter where I happen to live. I have always eaten out regularly, and always been pretty spendy on groceries, so I don’t think it’ll be much different when I’m shopping and eating on the road. I did include the mobile service, as it’s more vital than ever, and is part of my Internet solution. I currently spend the same amount for mobile service as I did in the house, and I haven’t bought a new phone yet, so expenses are the same. But I probably will buy a Nexus One and get Verizon data service in the next month or two; I need better navigation and GPS, and I think I’ll be better served by Verizon’s network. So, that’ll be an extra $59/month while my contract runs out at T-Mobile.

The Old House: $2439/month

Just for comparison sake, my old expenses at the 1000 square foot house a few blocks from downtown Mountain View:

• Rent: $2145
• Internet: $71
• Mobile: $73
• Power and gas: $130
• Renters insurance: $20

Total: $2429/month

One thing to note: I have no car expenses in either case. I sold my car when I moved from Austin three years ago, and I haven’t missed it (much). So, I won’t be taking a car with me on the road. My bike is on a rack on the back, and I’ll buy a motorcycle in a couple of months, if the bike proves unworkable. I figure I’ll just drive out every week or so for groceries and supplies, and then park somewhere new. One more interesting tidbit about cars: The car I sold when I moved from Austin cost about the same as my RV. I wouldn’t want to try living in a 350Z, though, even if it could carry a surprising amount of stuff in the hatchback (it probably could tow a small travel trailer, I guess).

It’s not really all that cheap, is it?

Someone on Hacker News questioned the logic of this comparison, suggesting that it’d make more sense to compare a 250 square foot apartment to the 250 square foot RV…but, I think that misses the point. I wouldn’t be willing to trade in a big house in a nice city for a tiny place if I couldn’t consider the whole country my living room.

The RV gives me the ability to travel anywhere in the country (and Mexico and Canada), while still sleeping in my own bed, cooking in my own kitchen, working in my own space, having all of my stuff, enjoying the company of my dog, and do it all for less than it cost to live in Mountain View. Regardless of the size of the house, the location advantages of an RV can’t be beat.

It’s also probably worth considering that a livable apartment in Mountain View, even a tiny one (though finding a small apartment that allows big dogs is extremely difficult in the bay area), will never be less than about $1000/month. It’s just a very expensive town to live in, and the surrounding nice areas, like Palo Alto or San Francisco, are even more expensive (a friend pays $1245/month on a ~300 square foot place in Palo Alto, that she got at the absolute low point of the rental price curve; she moved from a similarly nice and similarly sized place in the same neighborhood that she was paying $1500 for).

I could, obviously, choose to live in a really cheap city, or in the suburbs, and save tons and tons and tons of money. But I would be miserable. I want to live in interesting, exciting, beautiful, dynamic, places that have fantastic weather. I’m not particularly poor these days (though I’m by no means rich, and my current company still doesn’t quite pay me what my previous company did), so living cheaply isn’t really my reason for doing this. I’m downright pleased to find out that it is actually a lot cheaper than living more traditionally in any place I would enjoy living, even though I’m sure it’d be possible to live somewhere in the US for less and not have to live in a truck.

So, if you’re following along thinking I’m going to tell you how to beat the system and live for free, you’re in the wrong place. I’m too old to rough it all the time. I won’t hesitate to park in a Wal-Mart lot, or spend a few nights in a national park that permits non-designated RV camping, but I’m not too fussed about paying $50 or more per night to stay in nice locations with full hookups, sometimes, too.