RV Tour Solo Woman Living in a Lazy Daze Class C RV

we're going to do another interview now we're going to meet jeannie who lives in this beautiful lazy days motorhome so janie tell us a little bit about yourself how did you come to be a nomad i've been on the road since august of 2012 and i was in austin texas i worked for 13 years for dell computer and got into a job that was kind of a little stressful and i had a house that i was looking to sell and uh the market was terrible and then the market suddenly turned in austin in the spring of 2012 and i was able to sell the house and at the same time i had this job that was making me crazy and i ended up putting it up for sale and uh thinking about living in my rv i had a i bought a lazy days and um a few months earlier and i decided to live in it quit the job sold the house took off on the road for a few months to figure out what i wanted to do where i wanted to work where i wanted to live and um and that was four years ago wow so um but it took me a few years of um research um i was looking at before four years ago yeah yeah so i was um looking at selling a house and um was looking at downsizing it was too big of a house i was looking at downsizing i found tiny houses people living in rvs i found cheaprvliving.com i decided on lazy days and i found one that was um just the next town up a guy was reading his blog and so when i saw his ad on craigslist i felt like i knew the rig and i bought it and was able to get on the road with it so um why rv what what made you want to do in you know most ladies when they retire they just sit comfortably at home but you want to get out there and see the world yeah i um my folks when they retired um they took off in the fifth wheel for a couple years so i was familiar with it and um and then they came back to texas and built a house and it was kind of in back my mind and i saw how they were tired and i started um you know trying to save a little bit and thinking maybe i'd retire later and then it ended up coming earlier than i expected but um uh so i i thought i'd buy the this rv that i found online i thought i'd get that have it for a couple years and then retire and then get a bigger one um because this one was it was 22 feet it was 20 years old but it was in good shape and um so i was able to i thought it'd be my practice rig and then i ended up living in it for a year um but uh so you know when i was researching and finding these other blogs and i found people doing this like living and traveling and it just seems so fantastic and i guess i'm a bit of a gypsy i think i've i have that i used to move a lot and i'm easily i'm easily bored and easily amused so that really kind of plays well with this kind of lifestyle so if you start to get bored yeah you drive somewhere new and you're amused again yeah and when i first started out i i moved a lot and now i like to sit for two weeks and i just kind of like live my life but i do it in beautiful places and so that's just that's my that's my camping style now is that and i've met so many uh people on the road that have way more friends on the road than i did when i was in a job in a house um and there's always somebody somewhere uh to camp with or there's somebody uh that's somewhere that i want to go camp with and i have folks all the time saying oh we're over here come come camp with us and um open to the rtr uh rubber champ rendezvous um i've camped with randy and you know and then once you you meet people on the road then there there's all kinds of places to go and people to see and people to camp with so there's so many things to see in general you'll never run out no you never see them all yeah my bucket list is really long and everywhere you go you meet someone a new friend yeah yeah and new connections yeah even with the little group we have here there's there's two new people that never camped before so yeah who knows how many times you'll be camping with them down the road yeah right yeah so you you kind of people wonder if they're going to go out and be lonely you haven't found that at all no no although i was a loner i was more of an introvert to begin with um and so i do like my alone time but then you know you kind of surround yourself with your own tribe and folks that that kind of like to be alone and like to have you know a social component so you're able to join in with a social component as much as you want and also have your own rig that you can be by yourself as much as you want and i've been out in the forest by myself for 10 days at a time and that was fine and and i like to have um someone to kind of camp with and travel with you know their safety numbers although i think i'm much more safe out on the road than i was in the house in the city so you haven't have you been fearful or afraid since you've been on the road no there was one um maybe twice there was one time i can remember that i pulled into a um a campground drove all the way up casper mountain in wyoming and it was a really tough drive and i got there and i didn't like the feeling of the campground and i did there just was something about it that was kind of creepy and um i just thought i'm not going to stay there and so i just you just got to trust your gut right most of the time everything is great but that one time i ended up driving back down the mountain and went to the walmart for the night and you know it may have been fine but i you know guys sitting in cars in a campground with no content i it just sometimes you just trust your gut and that was like the one time if there was another time um i can't remember but rarely rarely were you afraid beforehand for your safety did it occur to your boy i don't know if i'm going to be safe out there no i don't think it really occurred to me yo you you were just confident the whole time yeah i mean you just um you know you have you know common sense right just common sense and you know you kind of like watch out and you do your research and um i'm you know pretty common sense so you kind of like can take care of yourself right right keep keep you know just keep aware of your surroundings right and following good research right yeah all you got yep and so uh after four years do you have any regrets you wish you hadn't done it things you've done right things you've done wrong gosh i can't say that i do anything differently um [Music] i i i'm glad that the the rvs that i bought i bought one that i was able to get into for a little over ten thousand dollars and it got me on the road and it was a good one to live in for a while and um i had really downsized my house i put all my stuff into storage for six months in a storage thinking that if it didn't work for me i could set up a house and then i loved it so much when i was out on the road for about three or four months i went back to texas and um donated it all got rid of it and um and then ended up traveling for another year and then um sold the 22 foot and bought this 26 foot for a time i had a scooter i needed uh kind of some something to get into town and back and so you didn't have to break camp every time yeah yeah with the 22 foot it was kind of easy and i was traveling a lot but once i started kind of like sitting in one place for about two weeks it was easier to i was always bumming rides and i didn't like that so i wanted my own transportation and i got a scooter i got a ramp on the back and did the scooter because i thought towing a car just really scared me the scooter ended up being harder than i thought about a year year and a half ago i ended up getting a car i got rid of the scooter and got a car um and then towing a car is easier than i thought it was going to be so um ended up getting a manual transmission and just like popping neutral go so you know the the getting the stuff to do it uh all the the tow bar and base plate all that kind of stuff it's kind of expensive to get set up but it's so nice having a car so maybe if i had to do something different maybe i wouldn't get the scooter because it just i should have just gotten a car to begin with right people are afraid of towing yeah but it you found it really wasn't any big yeah yeah and i thought you know i would i'd mess it up you know i just figure i would be one of those people that's you know dragging a car with a brake on or something and if you just follow with any with a reg you follow a checklist before you get going with the car you just have the things that you do and i went to there's a lazy days uh they have a gathering of the ladies ladies gathering every september and one of the seminars uh that year not last year the year before was about to tell her not to toe and just talk to the ladies about it and then explaining you know how it is to you know to be turning and negotiating um roads and stuff with a car the car is actually skinnier than an rv so yeah so i'm like oh you know i gotta watch my back tires and my tire swing so if your back tire can make it the car can make it because it's skinnier than you so i'm like bing so it was like that was like a light bulb moment of if i could drive this the car's just gonna follow behind me and as long as um you know you just hook it up properly put it in neutral and just you know kind of double check it and and go and i can kind of tell if i'm going up a mountain that i have some extra weight back there but it's really light a ford fiesta it's 2500 pounds so it doesn't do much it's it's great to be able to um go into town take my laundry do grocery shopping go hiking you know just take it anywhere we want to go so so you can build set up camp and go explore very cheaply right exactly yeah instead of eight or ten or if lucky on your lazy days you can probably get 30 yeah 40 gallons 30 40 miles 40 miles a gallon that's super yeah people always ask what kind of mileage you get on this which is about nine but i always say but it's a house it gets good mileage for a house right very good mileage per hour very good miles for a house right so yeah but between the two combined two yeah it's doing pretty well for the year and i like to kind of settle i always say i spread out like flubber you know i just have i get to camp and i'm just like spread out i don't want to break that every time i want to go someplace right so that's my style and then also if i'm camped with with my gal pals we just pile in the car and go so it's nice having someone with a car right yes it is very much so you're boondocking here in near cottonwood arizona on national forest land do you mostly boondock or rv parks yeah i started off in rv parks uh national parks state parks um and it was okay and i've done some rv parks um i did a month in denver in an rv park it was so close together but i was glad to have it because i was selling my rig and buying this one and i had stuff to do and get the scooter so i've done rv parks but i'm not crazy about them and i'd rather be able to spread out and have the forest and i'm just a forest and a mountains kind of a gal i don't really want to be i'm just not an rv park kind of person it's just i prefer to be out here um i don't have a problem leveling i like the you know my tribe is out here these are the folks that i like to camp with and we just like to be out in nature right all the time you just walk off i like you know campsites where there's uh forest roads going off in all directions um soon we're going to be up uh closer to flagstaff you get in the forest and there's you know great trails every which way to just take the dog and just go off a new trail in the morning so that's that's where my joy is and have you had any problem finding free boondocking spots no um there's you know different websites um i have the benchmark atlas and so like when i read your blog and you write about a place uh that you're camped and it looks good i will get out my benchmark and i'll mark it and i'll write you know cheaper every living and the date uh rvsu has a lot of good spots a lot of the blogs i will mark them on my benchmark i'll go to freecampsites.net and there's the motor vehicle use map you go to the forest service they have to give you a motor vehicle use map that shows dispersed camping campendium is great now i love campendium that's a new one and they've got some good stuff with a lot of pictures um so you can get an idea of a place um but yeah so i just make notes um uh on my benchmarks uh i keep a a spreadsheet of the places i've been with the gps so i know where to go back i keep a spreadsheet with you know where to dump and also rv sue she'll write like where she got her propane where she dumped her tanks and that kind of stuff so once i've got all that information and i kind of plan next year's travels i kind of i kind of map it out on the spreadsheet to know where to go so you follow these other blogs and you know where they've been you can get this and that and this yeah all around the country yeah so maybe i'm not going to go there this year or next year but in three years maybe i'll i'll go back and i'll have it all in my benchmark of of where to go right it's very likely to yeah to crisscross where the other bloggers have been yeah yeah and so you this is your second lazy days now and so you must think they're pretty special i like them yeah i've uh i like the look of them i like the retro look i like the quality um i like when i was researching there's there's really kind of a community that you get with them and and that appealed to me when i was first researching is you know they have gatherings um they have a gathering on court site which when i was first on the road i was invited to and i thought well that sounds good so um when i went there i met a whole lot of lazydays folks and now those are some of my good good friends that i camp with and you know there's a ladies gathering every year there's there's a community that you can go to different gatherings and there's a forum online that is very very informational it's a very well run one about different things engine wise coach wise batteries solar whatever you need help with there's probably someone who's had that problem before and you can go research so it's um it's a good rig it's the i like the layout i like the amenities um and it's what i ended up settling on when i decided i wanted to rv is to get a lazy days and the first one i got was a 92 but it was in great shape and was great at first and then when i realized i was going to be doing this for the foreseeable future i ended up getting a 26 foot mid bath which gave me a bit more space and it's more of it's more kind of house-like so and lazydays has a reputation as one of the very best rvs you could buy and so would you agree with that i would yeah and then they're not cheap they're um you get the quality you pay for the quality you get your money's worth you do they're just they're hard to come by sometimes especially outside of california they're just uh they're custom-made not custom-made but they're they're made to order in california near la so you know in texas it was just really hard to find one i was lucky to find one that either only kind of on the on the secondary market you buy them from individuals they don't you don't go to dealers very much there aren't any dealers and so um you have to be really uh kind of almost lucky to find a good one um unless you're oh i'm there they're in california a lot but um so i was just really uh lucky and uh had some good perseverance to get my first one and then i ended up um being near denver when this one came up and it ended up being being good because of this one um i had a uh they had reinforced uh for towing back there and ended up being really good for putting a scooter on so you know to finding the right rig you just have to be perseverance and luck it really is for any rig really really you know but you know i just found that that's the combination i needed to get the rigs that were perfect for me um patience but yeah so i like the quality i like the design i like the layout i think it's it's worth what you pay for right yeah right well why don't we go take a look inside yeah my first one was blue and white i kind of like that color the gray and white um it's uh the gray is not great paint for it it fades a bit but um they have that kind of retro look yeah that i really like and uh so and your ford festiva fiesta fiesta fiesta yeah and you just tow it back it's so light uh it gets great mileage um can haul stuff and people and it works great [Applause] and even with a great big rig you camp as much out of it as you do in it yeah so you're outside a lot yeah so i've got you know chairs i've got a bed for riley out here so there's riley there's riley let's open that up and one thing these uh lazy days are known for is their real quality build and and in every way they're very high quality yeah a lot of wood real wood um and so you actually sleep up on the uh yeah on the overhead yeah i sleep above i make a bed i don't sleep in a sleep sack although i i have one up there um but i make the bed with a fitted and flat sheet like a real person and i like that that's my thing is i want to get into a real bed at night not a sleeping bag so um but yeah the thing about the lazy days is they did have a um a full oven not a you know a rv size oven stove and a microwave i don't i didn't want a convection oven or just a microwave i wanted a real oven because i bake so you do actually use the oven oh yeah a lot a lot yeah so that was important to me and that's one thing i liked about the lazy days was you did have the full um the full kitchen amenities this one has a fold up um for extra counter space i use that a lot you know this one has a dinette and this pulls out and then you can actually uh has extra cushion so this pulls out and you can make a bed here which i've never done right unless you have a gadget caster yeah most people don't and then i you know in the cab i close that off with insulated curtains so i don't see my excuse me storage back there and i've got a i've got a 12-volt outlet up here and i've got stuff that i plug in right there and i've got a inverter right behind the refrigerator and that's where i plug in to the battery to run 110 and how much solar are you running i have 320 watts i have two 160s and then i have a blue sky controller charge controller and monitor and my batteries are right there so we have the run just kind of going right in here my inverter's right there we're running i've got about a two foot run from the batteries on on two out welding cable so there's like no no drop off in in charge lots of good storage nice oh yeah all nice real cabinets underneath the um dinette seats and up above and drawers and everything um you have a microwave do you run a generator do i have a generator i don't run it that much i just don't choose to use the microwave that much i tend to run my generator once a month to exercise it rather than actually using it i didn't use it more but a lot of people end up doing that yeah especially once in a great while i'll run the microwave but it's storage right now it keeps my chips in there i think most uh microwaves end up being just now let's put the chips in there yeah um and then uh back here we actually the bathroom door closes so if it's really cold at night i will close that off and maybe run my little heater in here and um and also if somebody's showering that closes but i also have a um an accordion door that closes off here and so if someone's showering and then the wardrobe is here um that makes a nice little area for for couples or if you have a guest chances are it's mostly couples yeah and so yeah this is a real convenient thing yeah and i have a um a catalytic heater that i um had put in a about a year and a half ago that comes off of my hot water heater gas line and so i can move that up front or i can keep it back here and so do you just use it or do you use the furnace as well i rarely use the furnace it's so inefficient and loud yeah so batteries yeah and so this i just um you know i keep my propane tank filled and um this thing is on a i think it's a seven foot i got a some extra tubing on it and so that can go up there and back here and i made a little cover for it because you're supposed to keep them covered so yeah the dust kills yeah yep so i made that out and um so i have this is the mid bath and so it's got two couches and i actually have i do fiber arts kind of thing so i have a spinning wheel i've got a loom i've got i knit i've got projects and yarn everywhere so um and that's actually a spinning wheel that's a spinning wheel and you spin yeah i just you just tread all it right now i've got something on there but you just treadle it and just i've got fiber and it just spins and you make cloth i mean that's what you're doing i make yarn so i would make yarn like that it makes yarn so yeah and then from that i will knit and make um i'm working on a shawl right now um i've made socks i make a lot of socks right now so um oh he doesn't like that sound um anyway so yeah so that's my thing is i knit a lot and i spin and i weave do you sell it i mean hand spun hand you know i have an etsy shop that i don't have going right now i tend to give away stuff um find like here's a scarf here's and i do book binding and i make lotions and stuff and i just try to uh find people that need those things and just give them away because i i can't deal with putting it on a website or whatever i just would rather say here anybody want this so um but usually but you don't get your money back per hour no but i'm not looking for it yeah i'm not i'm not looking to monetize it i just enjoy it right and so i enjoy the making and uh sometimes i just have to offload stuff to get it out of the rig and find people to take them please please take my stuff please you want a scarf anybody need a hat having a book um so um yeah so you know knitting is a very portable activity um spinning wheel nuts i just started doing this and and um weaving you know it's hard to do some of these things in a small space but it's possible um and um you know having i've got yarn up in these cabinets too um so that's that's a bit of my obsession but um i enjoy it it's my joy um and so i this one these floor plans they or these rvs most of the lazy days they had a uh a tv up in this cabinet and um i didn't like sitting here and creating my neck so my dad and i took the tv out um there's a stud right here and so we we attached and the tvs these days are so light so we um put a mount there if i had to do it over again i would get a smaller tv and how it's bigger is better not so much in an rv but and so we cut some shelves and put my dvds and stuff up there i've got an inverter that runs off a 12 12-volt so if i am boondocking i can run my dvd and tv off of my 12-volt and um and then i also put in a pantry right here my dad built that for me he's got a wood shop cat and peek in there yeah it's um this is uh andy baird at um oh right andy bears travels he did the he has the plans and so we uh made this and so it's like three inches which boy holds a lot of stuff yeah it's a four inch to one by four which is really three and a half and so that's mostly what you need you know it's just everything is flat kind of yeah less than four inches so yeah that's amazing amount of stuff and easily yeah you know there was this was just a wall that had a clock on it right and you know andy andy took out his his um door but i use this a lot so i didn't want to lose that so we set it up so that it and you it's a little more forward than his but you don't lose any haul space i mean you can go buy this no oh no fine there's no problem there yeah no one would be too big to go yeah so and i'm gonna stick my head in your bathroom yeah so there's um this is one thing that was a lot bigger and this one than my prior one is i have a shower which is where i store my um laundry and stuff and and it's a wet bath so uh just your shower gets wet yeah and you know i've got um extra storage above and i've got storage below and you know it's a good size one thing uh lazy does is make make things right quality and well-designed i mean oh yeah the design is really good and they don't change from year to year i mean this is a 2001 and you look at a new one and there's a few changes but not much it's almost all the same plenty big room bathroom yeah you're you're comfortable in there yeah and plus if you close that door and close off this um uh accordion door you've got a nice dressing area so and then riley has his bed and these couch these are twin size um and they can pull out and this couch cushion goes down that could be a double or you can put them together for a king um and the one i had before was a twin king so the back was the same except for the dinette was in between and then you had a smaller bathroom and a huge amount of light in here oh yeah really pleasant view to sit in here and just look out you can see oh yeah 270 degrees yeah and that's the thing is that what i like about this floor plan is that you can just i just i like to go to pretty places and live my life in a pretty place i love the mountains i love the forest i love you know the the green desert this is beautiful you know in the in the winter i'm in quartzsite and um so yeah it's just i got a great view i can sit in here and knit or read or go out go outside and sit with the group and i take my knitting and we sit around and twitter chat and i'm knitting and they don't mind so well you've got a great great life here i think i do i really like it well jeannie thank you so much for uh showing us your home and uh sharing it with us it's really wonderful you've got a really great life here i love it yeah i uh it started off as a short term i'll just figure out what i want to do with my life and now it is my life yeah and a wonderful life it is it is yeah it's fantastic i'm gonna i'm gonna keep doing it for a while i know that okay well thank you so much thanks bob and we'll see you down the road okay thanks

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 597,735

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, toad, towed, Lazy Daze, Class C, kitchen

Id: _JNJGDkY-NA

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2017