I’m embarrassed to publicly admit this, but I think it needs to be said: I prefer reading digital books (specifically on my phone) over real books. But why does it feel so dirty to openly say that?
One of the greatest gifts road life has given us: finding out these lifestyles we’ve romanticized aren’t really for us before we commit to them.
For a full-time traveler without an unlimited cell plan, the three magic words are: Free public Wi-Fi. At first, we didn’t think it would be that big a deal to use public internet access, but after 2 years we realized we were spending a lot of time and stress hunting for, and working around, Wi-Fi. Now we’ve tried a CCrane Vector Home Repeater, and we really enjoy how it’s opened up options for us. As with anything, it has some limitations, but in the right circumstances it’s a huge relief.
We thought we were prepared to use self-leveling epoxy after watching videos and reading through articles. Turned out there's a lot about using self-leveling epoxy that no one talks about. We ended up learning them the hard way.
Our kitchen countertop has been the bane of our existence for the last 1.5 years. The wood veneer has been slowly cracking and peeling off since we moved in thanks to water splashes. It was finally time to do something about it. Unfortunately the project turned out to be extremely stressful.
Right before the summer we learned about the app Ultimate Campgrounds and were really excited about it. Ultimate Campground has an app for the U.S. and for Canada, and from their description it looked like they have an extensive collection of campgrounds.
The drive from Whitehorse to Tombstone Territorial Park is far, like 400 miles far. That’s too much mileage for us to make it in one go, especially knowing the Dempster Highway (which brings you to the park) is especially slow going in an RV. So we stopped at Five Finger Rapids and Midnight Dome on our way to Tombstone.
Living on the road and constantly traveling to unfamiliar places towing an 8,000 lb RV can be stressful. There are a lot of unknowns and we can end up spending a lot of time and data trying to figure all kinds of things. We know it’s probably like that for all travelers – whether you’re full-timers or not. So we’ve compiled a list of apps that have made our nomadic lives easier (especially one with a limited cell data plan).
Insurance can help recover after losing physical things, but in modern times data are often more precious than possessions. This is doubly true for “digital nomads” who often eschew owning expensive things and embrace going paperless for both personal and work records. If we lost access to our files, it would shut our lives down until we could get them back together. Everything is in our laptops. Insurance can’t protect against data loss. That’s why we need backups.
We had this kickass plan for hiking Sheep Creek trail in Kluane National Park. During our first trip to the Tachal Dhal Visitor Center, the ranger mentioned that we could make a loop out of the trail instead of hiking it as an out and back. We were excited to finally hike a loop trail in Yukon.
Samuel Glacier is no doubt one of our top 5 places we visited while we were in Yukon this past summer. This is a place we insist you check out if you’re in the area. Though keep in mind that Samuel Glacier isn’t actually in Yukon, but in Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, the most northwestern tip of British Columbia. It’s not far from the British Columbia/Yukon border, by Kluane National Park, about 70 miles one-way from our boondocking site next to Quill Creek. We left the Toaster behind and took a day trip there.
I remember my first national park. It was Big Bend National Park and I was a junior in college. We drove from Florida to Texas, picking up friends along the way until it was 6 of us in two cars driving the long distance across the longhorn state. We pulled into Big Bend in the dark, our car headlights catching a pack of javelinas scampering across the road.
Someone asked us how we handle vet checkups as full-timers for Tybee and Tyki. With there being so many people who live on the road with dogs, we felt this was a good question to write a quick post about.
Tyki and Tybee in Washington.
Since Tybee and Tyki are in very different stages of their lives, we handle their vet visits differently. Tyki is a healthy (knock on wood) ~4.5 years old. He doesn’t require any medicine aside from his monthly heartworm prevention and flea medicine, which we are strict about giving. Annual trips to the vet are all he gets, a good thing too because he’s terrified of those visits. (He shakes even when we bring him along for Tybee’s visits.) We’re also lucky that he doesn’t get himself into too much trouble. During the 1.5 year that we’ve been on the road, he’s only had one emergency (thankfully during office hours) and had to spend an overnight at the vet.
Tyki in Borrego Springs, CA.
We bring him to whatever local vet that has the best prices when it’s time for his annual checkup. We realized after hitting the road that some vets offer a first time deal. Often the deals are in the form of a free visit. This means we save anywhere from $40 - $50. This works out nicely because we travel and have access to new vets all the time. The downside of this is that his health records are scattered across the U.S. It requires a little bit more work on my part by calling and asking his previous vet to send over his health records. I also keep track of all his (and Tybee’s) visits with the name, address and phone number of the vets he’s gone to. On top of that, I keep detailed notes of the office visits for both dogs along with their vaccine dates so I’m not reliant on the vet’s records.
Tybee is now 14 years old and needs to visit the vet a lot more frequently than she used to. During the last year she’s had several bad cases of UTIs that required more vet visits than her standard twice a year check ups. Banfield Pet Hospital (frequently located inside Petsmart stores) offers several different wellness plans for dogs, puppies, cats and kittens. Tybee is on the Special Care Plan, which is ideal for older dogs with chronic conditions. After I realized that she was having continuous UTI problems, I did the math and realized that being on the wellness plan made sense. I pay $42.95/month and the plan is good for a year. The Special Care Plan that Tybee is on includes the following services:
Tybee has used everything on that list except for deworming and dental cleaning. While she definitely needs a good teeth cleaning, at her age I’m not comfortable putting her under anesthesia. Banfield did let me use the blood test that she would’ve gotten if she was getting a dental cleaning just as part of her annual check up. The other benefit of going to Banfield is that there’s one almost everywhere, they have long office hours, open on weekends, and her files and notes can be accessed from each hospital.
Tybee in Lake Mead, NV.
I order their heartworm and flea medicine through 1-800-PetMeds. Some of Tybee’s medicine I will order online and others I get through Banfield (with the 20% off discount from her plan). Tybee’s Gabapentin, a pain medicine that’s also for people, I get from CVS because it’s cheaper there than Banfield.
If your pet takes prescription medicine then be prepared for some hassles as you travel from state to state. Due to drug laws, vets can't refill a prescription medicine that was written by another vet in a different state. The vets I've come across all require that they personally exam Tybee before refilling a prescription or writing her another one. This is where Banfield's unlimited office vets come in real handy. The other option is to use 1-800-PetMeds or another similar online company to get medicine refilled. Also keep this in mind if you're traveling over the border to Canada or Mexico.
Tyki & Tybee in Yukon, Canada.
The downside of always changing vets is that the quality of doctors also varies, a lot. Even just going to all the different Banfield hospitals, we've come across only one or two veterinarians that I really liked and felt like they did a good job as doctors, were knowledgable, perceptive, and had good people skills. I've come across one vet at Banfield that was terrible. He may have meant well, but his communication and people skills were very lacking. He totally lacked tact.
Tybee in Washington.
This has worked out great for us so we’ll continue handling their vet visits this way. I hope this has provided you some useful information and will help you figure out something that will work for you.
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We all know that recycling can be really confusing: what can be recycled and how should it be recycled? These common questions cause two unwanted things to happen: people improperly recycle and people stop recycling. Both are equally bad. I've compiled a list to help clarify the correct items to recycle, and right ways to do it.
Solar panels have to be aimed at the sun to work. I’m serious. They really do. When they are bolted to a vehicle, that doesn’t change...but the location and orientation of the rig certainly does! Combine that with the fact that the sun itself follows a varying path through the sky, depending on time of year and latitude, and you have a lot of variables to consider if your rig relies on solar for power. So where – and how – you park your RV has a big impact on how happy you’ll be with your solar panels’ performance.
These past few months seem to have been the season of full-timers, who we know from the road settling down. They close the doors to their nomadic lives as they move into their new homes or park their rigs on their newly purchased properties. There are various reasons they've said goodbye to the traveling lifestyle, consistency and friends are two of them.
While Auriol Trail isn’t one of the best hikes in the park, it sure felt nice when we completed the 9 mile roundtrip hike in less time than it had taken us to finish some of the other shorter length hikes we’ve done in the area. The hike stayed in the boreal forest for the most part. After being spoiled with treeless views quickly into all of our other hikes, it was strange remain in the trees.
We headed to Haines Junction with a boondocking site we found on the iOverlander app in mind. Except we were driving too fast and passed the GPS coordinates for it. We pulled into the first pullout we saw to turn around. It was a large pullout next to a creek with a fire ring and "teepee". What caught our attention was the dirt road leading in the woods next to all that.
