Questions and Answers

It is hard to believe that we have been living full-time in The Bus for two years.  In June 2015, we sold our home in Maryland and hit the road expecting that we might be full-timers for 2-3 years.  Now at the two-year point, we feel like we have seen and explored only a small portion of what we set out to do.  One of our relatives asked, “How long do you expect to do this?”  We don’t have a good answer for it other than "until we get tired of it".

The numbers are the number of times we have live there.

This is one of several questions we are often asked when people find out we are full-time RV’ers.  Another question that we have probably always been asked but never gave it much thought is, “Where are you from?”  For a quick reply, we often say Auburn, AL since that is our current legal residence.  There are certain Federal and State legalities that require residents to have established residency.  However, it is more difficult for us to answer since we lived in several different locations during my military career.  As times moves on, we may or may not retain a residence in Auburn, AL and it may become harder to answer what is typically a simple question.

Speaking of states and maps, it has been about 10 months since we added a new sticker to our RV map.  Many RV owners add these maps to their rig to show where they have been.  Some people ask, "Are those all the states you have been too?"  There are no hard and fast rules on what qualifies as sticker worthy.  Some people add stickers if they drive through a state while others add them if they stay overnight in the state.  We decided that we would only add a state sticker if we actually spent a night in The Bus there.  Just because we visited a place in the past and may have even camped there in a previous RV, we felt The Bus needs to qualify its own experiences. 

We left Alabama after having new Koni shocks installed on The Bus at Red Bay Diesel and made a short stop at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky.  I appreciate all types of cars, and even though Corvettes are not my thing; I enjoyed seeing the beautiful examples on display.  It was sad to see the ones on display that were crushed by the sinkhole under the museum a few years ago.

We selected a campground near Frankfurt, KY and paid for a week.  This would give us enough time for me to get my work hours in and also see a few of the distilleries along the Bourbon Trail.  The official Bourbon Trail passport is more of a marketing gimmick where several of the large producers award a t-shirt for visiting all the ones listed in the passport.  There are many other distilleries in the area that you can also visit and all of them offer tours to the public.  We picked out a few to tour and called it good.  Hey, they are all making booze and its pretty much the same process.  It was surprising how much Bourbon and Whiskey is made in this area.  There are literally more barrels of whiskey in Kentucky than residents.

Another question we get asked is “Do you cook in your RV?”  Certainly, we do. We have a full kitchen including a dishwasher.  The convection/microwave oven took a bit of getting use to as it cooks differently that a typical oven.  Pattie was given some sourdough starter by my mother recently and decided to try and bake fresh bread.  She followed my mother’s recipe and the results were fantastic.  

This was our first overnight stay in Kentucky so we were able to add the Kentucky sticker to our map.  From here, we plan to head north to cooler weather.

Thanks for keepingupwiththejonesrv!

RV Tip:  Knowing the tire pressures and temperatures on your RV and anything it tows can alert you to trouble before it becomes a crisis.  We added the EzTire monitoring system to The Bus and the Jeep this month.  It is easy to install and wirelessly receives data that is presented to the driver on a small screen.  Now if the Jeep develops a flat tire, I should know before a motorist pulls along side blowing their horn and waving frantically.