Hi. I’m Anne Louise. I’m 83 and single, living alone in Minnesota. My goal is to be living full-time in a van by the end of summer 2027, but hopefully sooner. Right now Im just camping in my small SUV with my dog and researching and learning what I need to know. .
Welcome!
Pushing 80 myself, and have been a nomad my entire adult life.
I’ve had many rigs over the years, DIY’d many, and also had many factory camper vans & motorhomes.
Today we’re in a 40’ converted bus because there’s 3 of us. But when I was traveling alone, my favorites were mid 1970’s motorhomes, and they can still be bought very cheap and in excellent condition. They were built in an era when quality still meant something.
We’re currently in S. Florida, but will be heading North as the weather dictates. My female travel mates are 23 & 87, and we’re all living out our dream lives, working a few hours each morning from the comfort of our home on wheels, then we’ll jump into our towed mini-van and go exploring for the rest of the day.
We’re now doing a Thousand Trails package, hundreds full hookups campgrounds across the country for only $1500 a year, all utilities included!!! That comes out to under $150 a month!!! We’re pretty new to it, but wish I’d known about it much sooner.
Good luck, and we’re here to help.
Fulltimer, I thought you said you were in older motorhome, not a converted bus?
It is a converted bus, but I often refer to it as a motorhome, because that’s it’s purpose.
Well the body of buses is much sturdier built than for RVs, good for collisions may be even for rollovers where RV would get pulverized. Isn’t it metal throughout… And they have more ground clearance on average I think, like 10 inches on some. Plus you build them exactly the way you want it
I call them schoolies not motorhomes because of very different construction.
Mine is actually an old Trailways bus that I converted for retirement in an RV park. When I gained a family living with me, my van was too small, so I switched to my bus.
I’ve had many motorhomes though, both Class A & Class C. Aluminum framed ones can be pretty sturdy, but the wood framed ones are usually poor quality. I’ve had a lot of vans, buses, boats, and trailers too. Even done a few bicycle campers for both myself & others. Did both of the Mississippi loops by boat, and the Columbia, Snake, & Colorado rivers. Many lakes too.
Back in the 70’s, 80’s. & 90’s. I traded rigs often, because there was good money to be made when selling them. I still worked full time, but I could have lived on the profits from buying & selling.
Not sure about ground clearance, but I’d never try to take it off road. We’re mainly doing Thousand Trails RV parks right now, and it’s been a pleasant experience. I bought the most expensive one that covers the whole country and over 300 campgrounds for about $1500 for a year. It includes full hookups, and comes out to about $125 a month. Talk about cheap rent!!! I love it!
We’ve been totally happy with everywhere we’ve stayed so far, and some are even very fancy resorts that non members would probably be paying over $100 a night for. There’s a 2-3 week time limit per campground, but we’ve been rotating between two of them that are only about 20 minutes apart all winter. South Florida sure beats the frozen North, and we’ve been having a blast!
We’re towing an AWD minivan camper for a grocery getter and exploration vehicle. I will be building a hard sided roof top tent for it, and we can use it and tents for places we can’t take the bus. With my new family, I have a whole renewed outlook on life.
A lot of RV parks disallow all buses or even RVs older than 10 years old, good if your membership campgrounds allow buses. Yeah I would not take a bus of that size off road, schoolies go off road all the though. Pretty good price for membership. I wonder how they manage to keep it so low given RV parks had been mostly jam packed since 2020. LTVA prices in AZ/CA are likely going up to $600 for 8 months this year and that’s just open BLM with no stay limit, trash dumpster, pit toilet, dump station and one water tap for all.
Snake river, I’d love to travel it by boat. I did long boat river trips growing up overseas.
Thousand Trails seems to have only 2 rules that applied to me, looks, and all RV’s require RVIA certification. My camper van was originally a Travco before it had been gutted, but it had the badge, and nobody at campgrounds knew it wasn’t original.
For my bus, I cheated and bought an RVIA plaque off from a motorhome of the same year from a wrecking yard. So far nobody has questioned it.
I wasn’t very impressed with the LTVA’s, but many years ago I’d spend time around Salvation Mountain & Slab City. Leonard Knight, the builder of Salvation Mountain and I became good friends. Slab City was a very decent place back in those days, nothing like it is now. Thousands of respectable snow birds each winter. In the 60’s & 70’s there was alway work at the Salton Sea resorts, but after they closed, the problem was jobs were pretty far away, like 2+ hours to Riverside, San Diego, or Quartzsite in the winter.
There’s cruises up the Columbia River, then up the Snake River to Clarkston, WA. It’s like a 9 day trip. Years ago, I took a sternwheeler from Seattle, down the Washington coast to the Columbia, then the Snake river. I couldn’t find that cruise available any more now though.