We are now in our fifth year of full-time travel, and we're still loving it! We remember living in a comfortable sticks and bricks house where everything stayed the same. We went back to the same location every day after work, and we took for granted that we would always have electricity that ran all of our appliances, and as much fresh water as we wanted from our faucets.
We also had memorized the channels for our favorite television stations, and we knew our telephones always worked. At home we could depend on high-speed internet where information was just a google away.
Our life is different now in so many ways. Our home is always moving to new locations, and some times we can't remember the name of our closest town. Because we're always looking for the bargain camping spot in the best location, we have different combinations of electrical, water, and sewer hookups at each location. Here at Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, we have only electricity. So our stay is limited to the tank-full of fresh water we brought with us, and the capacity of our gray and black water holding tanks.
We can't run to the nice visitor center for more water, because the entire refuge is under a boil-water order. So unlike our lives in a sticks-and-brick home, we are constantly adjusting our daily life to what our current limitations are due to our camping site. In this case, we will be very careful with the amount of water we use, taking short showers and washing dishes in a tub so the water can be poured outside.
We often have to watch our water or electrical usage to fit our camp site. If we have a 30 amp electric site (rather than the preferred 50 amp), we know we can't run the microwave and the air-conditioner at the same time, or the water heater and microwave, or the . . . That lower amperage of electricity will run our appliances, but just one big one at a time.
One current limitation that is hard to get used to is that we have absolutely no phone signal at our campground in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We can't make a phone call or even send a text from our home. Likewise, we can't use our cell phones as hot spots to give us access to the internet. There is no wifi in the refuge, so we are really cut off from the rest of the world here. In over four years of travel, we've only had a hand-full of times when we have had no cell phone service. So we are less practiced at dealing with this limitation.
In our five-day stay at Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, we can't count the number of times we have had questions like, "What's the weather for today?" or "How far away is . . ." or "What hours is that business open?" or "What kind of lizard is that?" and we couldn't instantly look at our phones to get the answers.
We have become so dependent on instant answers to so many of the questions we ask, that we think this limitation might be the most debilitating of all. We like to keep in contact with family and friends, and right now we can't call or text or send a message.
Now that we think of it, we lived without the internet and GPS not so many years ago. Mark quipped that we would need to travel with a set of encyclopedias if we kept having this connectivity problem. It wasn't so long ago that the family set of encyclopedias was our best source to find out about things we didn't know. My, how times have changed!
So every time we wanted to make a phone call or send a text, we had to take a drive up to a high point within the wildlife refuge. There we could also get enough of a signal to check email or google all those unanswered questions. Sitting beside the road in a wildlife refuge, we got some interesting pictures of the wildlife that meandered next to our vehicle.
An entire herd of bison came to visit us one day, grazing around our vehicle like we were just part of the landscape. These big guys are shedding their winter coats, giving them a patchy appearance right now. With temperatures in the 80s, it made it a little uncomfortable for all of us sitting on the side of the road.
One of our favorite places to hang out for a phone signal was close to the visitor center. The bison didn't seem to read the sign that the facility was closed for the day. They just ambled around the gate and took advantage of the lack of traffic to "mow" the yard close to the building.
We also got to witness nature in action, as this bull came bellowing up the road, obviously on a mission.
Then we saw another big bull approaching from the opposite direction, and we prepared to watch a bull fight near the car where the two paths intersected. It was a little anti-climactic as the two merely circled each other a couple times, and then laid down in the shade.
We're trying to see these up-close nature experiences as the positive side to having no phone signal. But the truth of the matter is that we prefer to be sitting at our lovely shaded campsite typing a blog, rather than roasting in the sunny car on top of the hill.
We're very good at conserving water, and our 90-gallon tank of fresh water is still serving us well. We're loving our time at Wichita Wildlife Refuge, but we're finding that we are definitely spoiled to being connected to rest of the world through our phones as we wander His wonders.
We can't run to the nice visitor center for more water, because the entire refuge is under a boil-water order. So unlike our lives in a sticks-and-brick home, we are constantly adjusting our daily life to what our current limitations are due to our camping site. In this case, we will be very careful with the amount of water we use, taking short showers and washing dishes in a tub so the water can be poured outside.
We often have to watch our water or electrical usage to fit our camp site. If we have a 30 amp electric site (rather than the preferred 50 amp), we know we can't run the microwave and the air-conditioner at the same time, or the water heater and microwave, or the . . . That lower amperage of electricity will run our appliances, but just one big one at a time.
One current limitation that is hard to get used to is that we have absolutely no phone signal at our campground in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We can't make a phone call or even send a text from our home. Likewise, we can't use our cell phones as hot spots to give us access to the internet. There is no wifi in the refuge, so we are really cut off from the rest of the world here. In over four years of travel, we've only had a hand-full of times when we have had no cell phone service. So we are less practiced at dealing with this limitation.
In our five-day stay at Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, we can't count the number of times we have had questions like, "What's the weather for today?" or "How far away is . . ." or "What hours is that business open?" or "What kind of lizard is that?" and we couldn't instantly look at our phones to get the answers.
We have become so dependent on instant answers to so many of the questions we ask, that we think this limitation might be the most debilitating of all. We like to keep in contact with family and friends, and right now we can't call or text or send a message.
Now that we think of it, we lived without the internet and GPS not so many years ago. Mark quipped that we would need to travel with a set of encyclopedias if we kept having this connectivity problem. It wasn't so long ago that the family set of encyclopedias was our best source to find out about things we didn't know. My, how times have changed!
So every time we wanted to make a phone call or send a text, we had to take a drive up to a high point within the wildlife refuge. There we could also get enough of a signal to check email or google all those unanswered questions. Sitting beside the road in a wildlife refuge, we got some interesting pictures of the wildlife that meandered next to our vehicle.
An entire herd of bison came to visit us one day, grazing around our vehicle like we were just part of the landscape. These big guys are shedding their winter coats, giving them a patchy appearance right now. With temperatures in the 80s, it made it a little uncomfortable for all of us sitting on the side of the road.
One of our favorite places to hang out for a phone signal was close to the visitor center. The bison didn't seem to read the sign that the facility was closed for the day. They just ambled around the gate and took advantage of the lack of traffic to "mow" the yard close to the building.
We also got to witness nature in action, as this bull came bellowing up the road, obviously on a mission.
Then we saw another big bull approaching from the opposite direction, and we prepared to watch a bull fight near the car where the two paths intersected. It was a little anti-climactic as the two merely circled each other a couple times, and then laid down in the shade.
We're trying to see these up-close nature experiences as the positive side to having no phone signal. But the truth of the matter is that we prefer to be sitting at our lovely shaded campsite typing a blog, rather than roasting in the sunny car on top of the hill.
We're very good at conserving water, and our 90-gallon tank of fresh water is still serving us well. We're loving our time at Wichita Wildlife Refuge, but we're finding that we are definitely spoiled to being connected to rest of the world through our phones as we wander His wonders.
We loved those years of fulltiming. But all good things come to an end they say. Seven years was our limit and judging from others we know that are no longer on the road, that is about average. No we don't have Bison on our property. But we do have ducks, herons, geese, deer, all sorts of birds, an occasional coyote, the neighbors peacocks and a stray Beagle that has adopted us.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your time "out there" as long as you want. And remember, if ever traveling I-65 in north Alabama, we have 2 RV sites.... with 50 Amp, all the water you need and even sewer. Just no Bison.