If you’ve ever had the dream of living life untied to a specific location, then the thought of living on the road in a van, schoolie, or RV probably appeals to you. The lifestyle of being on the road is one of freedom and discovery. You’ll see more, do more, and create a life that causes most to say, “I wish I could do that” whenever you mention your locational freedom. However, no lifestyle is without its drawbacks and hardships. Living on the road isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, so here are ten reasons why living on the road sucks.
1. You will miss your family – duh.
If you have loved ones wherever you currently live, they won’t all come with you. This is true with any long-distance move, but there are a few differences in being on the road. When you move somewhere new and settle down, it is still easy to plan trips to visit or have others visit you. Planning trips back home can be a challenge when you are on the road, depending on the location’s distance. If you plan a trip in advance, it can be challenging to pinpoint where you will be exactly and when.
We have family in Colorado and are currently spending most of this year on the east coast. With a new nephew back home, our desire to visit home before a whole year passes is high. The fastest and cheapest way to do so would be to book a flight – provided we can plan it out around all the other moving around we will be doing.
2. You can’t just grab a drink with your friends.
Most are accustomed to making friends from work or hanging out with old friends as a common pastime. But when you live on the road, you are far away from your old pals. Moving somewhere new can be hard at first, but eventually, most people make friends and find people to hang out with in their free time. However, when you are always on the move, it doesn’t allow you to stay in one place long enough to have a regular buddy who you can call up to grab a beer.
While we make friends on the road, those times together are short-lived, and then we are off to new places. It’s always fun to make new friends, but sometimes you will miss just catching up with an oldie but a goodie.
3. Stuff breaks, and you need to keep moving.
Like with any living residence, stuff breaks and will need fixing. Now imagine something breaks the day before you need to move your house seven hours down the road. We just had a spring snap on our hydraulic leveling jack four days before our departure date. We tried to order the part to our location before we left but found out shipping would be delayed. We had to get it reshipped to the new location that was conveniently not answering the phone to confirm the correct address for shipping. We had to find a workaround to ensure the jack would stay up for the drive. It’s now been two weeks, and the part has yet to arrive because USPS wouldn’t ask the park office for our site number, so they returned it to the sender about a week ago.
The point here is that things will break, and they seem to always break at the most inconvenient times. Being on the road is just an added inconvenience when things go wrong.
4. You get what you get, and it’s now always true to what you saw online.
If you’ve ever booked a vacation and got to your hotel and thought, “this is not what I thought it was going to be.” You probably made the most of it for the week or so that you booked. When you book an RV park or campground for a month or more, and it wasn’t what you expected, you still have to make the most of it.
While online reviews are super helpful, and we’ve gotten lucky for the most part, there are still things you can never expect. Weird or noisy neighbors, a strange grass your dog is allergic to, or smaller campsites than the pictures led on – this is your home, for the time being, so make the most of it.
5. Traveling on the weekends between work.
While we enjoy most travel weekends, sometimes it’s the last thing you would ever want to do. Just worked an 80-hour workweek? Now it’s time to pack up your entire home and drive ten hours just to unpack everything again. Don’t worry; you’ll be done just in time to start a new work week. ‘Nough said.
6. It’s harder to relate to people.
Deciding to travel full-time is an adjustment. Your life and the way you view it will change. You’ll have countless travel-related stories and some daily life activities that few will understand. Sometimes there will be a disconnect when talking with people who can’t relate. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but sometimes it can be hard to find someone to complain about dumping your black tank to. Not to mention nobody wants to hear all of your travel stories when traveling only makes up one to two weeks a year of their life at most.
You’re often caught between people who think your life is either trashy at the trailer park or a constant vacation. It’s a bit of both and neither at the same time – that’s why it’s great when you can hang out with other full-timers.
7. You’re constantly relearning the basics.
Whether it’s getting the cheapest gas in town, going to the gym, or just buying some groceries, you will always be learning where everything is just in time to move again. There are so many aspects of everyday life when you are stationary that feel turn-key. You know what store has the best produce or gas station on your home route. You don’t even have to think about it anymore.
When you travel full-time, you will always have to think about it, and some weeks it can get old. That’s not even considering how many places will start to blend together and will have you wondering why you thought there was a Walmart just west of your new digs when it’s clearly to the east.
8. Changing time zones.
Luckily this inconvenience only comes up on occasion. However, a few months ago, we found ourselves falling back for daylights-savings in Colorado, just to spring forward again a week later in Oklahoma, only to spring forward again in Georgia shortly after that. You could say we got a little mixed up, and it was hard to keep track of all of our scheduled work meetings.
9. Doctors, dentists, and veterinary appointments are a pain.
If you’ve ever found it hard just to remember to schedule your annual physical, six-month dental appointment, or get your dogs in for an ear infection, now try always scheduling with a new office. Even with good health insurance, many doctors’ offices can be hard to get in with if you haven’t been seen before. Not to mention trying to catch everyone up on you or your pet’s medical history.
Traveling full-time can be a major pain when it’s time for those appointments. While we generally try to schedule annual visits when we know we will be visiting Colorado; our schedules end up super packed between that and catching up with friends and family. As for the appointments that can’t be put off, you can expect to make at least five phone calls before you find someone who can get you or your pet in as a new patient – hopefully, you like them!
10. There’s a sense of urgency.
While traveling full-time creates independence and freedom, it can also be stressful depending on your timing. We try to stay places at least a month if we can help it, but even with that amount of time, it never feels like you see everything you want to. Between working full-time during the week and traveling long distances between locations, there isn’t as much time to get out as often as you’d want to.
We get tired like everyone else and need some time to just stay in and relax, but we have found it’s hard to do that when we know, we might be giving up an epic hike or beach day that won’t be available to us next week.
