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I Go RVing For My Health
by Natalie Gordon
(Winnipeg Manitoba)
I Go RVing For My Health
Editors's Note: This story was submitted on our Why Do You Love RVing Page
I have had Asthma all my life, although it was not diagnosed properly until I was in my forties. It always went by the same pattern. I would be fine during the summer, but winter would arrive, and with the snow, flu, or a cold that ALWAYS went into my chest and became bronchitis or pneumonia. Every illness was followed by weeks of wheezing and misery as I recovered.
Over the years, the time I was well in the winter grew less, and the amount of recovery I made in the summer shrank until one horrible winter I had six bouts of pneumonia in four months, including one where they rolled in the intubation machinery, and for 12 hours we wondered if it was going in.
I was basically a prisoner of my lungs that winter. We tried the traveling thing that summer with a six-week driving trip to Texas. It was a test run to see how my husband and I survived a long trip. We discovered we loved the traveling, but the camping in a tent was the pits. If it rained, we just gave up and rented a hotel room somewhere. Other than that, it was great fun.
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When we returned to our home, we started shopping. After much research (And I mean a LOT of research) and a lot of considering what would work best for us, our lifestyle, our budget, and our needs as a couple of itinerant biologists, we decided on a 30-foot ultralight travel trailer and a pick-up truck to pull it.
We picked this rig style because we are very outdoorsy in warm weather and we like to Canoe and Fish and visit remote areas, especially State/National parks and really rough spots where the monster coach type rigs can't go.
When we park, the truck becomes our vehicle for getting around, and the trailer stays at our campsite. The small crew cab is where our dogs ride. That 4 wheel drive
We tried it for one winter before we decided to go full time. I was so much better, health-wise, and we had such a great winter of fun in Arizona that we knew we were ready to sell the house when we got home that spring.
The only hard part was hitting snow on the trip home. We lived in a campground near our home city where the kids and grandkids are that spring/summer/fall for the six months required to keep our Canadian health care and residency intact.
We escaped winter the second year going east to visit some of my husband's colleagues on official collaborative visits (which cover some costs), and we ended up in Florida. We were chased south by a Christmas blizzard that actually followed us all the way to Tallahassee.
Again there was a dramatic improvement in my health that winter. We found a work camp arrangement at a scientific lab, so our costs were minimal. This April, after a third missed winter, I celebrated a VERY special anniversary. I have gone one full year without needing steroids and without a single bout of pneumonia or bronchitis.
I am fitter than I have ever been, and the lifestyle is extremely cost-effective, especially with the work-camp arrangement and a lot of boondocking. My husband is recently retired, and I am working as a bioinformatician which allows me to be away winters and log in to work.
Our latest project is installing full solar powered gear and batteries so we can go off-grid for longer stretches of time. I really like being healthy, and I love my RVing lifestyle.
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