Storage, the Bus, Hurricane & Ants

I’d like to say that October resulted in miles on the road and tons of amazing sights to blog about but this part of the story is a little less breadth and more depth. This phase is all bout taking a 3600sqft living space and packing into about 800sqft on wheels. Some legit tears have been shed trying to let go of additional stuff we thought we could keep and just trying to find a consistent spot to put the essentials… when we don’t even know what’s essential yet.

The week we thought we would spend in FL organizing was hastened into a Hurricane Milton fueled departure just after picking up the DillerTime Bus (pic below), which we are still trying learn how to operate. First drive on the interstate packed with traffic made things a bit tense and instead of 1 vehicle we left with our SUV too since we didn’t have time to sell it or get it replaced with a tow vehicle (nope our current SUV can’t tow behind). Not a complaint either since we are sitting in our second most expensive home and fully appreciative of the really nice ride/home we have. For those into specs its a class A 2022 Fleettwood Discovery 38N. Humbly, Michele and I have truly wrestled with the frustrations involved in consolidating our lives while we also recognize how nice our first RV is. Its a juxtaposition that we will continue to encounter but one we couldn’t have been aware of starting this process. As one example, we couldn’t find a place to park the bus on our evacutaiton from Milton. The caggle of RVs on the road combined with a number of evacuees from the NC mountain flooding made finding a place to park very challenging. We were thankful to find a relatively new, big-rig friendly park right off 95, Shellring RV Park, where we spent our first few nights on the road and tried to assess what we brought and what we forgot. While sorting through summer/winter clothing for our trip and realizing we left our SUV title in FL storage, we also learned that parking in th woods comes with bugs and in this case, a full on ant assault force. They climbed aboard on the water hose and then my camp chair leaning against the bus… very resourceful ants. By the time we noticed we already had an army of ants making their way through the bus. 2 bottles of environmentally friendly ant killer and they just kept coming so upgraded to RAID and 2 more bottles later and the assault was done. Not sure if you have ever had the experience but once you cut off a few thousand ants from their nest those nice lines of ants you can track turn into a wandering hord of zombie ants. Ant bait and getting on the road and the ant infestation is subdued but a fun introduction to RV life and I’m not even going to get into the fun of a new sewer hose that doesn’t reach the pipe and had a bit stuck in the discharge…

Despite those hiccups it was truly nice to gear down and start to feel out what this RV life will be like. Meeting new people and enjoying some of nature, even some northern lights on one night over the lake. We remain thankful as we make this not only our home but also how we are living. RV fulltime!

Planning to spend a week in Charlotte to organize and learn how to operate parts of our bus for cold weather.