How We Came to the Full-Time RVing Decision

Twelve years in business, an ever-declining economy, working longer and longer hours just to pay the bills -- this didn't seem to us to be what God had intended for us in our business.  We loved our coffeeshop -- the one God had ordained for us to own in Rocky Mount, NC -- but from the time of the first news of the bank failures in Sept '08 -- and subsequent economic decline -- we had a feeling that our business was in its declension period.   And over the following 5 years, that's exactly what we saw.  John started looking for work -- and even had a couple of jobs -- so that we could continue to put bread on the table and -- you guessed it -- pay the bills.  Then Gayle was blessed to have work at the YMCA (work which she loved, by the way), but it was ultimately so that they could continue to -- you guessed it -- pay the bills.  Which we did -- and we're thankful for that.  But the time we spent together was less and less, and all our time seemed to be working toward one purpose -- to pay the bills.

God is good, and has always provided for us.  But it seemed that we were missing so much more of life.  Life with one another as a married couple. Life with our boys, who were growing up and out of the house too fast. Life in general (when was the last time we took a vacation?).  It was time for some real changes.

The coffee business is what we knew -- it had been our business for nearly 12 years.  So we thought, "Let's have a mobile coffee truck or trailer, so that we can go where the business is, and live out of an RV, and see the country."  This seemed like a good idea, until we started researching this idea, and found that it would be far more trouble than we were willing to commit to in this stage of our lives.  I give credit to my cousin-in-law, Barb, who had recently spent 3 years full-time RVing.  She asked, "Have you ever heard of 'Workapming'?" Of course we hadn't, but Barb sent us some links to workamping websites, and we immediately changed our course of action (Thank you, Barb!).  Our course was set for full-time RVing!

These revelations and conversations took place in July 2013, when we decided that we would "go for it," and set our minds and plans toward Full-Time RVing, to work seasonal jobs as "workampers" while we travel about the country.