Jumping into Full-Time RV Life

After the two trips we took during the winter of 2018-2019 we knew that we had a full-time RV life in our future. When we arrived home in May of 2019 we put our little teardrop up for sale and began discussing how we were going to make our vision a reality. At this point all we knew is that we wanted to travel North America full-time, we had no idea by what means we were going to do that. We spent hours and hours watching YouTube, drawing up floorplans for bus and van conversions; we looked at truck campers, travel trailers, 5th wheels and motorhomes of all sizes. We decided on almost every one of them and then changed our minds more times then I care to think about. The only thing we knew for sure is the our Nucamp teardrop was way, way too small for full-time life. Lesley is a Pathologist and works as a consultant for several medical associations throughout North America. For this reason, what ever option we decided to go with needed to have a dedicated workspace for the long hours she spends at her computer. Eventually, this need helped us narrow down our options to just a couple of choices. We looked at a brand new Airstream Tommy Bahama and discussed having the dealer remove the bar and build a desk. However, in the end we just couldn’t justify the cost of a new Airstream. From there we began looking at 5th wheel trailers which all seemed to have more than enough space for what we wanted. The drawback to a 5th wheel was that we would need to sell our truck and purchase a new truck that was capable of towing such a large trailer. Through all of this, we couldn’t escape how much we had loved that Airstream. Those feelings convinced us that the Airstream was the choice for us. However, we still were not willing to put out the nearly $200,000 that the new Airstream would cost. We decided to start looking for an older trailer that we could rebuild to suit our needs.

It was summer of 2019 and my days were filled with combing the internet for the right trailer. Our search criteria was not too extensive. We knew we wanted an Airstream that was around the 30’ length, we wanted it to need as little structural work as possible and it would preferable be in Canada. To our surprise, it did not take too long before a possible candidate appeared on Kijiji, a Canadian buy and sell website similar to Craigslist. The seller had posted the ad less than 12 hours before I found it. I immediately contacted him about travelling to see it. Our first conversation took all the wind out of our sail. In just 12 short hours, I was the 7th person to contact the seller and request to come and see the Airstream. He took down my information and told me he would contact me if nobody else took it, which I knew was very unlikely. A couple hours had passed and as I moped around the house, my phone rang. It was the seller. He informed me that everyone else who had contacted him could not come and see the trailer until the weekend (this was a Tuesday) and that I was welcome to come look at it if I could get there before then. I told him I would come the next day, first thing in the morning. The trailer was about 4 hours away in Northern Ontario. As a former long haul truck driver, 4 hours was practically down the street for me. The next morning my wife and I jumped into our truck, drove to Sudbury, Ontario and met with the couple selling the trailer. We looked it over, talked about it’s history and 4 hours after arriving we were hooking up to our new Airstream. We drove the trailer home, parked it in our rear driveway and started dreaming about all the things we were going to do to it. Our full-time life had begun!

Check out our YouTube channel to see all the work we did on our Airstream.