For some, the dream of retirement seems to be just that, a dream. A goal that can never be reached. For others the dream is a happy one, where we stop working and are financially secure and become active seniors. What ever your goal, you need to start planning for it early. And saving for it. I had a retirement plan, it was upended a few times in my life. When I finally got back on track, it all changed.
My plan was to work until I was 65, or 70 if I could get away with it. Sell my big house and downsize, and live off the proceeds of the sale as well as drawing the maximum social security benefit and the money in our IRA’s. Maybe we’d do some traveling, maybe move closer to my son. Definitely do some gardening and catch up on a lot of television. My retirement plans did not include living in an RV, nor moving to Washington state where it is cold all the time. Life, and my wife, had other plans for me.
In 2022, at age 57, I did all of the above. Sold my house, moved to Vancouver, Washington, and moved into an RV. There was a reason, a very tiny reason, our new granddaughter! When my son came off active duty he and his wife settled in Vancouver. It wasn’t long after seeing the smile on my wife’s face while holding the baby that life changed, the plan changed. After 14 months living with the kids, helping my son with his fixer upper house and watching the baby grow, my wife and I hit the road. Heading south toward California before the winter ice storms made the mountains impassible. We cruised around central and southern California, revisiting campgrounds that we’d been do in the past, and visiting with family and friends.
Our RV is just 30 feet long but is spacious enough for the two of us and our dog. It’s comfortable, with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom with a shower that can fit my 6’4” frame without hunching over. Our fresh water is enough to sustain us for a week, and we can go a 10 days without needing to dump our waste tanks. But there was one feature that was lacking, that of electrical power. Our one 165 watt solar panel, and our 100 amp hours of battery, were enough to power the fridge and some lights for a day but couldn’t do much else. If we wanted to run the AC, tv, fireplace, microwave or my wife’s hair iron, we needed to plug in to ‘shore’ power.
As a kid you probably went tent-camping with family. Pack a bunch of stuff into your car, set up camp at a nearby campground in the woods, cook from a small grill, store your food in an ice chest, roast marshmallows over the campfire, and leave your electronics at home. That sounds like fun, for a weekend. When you live in your RV full time, however, at some point you need some modern conveniences like internet so you can do your online banking and have a video call with kids and grand kids, or make reservations at your next campground. That takes power.
Generator vs. Solar
I considered buying a generator. An appropriate sized generator would cost about $2,800, which was a third the cost of solar, but it has a lot of drawbacks. To begin with it’s heavy, at about 130lbs. Every time you set up camp you have to get it out and set it up. You have to set them far enough away from from your RV that you don’t choke on the fumes, but within reach of your power cord. Generators are one of the most stolen items at campgrounds, so they have to be chained up. And every time you leave to go shopping or on a hike, you need to put it away. They use 4 gallons of gas per day so you need to carry several containers of fuel. And that fuel can add $12-$20 per day to your camping costs. The other concern is that some campgrounds either have restricted hours that you can run a generator, or in many cases have banned them completely because of noise, security, pollution and fire concerns. After reviewing all the pros and cons for each, I decided to go solar.
After obtaining quotes from a few vendors, I settled on adding 800 watts of solar panels, bringing our total to 965 watts, and multiplying our lithium battery capacity times 4, for a total of 400 amp hours. We also added a 2000 watt inverter and a new smart charge controller. The installation took only 4 hours and the company came out to the RV resort we were staying at in Phoenix. By nightfall we were fully charged and the next day we headed out to our first ‘boon-docking’ (no hook-ups) campground in the Tonto National Forest, about 90 minutes from Phoenix.
Life Off The Grid
Now that we had figuratively ‘cut the cord’ we could stay virtually anywhere we wanted. The best part was that we could now visit the US Forest Service and US National Park campgrounds which almost never have hookups. We stayed 6 days at the US Forest Service Schoolhouse Campground near the Tonto National Monument. It was no-frills, no hook ups, and only vault-toilets, but it was only $20 a night and the views were gorgeous.
Several of the days were partially cloudy. Some days we charged up the battery to 100%, usually by noon to 2pm at the latest. Twice did we reach only 90%. But depending on our power usage, we never once went below 50% by morning. Peak solar charging times were 11am to 3pm, often we generated more than enough power to charge the batteries and had excess power. We made sure to charge up all of our devices during this time. This was also the best time to use other power hungry devices like my ice maker and iced tea machine. By managing our power this way, we almost always had 100% of battery power by dusk.
Our first full month after the upgrade we stayed almost exclusively at state and federal campgrounds in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. We did stay one day at a KOA near Tuscon so we could do laundry. We ended that month with a 6-day stay at Palo Duro Canyon, a state park outside Amarillo, TX. We visited once in 2012 for a day hike and had always wanted to come back and camp here.
It also opened up a lot of other places for camping. This included businesses and residences where we could camp for 1-4 days for free, through a network called Harvest Host. These ‘hosts’ offer their driveway or parking lot to travelers at no cost. Businesses, including wineries, golf courses and shopping centers, hope that you will spend money in their establishments. The private residences that offer driveway camping are often looking to meet travelers and will sometimes invite you into their homes for dinner. We even were able to utilize free camping at Bureau of Land Management (BLM) properties.
Two Year Return On Investment
In addition to the freedom that this upgrade afforded us, we also attained a tremendous savings to our monthly budget. The first 4 months we were on the road full-time we spent chasing electricity. Going from one campground to the next where we could get an electrical hookup. I had set a monthly budget for campground fees at $800 but we were blowing through that and averaging $1,211 per month. State and local campgrounds offer sites for $30-$40 per night with electricity, private campgrounds can be $50-$125 or more per night.
No longer having need for an electrical hook-up we can stay at free and low cost places. We were able to stay at boon-docking campsites for as little as $11 per night. In our first full-month after our solar upgrade, our campground fees dropped 51% to $623. At that rate, we can recoup our solar investment within 13 months on the road.
Living Our Retirement Travel Dream
After Amarillo, we’re turning back toward New Mexico, then up to Colorado, over to Wyoming, down to Utah, then west through Nevada and Oregon on our journey home. Along the way we will be visiting national parks, hiking, dining and exploring America. Tonight we are boon-docking in a national forest, we don’t have hookups but everything is running on our solar charged batteries. We don’t have cell service but our Starlink internet is working great. As we get back to the trailer from our after dinner walk, my laptop starts to ring. I click the green button to accept the call, my screen fills with a tiny round face with tousled blonde hair. “Hi Papa, hi Gigi” says the little voice. We’re living our dream!