That was a long winter….

Hello all! Welcome to our first blog post! For those who do not know us personally, we are the Hoovers. My beautiful wife Nicole, our sausage doggo Bailey, and I would like to invite you to tag along on our adventures! Oh, and my name is Ryan. I’ll be typing up this first blog post on our site here, and many more to come. Nicole will want to share her perspective as well, so I am sure you’ll see stories, pictures, and more shared by both of us over time. Also for the people who don’t know us or our story thus far, I’ll give a bit of info.

Nicole and I are high school sweethearts. We’ve been together for 30 years now. We are the parents of two beautiful boys. We absolutely love being outside, and are very fond of many different outdoor activities and hobbies. After 17 years in the same home while raising our boys, we decided to sell the house and start a nomadic life on the road for a while. Our boys are both out of school (and both are recently married!!) and starting out on their own journey in life, so we figured it was a perfect time to head out on this adventure.

I have joked with Nicole for pretty much the entirety of our relationship that I would be happy as a clam to walk into the woods with her and not much else, and create a home and a life in the woods away from the hustle and bustle of the world. The reality of that level of adventure is a little too extreme though given our age at this point. So our half-measure is to sell our house, downsize the things we had accumulated, and to live an active life with less stuff and more experience. I have an Aunt and Uncle who have been living on the road for quite some time. They are a great inspiration in this, and also in the love they have shared for so long. We’ve picked their brains a little already, but I’m sure more knowledge of this lifestyle has yet to be learned from them. I can’t wait to share our stories with them.

Anyway, we sold the house. Dylan wasn’t quite done with school though, so we rented an apartment while he finished. This gave us some time to consider exactly how we wanted to pursue this lifestyle. Initially we wanted to have a diesel pusher bus, and tow a small car behind it. We needed a new car anyway, so we got a small hybrid that was capable of being towed in such a fashion. But, as time went by and we saw more RVs at shows and lots, we changed gears. After walking through a very large number and different types of RVs, we realized we loved the ceiling height and feel of a home on wheels that a fifth wheel gave us versus a class A (bus) motorhome. In addition to this, a single engine and drivetrain would be much cheaper to maintain. So, we sold our fun little hybrid and bought “Bud”, and soon after “Doris”. We have grown into the habit of naming our vehicles as of late, and there are no two better names to choose for these particular items. Bud and Doris were my beloved Grandparents. And, my earliest memories of being out in the woods camping and cutting firewood are with them and my parents. Bud is our Chevy 1 ton diesel pickup, and Doris is our Grand Design 345GK fifth wheel. The “GK” stands for Grand Kitchen, which suits the moniker just fine, as my Grandma was an amazing cook as is my lovely wife. Some of my family members may say Bud would turn in his grave knowing I named a Chevy after him, because he was a Ford man. But I’m sure he’ll forgive me, lol. Once we got our two new toys, we headed to Montana, where Nicole wanted to spend a Christmas with family. Our nomad life had to happen in stages. The apartment forced us to downsize the “things” some, and living in the RV at Nicole’s brother’s property before we detached even further from a stationary lifestyle of living in a house even more. Then, the purgatory of winter in Montana hit…..

….Four months later, we finally hitched up after a very long and very cold winter in Hamilton, MT. As those of us who aren’t residing under a rock know, it was a doozey! Even California got snow where they usually never do. In Hamilton, we got the first snowfall on Nov. 6th, and it never really went away until the weeks preceding our move back to Spokane. Our new RV got through three cold snaps while we hunkered inside during that time. We burned through many tanks of propane, and we even had a refrigerator failure for a few days at one point. As it turns out, even with a cold weather package on your RV dual power fridge, they only like to work down to roughly 20 degrees. Much time spent below that, and they freeze up. And you might think, “well, isn’t that the preferred function of a fridge?”. It is, but not on the outside! Luckily, all it took was a 100 watt lightbulb sitting outside the RV in the lower fridge access cover for a few days to warm the cooling unit up a bit. After about 5 day, it started working again. We lost a bit of food, which sucked, but at least it wasn’t the end for our fridge, which would have meant a warranty visit for a replacement. From what we’ve heard time and time again, we’d have been waiting for our RV to be worked on for months. Not acceptable since it is our full-time rolling home!

Our travel day back to Spokane was fairly uneventful. We did get passed by probably 6-8 speeding police vehicles between Hamilton and St. Regis, MT though. I was very nervous that we would be stopped at some point by some horrific accident. But turned out that the very popular St. Regis travel stop was being held hostage by all the officers who had passed us (and then some…) as they tried to deal with a criminal. It looked like a war zone as we passed by on I-90. The passes beyond we mostly dry, and easy to traverse, which was a huge blessing. Just about four days prior, Lookout Pass had received around 8 inches of snow.

We’re in Spokane now for just shy on a month. We look forward to catching up with Dylan, our younger son who is still here for the time being, and also with my Aunt and Uncle who are currently holding down the fort at my Mom’s house before they set out in their fifth wheel again for the warmer months. Our first warm season will be spent in the Pacific Northwest still, as we want to be close by as our children get their feet under them. We’ll be in Richland, Yakima, Chehalis, Puyallup and Vancouver, WA and also some spots in OR over the course of the spring. We have 11 weeks straight booked on the coast in WA and OR!!! We’ll make a trip to see my Dad in Glacier Nat’l Park back in MT during summer, with more time spent in Hamilton before we head south. By way of Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon, we will be wintering in the Phoenix, AZ area near my Mom and Sister. We plan to head northeast for the ‘24 warm season, and to winter in Florida that year. We are very excited for the sights and adventures that await us. We plan to share the ups and the downs here with you all, and we wish the very best you and yours wherever you are!! Much Much more to come!!!!