Episode 1 - Pilot

Hello, we'd like to welcome everyone to our initial Pass the Broccoli podcast. We're your hosts Danny and Dory and we're podcasting from our home in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. What we'll be covering in our podcast is how we travel to some great destinations and the way we travel using our RV. So let's get into it. A little background of how we got here. We have six kids and we've always wanted to travel, but we only wanted to travel just me and my husband. Once our children got out of the house, causing us to become empty nesters we decided we're going to get an RV. We had an RV that we traveled in like on the weekend, took our kids camping. But then we decided we wanted something so that we could go more than just on the weekends. We sold our house because we didn't need the house anymore because all of our kids were gone and we didn't need a mortgage payment. Also, a lot of our friends and neighbors. Had started dying at an early age. And we realized that we want to be able to travel and enjoy ourself while we're young, not as old as most would start out, but before we were tired so that we could work and pay for our trips as we went along. Also, it was more we did do the weekend warrior thing and every weekend we'd have to go set up the camper and drop it off and come back and go to work. And the big thing is we were still working, right? So both of us are still working and we're still working today, but we were still working when we bought this RV. And we wanted to go and experience more places than just, short term destinations we can do in the weekend. So that, that was some of the. Some of the ways we got here and like you said, getting the kids out of the house and being empty nesters, we had a little bit more time, we experienced, and also more money because kids, and then we experienced them trying to come back and bring their kids into our house. We didn't want that either because we enjoyed our serenity with them gone. And then, again, as you said, the deaths in our age circle from people we graduated with and maybe work with. and all that. It was, they were starting to drop like flies and they still are, it lit a fire under us to try to get to this decision Yeah, we want to travel now before we retire because, as you age, your health declines. So we're trying to do it while we're healthy and working to pay for it. Yep. And, so we started out in that little travel trailer that we took. to these little local places as, weekend warriors, if you will. Then we upgraded to a Class C. Which is great. Yeah, because we didn't have all that setup associated as you would with a travel trailer. And we took it there, and we actually took it to some, few places, when we had like a four day weekend or anything like that. I think we took it once we had a seven day week vacation, we went to Myrtle Beach on the campground. And the only problem with that one was once you got there you couldn't go nowhere because that class C is also your driver, your vehicle and your campground. Because we wasn't towing at that time. We didn't have any, it wasn't big enough to tow a big vehicle behind it to take us places. So we did that. So we did it the places we'd go to the destination campground, really it's a campground because you had to plug in and charge and all that. So you had to stay there and so you had to choose places that had a lot to do, some of the places like, the Corps of Engineers had the lake, so we just did the lake life there and stuff, and then, but there are some KOAs that have a lot of stuff to do, like pools and hot tubs and stuff that you don't have to veer off too much. But, yeah, so we did a Class C, and then We decided to sell our house, completely sell our house. And moved, we bought a Class A. First, we traded that Class C in, because I'm like if we're going to We were thinking about, the future and we wanted to work camp and, Hit the road and work from the road whether it be working at the campgrounds or working at your company From the RV or anything like that. And then doing that we decided we needed more room than this class C had So we went and got us trade dad to for a class A. Then we sold our house Yeah, and then we lived in the class A for like almost a year. Yeah Which was wonderful, but it was, but we were still working having to go in and out of the offices. Yeah, we actually tested it. We actually, while we had our house we went and rented monthly from a campground because you had to plug those in too, we rented that campground for six months and stayed in it and drove to work and all that. And decided, hey, yeah, we can do this. It's got the room and all that. And we did. We actually went and sold the house. And did that and got, got out of the mortgage and everything like that. It worked okay. It's just when you have that class a, there's some different challenges that come. Oh, it's huge. It was, I couldn't drive it. Yeah. I could have, but didn't want to. Yeah. We, and we got the, we got a tow vehicle to go behind it so we could drive places if we ever took it somewhere. But getting gas, it was a gasser, not a diesel, so if you get gas in a Class A, then It's very challenging. It's very hard to go in a regular gas station. Unless, Bucky's wasn't around then like it is today in some of these places. Yeah, because this was like 2019. Yeah. So a long time ago. 2018. 16, actually. 16? But Okay, I'll find the right year. But anyway, you know Getting gas in that was pretty, pretty difficult as well. But the best thing about our RV was the big window. Driving down the road, looking out that window, you felt like you were already out there in the world. So that was the best part of the big Class A. Yep. And so far we've went through a travel trailer, which was about 30 foot long. And then we went to a Class C, which was about 28 foot long. And then we got this big 38 foot Class A that we drive that we were driving. But we never really took a lot of trips in it. And so we just had to take a week of vacation and go somewhere. I think the place we went in our Class A, I think we took it two places. One, we took it to Hilton Head for a bowl game and then a couple years later we took it to Orlando for a bowl game. We took it two times for a New Year's bowl game, and really we had that thing for five years. I never really drew it. And we had 5, 000 miles on it. Yeah. So yeah, we didn't really. It was like a new. Didn't really get to get out there and experience the stuff and all that. Cause you know we were still working full time both. Yeah. So we decided we wanted to try a Class B. And this, and we had been looking at Road, road treks for a while and that's the one I liked but then right when we were getting ready to really seriously look at a road trek, they went out of business and they filed bankruptcy and all that. So then we looked at the window bagels version of that, which was Church of Travato and we found that Travato, and it had lithium in it. Which means you do not have to plug in to a campground and I absolutely love my Class B You're not bound to a campground. It's like plugging in 30 amp service all the time now the caveat to that is you do have to drive it to charge it up or plug it in to charge it up, But we stay at lots of Walmart's lots of gas stations, that's free overnight staying Yeah, So the biggest thing about the class B though is what we learned after we got that class B, again, we had 5, 000 miles on our class A and maybe 10, 000 on our class C because we didn't go too many places with them. But once we got that class B and didn't have to be bound to a campground because reservations were hard to get and congested at the times you wanted to go. We actually drove or. Used it and did his stuff a lot more. So instead of taking a week at a time for vacation to go to places We actually started taking two weeks at a time now that our kids were gone and everything like that And didn't have to take them with us on these trips because we couldn't because it's a small class B We actually put like maybe 20, 000 miles on it the first two years or year we had it because You didn't have to plug in. We planned trips and we would go out there and plan them out. And as Dori said, Even if you, if it took you three days to get somewhere, it's okay. You just drive a day. Stay in the parking lot, at the hospital, whatever. Just go find a place to park. You got power and everything. Air conditioning, everything. So that was the good thing about the class B. But what we learned was And two, you can go into more parks. Class A, a lot of parks you couldn't get, a lot of places you couldn't park. Also class B, you can't go to class A resorts either. That's a trade off. But what we learned is while we were traveling and exploring initially, we learned that class B was the best way to do it. Because a class B is made for someone who's on the move. It's not going somewhere and staying a week. Yes, sure. It's going somewhere, experiencing for a day or two, moving on. You're exploring where you're going and moving on to the next destination. And when you're moving on, you're also charging your batteries. So you always got power. So it's moving on. Now if you were going to go somewhere for A week, two weeks at a time, month at a time, or you're a traveling nurse, or a work camper who has to work contract lengths of, three months, six months, whatever. Class B probably won't be that good because you don't got a lot of room in there. Anyway, so that's what we were looking at. So when we learned that Class B was the way we wanted to go because of how it complimented our travel style right now. We ended up selling our class A and just having the class B and we were actually living in our class A. So we had to find another place to live. So we actually bought us a condo that allowed us to park our class B there. So we now, own a class B and we live in our condo and that fits our travel style right now, especially being part time. RVers. Travelers. Yeah. Yeah. We did the full time thing for a while and it was good. It's just, if you can't break away, if you have to come into the office, I think they call it hybrid, after the pandemic and everything, people got to work from home more. Now they're calling people back or even prior to that, they were just hybrid where you could work, two or three days at home and then come into the office. If you get away from that, then the Class B was the, is the way to go. So that's what we did. We sold our Class A, went to Class B and now, and we also have a condo so that when we are here, we consider our kids, they, we have six of those and they can come and see us from time to time. In Pigeon Forge. We're all the actionists and then when they leave, we can take off again in our RV. Class B RV. And our main goal was to have a place or home base in our area here in Pigeon Forge and then also have a home base in an alternate area, in the wintertime, like down in Florida or Georgia or Texas try to chase the 70s, as they say. Chase the sun. Yeah. 70 degrees, chase that as we get older and my wife, she can't handle the cold right now. Anyway, But yeah, so so, you know summarizing our introductory episode, We got rid of our kids So in our class I got rid of our kids went to two or three different RV styles till we found the type that fit our Fits us. Fits us. Fits our lifestyle and our traveling style right now. Yeah. We're still working, we're not retired and our goal was to, be in this area for nine months and be in another area when it's cold for about three months, snowboarding. We're probably like most people most people don't get to just travel all the time in their RV. They are just, Doing it on the weekends or you know periodically if they get to work from home doing it. We're trying to do more With it, but we also want routes where we can come back to and settle for a little while and then go back out there yeah with the family, you still got to be able to so she could see family So we ironically we had to adjust our style. So we were going to be full time until till that I realized That was an issue. So if you are if y'all are thinking about it You need to sit with your spouse and see if it's really going to work or not. Thanks for listening to our first podcast. We got some more stuff coming up here in the future. We got some Things like we'll be talking about our trip to Niagara Falls in this class B and then a Northeast trip, to Maine and some other different areas as well up in the Northeast as we did that trip in the fall So and then we actually did our first ever West trip in this thing, too So yes as you can tell we have driven this thing a lot and only and all doing this all while taking Still working full time but taking two week vacations at a time Yeah, so and you know saying it can be done if you can do two weeks and everybody needs a vacation Yeah, and everybody needs a trip and everybody needs a class B and the two weeks was great. It's great time you feel relaxed. You're not rushed and everything So you got a little bit of time to play with and all that so we'll get into that in some of our future episodes So we hope to see you all in future episodes Mhm.