People ask why a family with our life would take on an RV, as if the caregiving was not enough work already. The honest answer is that the RV is not extra. The RV is the release valve.
Since October 27, 2023, my wife and I have been full-time caregivers for my brother and my sister, J&J, adults who live with cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities. Care happens at home, around the clock, every day of the year. We love them, and we would not trade the decision to bring them home. But a life that never changes rooms will wear anybody down, including the two people doing the caring.
Our escape, our reset
RVing has been our escape, our reset. When we pull into a site and the chairs come out, the whole house exhales. J&J feel it too: the road is stimulation without chaos, new places at a pace they set, and the comfort of their own beds, their own food, and their own routines traveling with them. A hotel cannot do that for our family. A home on wheels can.
It is also a lot of work, and we talk about that here on purpose. A 44-foot fifth wheel, a 2026 Forest River Salem Hemisphere, does not forgive guesswork. Weights have to be right. Water, power, propane, and tanks have to be managed. Care routines have to be rebuilt inside a smaller space, and then rebuilt again at the next stop. Every article on this site came out of something we got wrong, paid for, or had to figure out at a picnic table.
Why we count everything
Money matters in a caregiving household. There is no slack in our budget for surprises, so we keep a trip ledger: every fill, every toll, every campsite, every snack stop. That ledger is why this site can show you a real trip down to the dollar instead of a guess, and why we label it, every time, as one sample trip. When the ledger has a gap, we say that too.
What this site is, and is not
This site shares our experience: what RVing costs us, what we have learned, and how we do it. It is not advice, and it is not a sales pitch. Where something is a paid link, it is labeled as one, next to the link. Where a figure is unknown, it says unknown. Where a job involves safety, electricity, or propane, we will point you to a qualified professional for the work itself, the same way we would want someone to point us.
If RVing is how your family breathes, too, or you are wondering whether it could be, you are welcome here. Start with what one trip really cost us, or read how care works on the road in our family.
