How to Thrive as a Nomadic Entrepreneur: RV Renovation & Creative Travel Tips

Every Friday night, Sandra and Louis of First Class RV Adventures sit down with someone living the full-time RV life, and this week’s guest brought a story that mixes water damage, a DIY renovation, and a blogging career built almost by accident.

Rebecca joined the show to talk about life on the road with her husband, who works as a journeyman lineman. His job is what put them on wheels in the first place — she works from home, or wherever “home” happens to be parked that month, and the couple has now been full-timing for just over two years. Alongside travel, Rebecca is the author and illustrator of a children’s book series called The Adventures of Pooky, based on her own dogs, and she runs a lifestyle blog called The Glamping Housewife.

When the RV becomes a renovation project

Rebecca and her husband travel in a 2015 Grand Design Solitude, a 379 front-living model she describes as “a big guy.” The conversation quickly turned to the reason their RV looks so different today than when they bought it: a leaking rail let water travel down into three of the unit’s slide-outs, ruining the floors underneath. The manufacturer’s help stopped at shipping replacement boards — the rest of the labor was on them, unless they wanted to pay, in Rebecca’s words, “thousands upon thousands of dollars” to have it professionally fixed.

Rather than just patch the damage, they treated it as a chance to upgrade. They revamped the living room, converted their unused dining area into an office space for Rebecca — complete with built-in storage her husband constructed for her books — and are now working through the bedroom. Rebecca summed up the trade-off simply: they gave up seating for guests in exchange for a workspace, calling it a case of “you have to bite one bullet in order to do something else.”

Asked what she’d tell someone shopping for their own rig, Rebecca didn’t hesitate: bring an RV tech along, especially for a used unit. She and her husband traded in a brand-new trailer for their current, older, larger model — and she’s fairly confident the water damage predated their purchase. Sandra noted that a thorough inspection typically runs around $500 and can take a tech most of a day, roughly eight hours, to complete.

Family reactions and where the road has led

The couple was no strangers to relocating — they’d already been moving every year or two for her husband’s work before deciding to go full-time. Reactions from family were mixed: her mother, who lived nearby, wasn’t thrilled at first, though she’s since come around and now visits them in Florida. Her father’s response was simpler: “live your life, do what you got to do… have fun while you’re young.”

Their travels started in Ohio, where they were both born and raised, before a slow drive down to Florida. Family ties brought them to South Florida first, where her husband’s job kept them for about a year and a half, followed by a five-month stretch in the Florida Keys for another job. They’re back in Southern Florida now, currently taking a break with no firm plan for what’s next.

Funding the lifestyle — and a few practical tips

Her husband’s full-time income is the financial backbone of their travels, but Rebecca has built her own income streams too. She tried various MLM opportunities early on that didn’t stick, then discovered blogging — now over a year into The Glamping Housewife, she’s picking up sponsored posts, has just finished her first personal development book (set to launch that month), and is developing a self-discovery and purpose-finder course.

For day-to-day logistics, she recommended an app called AllStays Camp and RV, roughly $10, which lists every camping spot in an area along with tent sites and gas stations. It’s the kind of tool she says makes a real difference when you’re figuring out where to stay next.

She also shared the trip’s funniest moment so far: pulling their 43-foot trailer into the Keys during snowbird season in February, only to discover the small RV park they’d booked barely had room for it. It took nearly two hours of maneuvering — and help from another camper who hooked up their truck to assist — before they were finally settled in.