RV All Year is a website for people who live in a Recreational Vehicle (RV) all year around. We are Judy and Rick Simon. and we plan to prove it can be done, by doing it.

Full-time RVers, and wannabes, have unique information needs. We want to help you find the information you need.

On May 2, 2022, purchasers took possession of our house in Edmonton, and we began life in a bumper pull travel trailer.

People shouldn’t be surprised that we’re doing this. We have been camping for as long as we can remember.

Both our families did a lot of camping when we were children. Rick started when he was two years old, and although Judy doesn’t really remember how old she was, she does know she was extremely young as well.

On our honeymoon, we went camping, first with family, and later on by ourselves. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Early in our marriage, we camped a lot. One year we started Easter weekend, in April, and finished the weekend after labour day, in September. We missed two weekends and threw in a two-week vacation. That year, we camped in a tent. We swore we would never camp any other way.

 But life happens and after a while, the tent didn’t seem quite so appealing. We upgraded to a truck camper. It was a small one that fit in our S-10 pickup. One year for our vacation, we drove the truck and camper from Edmonton to Ontario, to visit Judy’s family. 

Sometime later we switched to a small 8-foot trailer. We camped in it for a long time. We called it a bedroom on wheels. It didn’t have a bathroom.

As Rick’s disability got worse, we found that we were using the trailer less and less. Eventually, it didn’t seem worthwhile to keep it and we stopped camping for a few years.

At the same time MS was affecting our camping it was also affecting our thoughts about owning a home.

When we were young, we made a very good income and could afford the house. Rick was relatively healthy and able to help out with yard work. But as time went on, Rick became more disabled and could help out less. When he could no longer work, the house became too much. We decided living in a house didn’t make sense.

We had a choice between living in an RV or moving to an apartment. But what apartment would allow four pets? The more we thought about it the more appealing the RV lifestyle was for us.

But which RV should we buy? We considered many options and decided the best option for us was a Class A motorhome. Its advantages are that it is all on one level once you are in the unit. Set up is easy with most of the controls inside the motorhome. Even the smaller ones are big enough for us to live in. They don’t require a tow vehicle and, if we are careful to shop on travel days, we don’t need to tow a vehicle either.

But when the house sold, we didn’t have the money for a motorhome.

We decided to buy a bumper pull travel trailer even though we don’t have a vehicle to pull it. The plan is to live in it for a year or so. This will allow Judy to keep working to save enough money to upgrade to a motorhome.

Bumper pull trailers have the advantage that they are usually all on one level which made it easy for Rick to get around.

When we set the possession date for selling the house, we were thinking that we could start getting ready to move as soon as we have an offer. But when we got the offer, much of the work couldn’t start until they had removed the conditions on the sale. That left only about five weeks to buy an RV, downsize, downsize, downsize again, and move.

Did I mention that we moved from a 1200 square foot bungalow with a full basement, and a double garage, to a 300 square foot trailer, with the slides out? That’s downsizing. It’s a lot of work.

We’ve decided we would like to share our experiences to let you gain from our mistakes and successes. If you’d like to learn more, bookmark this page and come back to it as we add more.