Love or hate work camping?

I lived in my RV for over six years traveling around the country working contract network projects. The projects ranged in duration from a couple of days to 3+ months. For some of the shorter stays I would overnight at the nearest WalMart. Some of the clients allowed me to stay on their parking lot while completing the project. For longer stays I would find a suitable RV park nearby.

I loved it!!

Only two significant complaints:

1) The work circumstance that allowed me to enjoy the work/travel lifestyle has ended. The company that I was working for went out of business.

2) As I had very little input on the scheduling I sometimes found myself in Minneapolis or Detroit in February and Las Vegas or Phoenix in August.

I absolutely loved the lifestyle and would jump at the chance to do it again. I love to travel and see new things. I was able to spend time in 40+ States and was making great money doing it.

We had a nicely converted Eagle Model 10 that was very comfortable to live in. We put over 250k miles on it during that time.

While we traveled I met a number of folks living a similar lifestyle. Traveling nurses, radiology techs and union electricians. Funny thing, after a couple of years I started running into people that I had met on other parts of the country. I would pull into an RV park in Michigan and there would be Mike that I met in Texas and so on.

If you have the ability to earn an income that suits you and still have a bit of time to enjoy the places you visit I cannot see any reason not to GO FOR IT!

2gypsies wrote:

vacuumbed wrote:

Naio wrote:
In Portland, you may find it is illegal to live in your RV.

Is that true?

I think he meant it's illegal to live in your RV - while parked on city streets.

Staying in a RV park is just fine.

OP wrote:

Living in a small RV and driving it to work. No campground.

It's awfully hard to tell from that what is intended.

I do recall a recent thread, though, about Portland, where people said it was very difficult / impossible to get a long term spot at an RV park, and illegal to camp outside a park (e.g. on the street or in the employers' parking lot).

OP could do an 'advanced search' for threads mentioning Portland.

vacuumbed wrote:

Naio wrote:
In Portland, you may find it is illegal to live in your RV.

Is that true?

I think he meant it's illegal to live in your RV - while parked on city streets.

Staying in a RV park is just fine.

Since my wife and I live nearly full time in our motorhome anyway, I would have no problem going to work each day if the need arose. I wouldn't need to drive the coach to work though, since we tow a car behind us as we travel. Many years ago, I had a job that required me to be at sites away from home for several weeks at a time. I pulled a 13' TT behind my pickup to those jobs, and either lived at the job site or a nearby campground. I loved doing that, although I did miss seeing my family during the week. With no Internet or cell pones, keeping in touch was limited to pay phones most of time.

Naio wrote:
In Portland, you may find it is illegal to live in your RV.

Is that true?

In Portland, you may find it is illegal to live in your RV.

Thanks for moving the thread, and now I know to stay away from workcamping! :B

I would be doing this in Portland, OR with a good paying job.

Moderator note..... I have moved this topic here, because it has nothing to do with workcamping. The title is misleading....

OP, you will probably get more helpful responses if you ask a mod to move your thread to a more appropriate part of the forum :).

This section is for discussing working AT and FOR a national park or campground, while living on site. And mostly those are volunteer jobs, done in exchange for site rent. That is what workcamping means.

Notice: This post has nothing to do with workamping or volunteering in a RV park.

He is working a regular job but plans to live in the RV.

OP: The only issues I can think of that might affect you is if you don't have another vehicle (car/truck) other than the RV, it would be very inconvenient to unhook your utilities every day and rehook them when you come back to the RV. If you have another vehicle to drive around then no problem.

The second issue is that it seems you might live in Salt Lake City and most RVs aren't built for winter camping. You will spend a lot of money on propane to heat your RV and you'll have to take special precautions with your utilities (hoses, tanks if they're not heated).

Good luck!