Latest / Her Journey Her Way / Can you travel Full Time on $1200 a month? Sandy Did.

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Can you travel Full Time on $1200 a month? Sandy Did. · Her Journey Her Way

• Rita Gardner: Sandy is 61 years old and she is sitting in a national forest with five campsites in it and no cell service. Fuel is leaking out onto the ground underneath her bus. Her bus tire is flat, her bike tire is flat too. Which is a detail I love because what are the odds? She's by herself, she has no signal, she has no idea when anybody is coming or if anybody is coming. But here's the crazy part. She's not even scared, she's not nervous, worried, not even a little. That's the part I still can't get over. I have some of the coolest friends on the planet. They left the comfort of their home, got out on the road, took the trips most people only talk about. I'm Rita and this is Her Journey Her Way, a She Travel Simple podcast. I've spent most of my adult life traveling. Here's what I learned. The places are beautiful, the people are better. Every one of my friends has a story, and every one of them knows something you're gonna want to know. That's what this is. Their stories. Their lessons, their way. I've known Sandy a few years now. The first real conversation we ever had was about the Natchez Trace Parkway. I don't remember how we got on it, but we got on it. And she said, hang on. And she goes and gets a book, a whole book about the trace, and she hands it to me. Just hands it to me. We barely knew each other. I've gotta say, when this happened, I was floored. Today. I'm not surprised. This happens all the time, and it's a beautiful thing in our nomad community. So we go our separate ways. A year or two goes by, in a different state, different time of year, there's Sandy, and I've got her book with me because I've been dragging that book around the country in my rig this whole time, waiting to run into her. So I hand it back. Now, I still haven't driven the trace, and she hasn't either. But that book has been all over the country, and neither one of us have read it. Anyway, I want to tell you about who Sandy is. I sat down with her about a month ago and I asked for her to tell me her journey, you know, her way of doing things. And this is what she said. So she is 61 years old. She did 20 years in the military. Thank you, Sandy. She travels solo, no dog, no cat, nobody. She's quiet, she's not the loudest one at the campfire, and she's not trying to be. But don't let that fool you. She will absolutely help anybody with absolutely anything. She's one of those people who makes me feel comfortable exactly the way I am. I don't have to be up, I don't have to be entertaining, I can just be a person sitting in a chair. I'm gonna come back to that at the end because I There's something she's said to me that still floors me and it kind of changes the way I feel about myself today, but I'll get to that at the end. So before Sandy got her bus, she started out in a Prius. You know, those ridiculously small ⁓ hybrid Toyota cars. I get it. Great gas mileage, zero room. But apparently there is enough room. So she didn't start out in a van or a camper, just the Prius. She would go out for three weeks, four weeks at a time, on and off. But here's the thing, she did it all year long. She didn't do it just during warm and nice weather. She had a trick with this car that I want to tell you about because it fixes two problems at the same time and it costs you nothing but a tent. She carried one of those pop-up tents. Not the kind that you build. It's this is the kind that's already a tent when it comes out of the bag and when you're done with it, you origami it, you twist it back and you fold it into itself and it goes flat. Ninety five percent of the time you have to get on a YouTube video and figure it out how to twist it all back to get it into that frisbee looking shape. Just the FYI. Don't feel like you're the only one that's had to look that up. Anyway. She'd pull into a spot and then she said what she did was she'd take this tent and she would just throw it out on the ground. It popped up into a tent. And then it was set up and what she would do is she would just take everything out of her car. All her gear, all her bins, all her stuff, and she would put it in the tent. Now, I thought this was brilliant. So now her car is empty. So now she's got an empty Prius, which is her bedroom. Here's why most women tried car camping one time and quick. They pack the whole car and then it's bedtime and there is nowhere to lie down. Their stuff is on the passenger seat, in the footwell, and stacked up to the ceiling behind them, and they end up sleeping folded around a cooler and they wake up five times in the morning and go, nope, this is not for me. Sandy just moved the pile outside. Same car, same stuff, and now she's got a bed. And here's the second half of it, which is the part I really love. If she wants to go somewhere for the day, she goes. She just drives off. The tent stays right where it is with her things in it. And a tent sitting on a site with gear in it means that site is taken. Nobody's pulling in, nobody's questioning it. The ranger's not questioning it. She's got a bedroom, she's got a placeholder holding her spot, and she's got her car free to drive around all day. All three. Out of one pop up tent. Use your head about where you do it, obviously. That's a campground move, not a Walmart parking lot move. So 2018, she decides she's going full time. She buys a bus. And when she buys the bus, guess what? It has motor problems right out of the gate. Most people would take that as a sign. Sandy I love this. Sandy takes it as a schedule. She's still running her business, so she spends that whole stretch building out her inside of that bus while the motor is. situation is getting sorted out. So the bus is finally ready March of 2021, years later. Years. So this isn't something that she just did overnight in a month within a couple weeks. Years. She sells the business and she pulls out on July 21st, 2021. Now here's the part I want you to hear because this is the part everybody does differently and thinks about it in the wrong way. She did not know one single person out there, not one. I didn't know anybody. And I have several friends who didn't know anybody. So for her very first stop, she picked a schoolie event up in the upper peninsula. It's called the Schoolie UP. And she picked that on purpose. She said it plain. She said, I picked an event that people would be at for her first outing. She didn't drive off into the wilderness alone to prove something. She drove to where the people were, met people, and then she left by herself and took off. If you're sitting there at your kitchen table right now thinking you can't go because you don't know anybody, that's your answer. You go where the people already are. One time and then you know people. I want to say that the schoolie UP is has discontinued doing that event as of 2026. But there is another group that has a very kind group of people called the Schoolie Swarm. And that is S-K-O-O-L-I-E swarm, S-W-A-R-M. If you go to schoolyswarm.com, you'll see events that are coming up. And this is definitely something you can go to. Even if you're Bus and your rig is not done. Just go. Everybody waits till they're all set up and they're ready to travel. But truth be told, so many people come with just the shell. And then you'll find you'll get a helping hand. Anyway, I'm digressing. Let me get back to Sandy. Her bus is called the command post. She named it that because she did 20 years in the military. And when they'd run field operations, she worked in the command post. That's it. No agonizing over it, no figuring it out, no asking people on Instagram. She knew right away it was going to be called the command post. The bus was a 2002 five window, six point five liter diesel. Now if you remember, in the schoolie world, we measure our school buses by windows. Not all of us, but most of us do. So people will say, ⁓ I'm looking for a six window or a five window. Anyway, her exact Position on that engine is that she does not expect anybody else to buy one. She's not recommending it. She's telling you what she had because she took care of that bus. Radiators, brakes, all of it. She replaced everything, done immaculate. Everything on that bus was new except the one thing that mattered. Four and a half years in, it threw a rod. And that was that. Her words roughly were: that was the rod that broke the command post back. Now, fortunately for her, she was able to sell that bus to a friend who uses it as an Airbnb, but it was not really an Airbnb. They use it for people to stay in when they come to their property. She's 61, filing for Social Security, and what she says is, We're not done. We've got to get on the road. We've got to go faster and further and more places, and no worries, at sixty-one. So she gets a 2023 RAM. ProMaster. Still the command post, but now it's called CP2 for command post two. Sandy was a contractor for this one. She did what a contractor does. She subcontracted the part she wanted done right, and she stood there for every single bit of it. She did the floor herself. Her friend Mary helped her run the wiring. And Sandy says Mary is a workhorse, which coming from Sandy is a very big compliment. Her friend Brett did the solar and the heavy stuff. Her other friend Casey helped her sand. And she pulled things straight out of the old bus and put them in the van. Her couch went in, her bed. But here's my favorite part of the whole build. She's lying in the brand new empty van and she's thinking about all the shows she's going to watch and all the designs she's going to look at and all the cubby holes she's gonna get to build. Let's watch this show. Let's see that diagram. Let's see this design. And then she stops and she goes, wait, this floor plan already works. The command post floor plan that she had in the bus already worked for her. So she built the same floor plan she already had. Same one. Moved the couch in, done. That's four years of knowing what you actually use, and she trusted it instead of starting over from scratch, like a beginner. Then she painted it. And she used house paint, regular house paint. Her and Casey sanded that thing down really good, primed what needed primed, and she went and bought the best house paint she could. $65 a gallon house paint. She picked the color herself and she rolled it by hand with a four-inch roller. She says that people stop her in the parking lots to tell her what a great wrap she's got, but it's not a wrap. It's $65 paint and a four-inch roller. Let's get back to this breakdown I told you about. She's in the woods. So this is when she was coming up from Kentucky. That's where she is originally from Kentucky. She's coming from Kentucky to meet me and a couple other friends in Canada. She pulls into this little national forest campground. There's only five sites. It's sitting on a river, nice paved little spot. And no cell service. That's kind of how she likes it. And the fuel line is leaking. Fuel is going everywhere. Here's why. A shop had replaced her fuel pump at some point and never put the brackets back on. Never remounted it. So the thing was just riding around, jarring itself loose until it let go. I want you to sit with that for a second because that is not a sandy mistake. That's somebody else's sloppy work showing up 200 miles later in a place with no cell service. And the same thing happened again with the other one later on in Canada, which is how she found out they never finished the job in the first place. So she's got fuel on the ground, her bus tire is flat, her bike tire is flat also. What does she do? She walks up the road, up a hill, to where? A graveyard. That's where the signal was in a graveyard. And from the graveyard, she calls a what? Mobile mechanic. So let me say that again. She walks up the road, walks up a hill, walks to a graveyard, and that is where she has signal service. Do all graveyards have cell service? I don't know. Maybe something to check out. So she calls a mobile mechanic, not a tow truck, a mobile mechanic. And this is the tip I want you writing down because I I had never thought about it this way until she said it to me. When you get towed to a shop, you sit in their lock and you wait your turn. You're not an emergency to them. You are a car in a line. They'll get to you when they get to you. And meanwhile, you're living in the thing they're not getting to. When somebody drives out to you, you are the job. You're the whole reason they got in the truck. It cost her under $300. And he came back later to check on her. The sheriff drove by too, and when he wasn't on duty, he sent another guy through later to check on her. They circled through, said a couple of words, and left her alone. Now I asked her about roadside assistance, and Sandy said she doesn't carry any. She doesn't have triple A, she doesn't have Coach Net, she doesn't have Good Sam. Nothing with her insurance company either. Nothing. Her reason is she paid for it for years. And the two times she actually needs somebody to show up, nobody showed up. So she stopped paying and she puts that money in her own pocket for when something does happen. Let me just pause here again for a moment. I'm not saying do it Sandy's way. I'm not saying triple A is worth it, not worth it. Same with Coach Net. All I'm suggesting is that this is a different way of looking at it. And it might not be a bad idea. It might be something that works for you. Personally, I have AAA. I do have CoachNet. I have used them both and I have also been burned by both. I'm on the fence and I'm also definitely on the side of Sandy. I think given the situation, I might go straight to a mobile mechanic, depending on my breakdown. ⁓ really think about it and don't rule out just having a bank account with savings in it for a mobile mechanic. I've heard this from several people that they don't end up being as expensive as you think. So I asked her, what was the scary part? Meeting people, where to stay, the breakdowns, driving the rig? Nothing. She said, not anything bothered her, which I found odd, so I pressed her. She said, when she's parked, she's closed up in there, nobody's getting to her, and if she doesn't like it, she drives off. She said Before you do anything, ask yourself this. Are you safe? Is the vehicle safe? Is everybody else safe? That easy. Those three little things. Are you safe? Is the vehicle safe? Is everybody safe? Get the rig off the road, answer those three, and then you can think. Because here's her line, and this one rearranged something for me. You would have been sitting somewhere tonight anyway. You're just sitting somewhere different. That's it. The whole thing. You had plans to sit in a chair and look at trees and go to bed. Well, that's what she does. You're now sitting in a chair looking at trees and you're going to bed. The address changed. Your life did not fall apart. And she does one more thing on purpose that I think is underrated. And honestly, this is the kind of stuff that really pushed me to start this podcast, to share this kind of information. This is not what you're gonna find in a Google search. She does not watch scary ⁓ shows. She stopped watching thrillers long before she got on the road. Her thinking is that maybe five percent of people out there are bad and 95% of people are good. And she's not gonna sit around every night feeding that 5%. Makes total sense. You cannot spend your evenings watching women get abducted on television and then wonder why you're scared to sleep at a rest stop. You just can't. You're building it yourself. I mean, it's kind of like willing it, law of attraction. So think about it that way. But then she told me that the question she actually gets asked isn't, are you scared? It's more, are you lonely? She'll tell you straight that she's got PTSD and anxiety from the military and that she wants to be away from people sometimes. She's not hiding it. And then she says the thing nobody says out loud. Wanting to be alone is not the same as being depressed. She says she can sit and stare at one tree all day long. And she means it as a good time. Because it is a good time. Let me interject here something that I have seen over the years. Sandy is not the only one who feels this way. I think nearly every person I've met on the road at an event camping wants and needs their alone time. The other thing I've noticed is that we all understand it. So when People are sitting around a campfire at a picnic table playing a card game and someone says, like my friend Timmy says, ⁓ I hope you don't think I'm rude. I'm gonna go rest. She says it very politely, and everybody understands it a hundred and ten percent. So if you say, Hey, I think I'm done here, I'm gonna go have some alone time, nobody bats an eye at it. It it's not like when you're at a a wedding reception or you have a you're at a birthday party, right? And you're like, you can't just go, ⁓ hey, ⁓ I'm gonna have some alone time. It's a little bit different when you're on the road. You can just escape into your van or your bus and just kind of decompress and and get yourself grounded again and and get your quiet time in. It is totally acceptable. So if you think you would not want to be a social butterfly all the time, that's fine. That's fine. You are like nearly everybody else out there. So when people ask Sandy where is she going, she says alone. She says, I'm going alone, as if alone is a place. And we all get that with her. So it's pretty funny to hear her her answer. So she's not going to a park. She's not going to a state. She's going to alone. Where are you going, Sandy? Alone. She's hysterical. Anyway, let's talk about the money because I know a lot of people have concerns about traveling and if they make enough money. And I want to tell you what Sandy shared with me, and maybe you can relate, maybe it makes things a little more clear. At the very least, I hope it gets you thinking that this is totally a possibility. While she was out traveling, she was bringing in $1,700 a month. ⁓ and she was living on twelve hundred because she still had bills back home to pay. So she had twelve hundred dollars a month to live full time on the road. Now she did have business sale money and that carried her through about four years of it. But here's her rule for stretching it, which is the single best fuel advice I've got for you. She says Every time you turn that key, you pay for it. So when the group says, let's move, let's go here, let's go there, Sandy says, no. She says, stay where you are three or four days minimum. Her words were, there's nothing worse than putting gas in one day, putting gas in the next day, and then putting more gas in before you go to bed that night. Everybody's out here talking about how many states they've hit. Nobody's talking about how the moving is the part that costs money. The sitting still is free. So this is where she's at now. She's got the van payment, she's got fuel, and that's about it. Her medical is covered from being in the military. She sold those properties that she had back home, so she no longer has those bills to pay. And she said it like this at 61, she is living. for basically nothing now. Now, how do you get from two houses to a van? Because Sandy had two houses. Two. Here's what she did, and it's so simple, you could do it this weekend. She took one of those garage sale hanging racks, the metal ones on wheels, and she put it in the middle of her living room. The middle of the living room, where she had to walk past it every single day. And every time she went through a closet, anything she looked at and thought, I haven't worn this in two years Went on the rack. Then people would come over to visit and she'd point out the rack. You want that? Take it. You need that? Take it. And for the stuff she can't let go, she got the fix for that too. Put it in a box. Don't fight yourself about it. Put it in a box because the next time you come around to that box, you're gonna feel different about it. And then you'll get rid of it. Great idea. I'm gonna say it in my best jersey voice. Do not struggle with it. Put it in a box, essentially deal with it later because that later you is gonna be in a completely different mindset than you are today, thinking, do I need it? What will I think of this? Blah, blah, blah. In a couple months, in a year, in a couple years, you're gonna go back to it and you're gonna look at it and you're gonna say, ⁓ yeah, I don't need it. And then it's gonna be easy peasy, let it go. I think that is great. Don't struggle today. I hate to say deal with it later, but if you really are gonna struggle, put it in a box, deal with it later, and it'll probably be a no brainer then. She said that she kept things two and three years and then went, I don't need that. So don't beat yourself up about it that you've s been hanging on to this stuff. I beat myself up about it, but what am I gonna do? Just let it go. The self beatings are not gonna get you anywhere. I'm I'm saying that more for me, but you might need to hear that too. For me, I don't travel full time. I go out for a month and then I come back and I look at things that I didn't even box up and I think, my gosh, I went a whole month without that. I don't think I need it. If I didn't need it for one month, I don't think I need it for two months, three months, and then 12 months. The only thing that Sandy protected was her art. So she had an art studio, and anything that belonged in her art studio went into storage until she had a place for it. Everything that belonged to the house was gone. Sandy and her art studio, I want to mention this because she made mugs. If you've been around the schoolie world at all, you might not know Sandy as the command post, but you know the mugs. Sandy makes coffee mugs by hand, not on the wheel. She has a wheel and she can throw one on it. And on a wheel, you can turn one out in about four minutes, she said, and she can just crank them out production style. But she doesn't do that. She builds them by hand, and each one takes about twenty to thirty minutes. She's got and then she says she's gotta babysit them while they dry because they dry a certain way. So no air on them, no moving them around the studio. And so She stamps them. She's got a little school bus stamp and a big bus stamp. And now she's found a van one too. So she's got a small schoolie, large schoolie, and van. She can make it with whatever you want on it. She sells them for twenty dollars, thirty, and forty dollars for the big ones. Now people will tell her they're expensive. Meanwhile, she collects mugs herself and she's seen studio mugs go for fifty and sixty dollars. Here's why I think she's right that they're worth it. And this is her, not me. Every morning out here, like when when we're out visiting and we're hanging out together and we're in groups, everybody gets up and they get out of their rig and walk around with, guess what? Their coffee. And you know everybody's coffee mug. You know it before you know their face. Her line was, I will know a mug before I read your shirt. That's true. I can picture people's mugs before I can picture their shirts. It's pretty funny. But she's right. Her mug, she says, they've all got flaws in them because they're handmade. Like a little drip down the side. And she says, you'll sit there every morning with your thumb on that drip, same drip every day, four years. That's not a cup, that's a piece of somebody's hands that you hold every morning. I remember her indicating about two years ago that it was just getting so expensive to make them, but she's getting the studio. back up and she will be making mugs. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. When Sandy opens up again, do not think about it. Do not go look at other options. They go like hotcakes and they will be gone. I have to admit it happened to me. I remember asking her for a mug. She had a couple of mugs and I couldn't decide. And by the time I was ready to pull the trigger, all the ones that I had my eye on were gone. In fact, all of her mugs were gone. And she at that point was saying, sorry, that's it. I'm not making them anymore. I am so thankful that she's going to be up and running again. And for sure, for sure, I'm going to order a mug right away. Here's the best part. Not not the best. It's the best part for me. And it's something I'm gonna share with you in case you want one like I'm ordering mine. I want a mug with no handle because I nest my mugs inside of everything else. My mugs don't have handles. I just don't have anything with handles. I make it so that everything can nest inside each other to save room. So I'm gonna ask Sandy to make me a mug that does not have a handle. If you think you might want to do this too, don't be afraid to ask Sandy to make you a mug with no handle. Just a little FYI. That's like a little minimalist ⁓ life hack. If you don't need a handle, it'll fit inside other things like bowls and cups. At the end of this Sit-down I had with her, I asked her, if there's a woman out there right now who doesn't know if she's ready, doesn't know if she can do this, what would you tell her? Now, Sandy being Sandy, this is why I love Sandy, she didn't go inspirational on me. She went practical because that's who she is. She said, when you know you want to do this and you get your rig, do not go by every single thing you think you need. She said, buy it as you build it because your measurements are going to be off. You're going to change your mind, and it's going to expire sitting in a box. She gave me an example. She bought a generator in 2018. Now remember, she bought the bus in 2018. She didn't even go on the road until 2021. And when she finally pulled it out, she didn't even know how to use it. Three years after. That generator sat there being money she could have spent on something else. She indicated you'll likely waste your money and you'll do a lot of returns. Wait until you know what you need next. I agree with her. I know people who have bought their stoves, who have bought their air conditioners, and they don't even have a rig yet. You just don't know. And for me, I have learned too to not buy it until I need it. Because nomad life, traveling solo, I do think that this is a growing area. And I think people are building stuff all the time and they're improving on things. And something that might have been great in 2022 is so much more advanced, is so much more improved by say 2026. So I am going to side with her and agree with her on this that I I get it. People are out there selling stuff and it's a great deal, but Really think hard, is it something l like a Berkey? You can if you get a great deal on a Berkey, snatch it up. But not everybody needs a Berkey and Berkeys you can place anywhere. But if you're gonna buy something like an air conditioning unit, you don't know where that's gonna sit in your rig, especially if you don't even have a rig. ⁓ if you found a great deal on a stove or a sink. You might buy a great sink and then find it won't fit into the space you have allotted for it. So I do agree with her. Take your time and just buy it as you need it. I asked her where she'd like to go back to, and she indicated the Maritimes and Newfoundland. So here was what was really wild about that. She said she had been to Alaska with the military and she's got the same thing out of Canada that she got out of Alaska. And it's a whole lot closer. So we're both on the East Coast. So if you're on the East Coast Consider the Maritimes and Newfoundland before trying to make a trek out to Alaska. I think that's great and I think I'm gonna take her up on that advice. I have not been to all of them. I did want to go to Alaska. I still wanna go to Alaska, but I think if I can't make it to Alaska anytime soon, I'm definitely gonna try to make it up to the Maritimes and Newfoundland in Canada. It's A third of the distance from me than it is to Alaska. I asked her where she still hasn't been, and she said Yosemite. She hasn't been to the inside of national parks because she went to these places in the winter and then she couldn't get into the interior. She wants to go to the loneliest highway and of course the Natchez Trace, you know, which is where we started. Neither one of us has done it despite having the book. One more thing. Sandy has guided me. And she has absolutely no idea that she did it. Now, she never gave me this advice. She's not a person who gives advice unless you ask her a direct question. And even then, she gives you the shortest true answer she's got. It's the way she talks about herself. There's no apology in it. She doesn't explain why she wants to be alone. She doesn't soften it. She doesn't dress it up. She doesn't check your face to see if you approve. Somebody asks where she's going, and she says, alone. And then she just lets that sit there. Now, if you've met Sandy, she doesn't have her hair done up. It's usually in a ponytail. She doesn't have the latest and greatest matching clothes, stylish outfits. She is Sandy. And that is something I have learned from her. For me to be me, to not apologize about it, to not try to impress people. People. I now talk to myself differently because of her. My confidence is different because of her. I did say she didn't give advice, but I do have to say she did say to me one time, you shouldn't talk to yourself like that. And and I I still can see her as saying that. Anyway, I'm getting all sentimental going back there. She's right. I did talk bad about myself, thinking that if I let other people know I was disappointed in myself, that they wouldn't be first people to be disappointed in me. But anyway, I'm no longer disappointed in me. I am who I am. I'm doing the best that I can and I don't think I'm doing a half bad job. In fact, I'm doing a great job. And I think everybody is doing the best that they can and we need to take a page out of Sandy's book and just be you. Unapologetically you help others when you can and however you can. I've known her a few years now, and I don't think I've ever said that out loud until right this minute. Thank you, Sandy. And that's what happens out here. You don't get taught. You stand next to somebody long enough and you start doing it too. I'm gonna go back to I believe there are a lot of great people out here. I think the number of Amazing, fabulous, outstanding, incredible people by far outweigh those with evil intentions. I really do. And I'm not saying everybody out here is going to be your best friend and do right by you, but I do believe there's a lot of great people out here. And I don't want everybody. Who's thinking about traveling to think about and focus on the people that are out here to abduct you and cause you harm. There's great people out there. Don't be afraid of them. Don't be afraid to get out there and introduce yourself and be part of those great people. Next time I'm gonna talk about another artist, different kind of artist, and the troubles she's gone through with her bus build. Her name is Nikki and I think you're gonna love her. And she's taught me a lot of great things, just like Sandy has. If you want tips and tricks and insights on traveling, head over to she travelsimple.com. There's blogs over there. There is some more information you can get. And I will see you next time. And until then, stay safe.