{"id":636,"date":"2026-08-20T20:50:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T20:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesingforthejourney.com\/journal\/?p=636"},"modified":"2026-09-30T20:50:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T20:50:31","slug":"why-we-chose-a-45-foot-motorhome-to-live-in-full-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesingforthejourney.com\/journal\/why-we-chose-a-45-foot-motorhome-to-live-in-full-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Chose a 45-Foot Motorhome to Live In Full-Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sell everything. See the country. Chase 70 degrees. That was the retirement plan\u2014and it still is.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n

This Wasn’t Going to Be Our RV. It Was Going to Be Our Home.<\/h2>\n\n

\n When Sue and I started planning retirement, we weren’t talking about buying\n an RV for weekends, vacations, or a few trips every summer.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The plan was much bigger than that.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We were going to sell everything.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The house.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Most of what we had accumulated over decades.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The things sitting in closets, cabinets, garages, and boxes that somehow\n keep following you from one house to another.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We were going to simplify our lives, move into a motorhome,\n and make the road our home.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Not for six weeks.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Not for one summer.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Full-time.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We wanted to travel the country on our terms, stay longer in the places\n we loved, move when we were ready, and finally experience parts of America\n Sue and I had spent much of our lives saying we would see someday.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n And we had a very simple idea for deciding where to go next:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

Chase 70 degrees.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n Head south when winter arrived.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Move north when summer became too hot.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Follow spring and fall whenever possible.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n No snow if we could help it.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n No brutal summer heat if we could avoid that too.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Just keep moving through the country in search of comfortable weather,\n beautiful places, and the freedom we had spent decades working toward.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n

\n The Retirement Plan\n <\/p>\n\n

\n \n Sell everything. Live full-time in the motorhome.\n See the country. Chase 70 degrees.\n <\/strong>\n <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\n\n

The Dream Started With Seeing More of the Country<\/h2>\n\n

\n Part of this dream started because of my job.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Work gave me opportunities to travel to parts of the country I had never\n really experienced before.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n And the more I saw, the more I realized how much of this country Sue and\n I had never seen together.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n I would come home and talk about the places I had visited, the landscapes,\n the roads, the parts of the country that looked completely different from\n what we were used to in the Midwest.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Eventually the question became obvious:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

Why don’t we go see all of this together?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n Not while trying to squeeze everything into a seven-day vacation.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Not while watching the clock because we needed to get back to work.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We wanted enough time to actually experience a place.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Stay another week if we liked it.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Change the route if something interesting appeared along the way.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Wake up and decide that maybe we weren’t ready to leave yet.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n That kind of freedom became the real dream.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

We Wanted to Travel on Our Terms<\/h2>\n\n

\n That phrase became important to both of us.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Go when we wanted.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Go where we wanted.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n And, most importantly,\n go how we wanted.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We imagined large western loops across the United States.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Yellowstone.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The Grand Canyon.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The Sierra Nevadas.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The Pacific Northwest.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Alaska.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The Northeast.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The beautiful places throughout the Midwest that we had lived near for\n years but never really taken the time to explore.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The Southeast.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Coastal areas.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Small towns.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n National parks.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n And roads we hadn’t even discovered yet.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

Chasing 70 Degrees<\/h2>\n\n

\n Somewhere during all of the planning, I started calling our travel strategy:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

Chasing 70 degrees.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n It’s not complicated.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n If it gets cold, move south.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n If it gets too hot, head north or find elevation.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n Try to spend as much of the year as possible somewhere the windows can be\n open and the weather makes you want to be outside.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We weren’t trying to outrun every uncomfortable day.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n But if your home has wheels, one of the great advantages is being able\n to choose the season you’re living in.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n At least most of the time.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n

\n Our Travel Philosophy\n <\/p>\n\n

\n \n Home comes with us. The destination can change.\n And whenever possible, we chase 70 degrees.\n <\/strong>\n <\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\n\n

Once You Decide to Sell Everything, 45 Feet Makes More Sense<\/h2>\n\n

\n When someone hears \u201c45-foot motorhome,\u201d I understand why the first reaction\n might be:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

Why do two people need something that big?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n But that’s looking at it as a vacation vehicle.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We weren’t.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We were planning to sell our traditional home.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The motorhome would become the home.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n If you’re spending a weekend at a campground, you can tolerate compromises\n that become much more significant when you’re living in the RV every day.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We weren’t asking:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

What can we camp in?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n We were asking:\n <\/p>\n\n

\n

What could we comfortably live in?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n That’s a very different question.\n <\/p>\n\n\n

The Tiffin Allegro Bus 45 OPP Became the Coach We Planned Around<\/h2>\n\n

\n The motorhome Sue and I kept coming back to was the\n Tiffin Allegro Bus 45 OPP<\/strong>.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n We had not purchased it yet.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n But it became the coach around which we built much of the retirement plan.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n What attracted us wasn’t simply that it was large.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n It was that the space and features made it feel much more like a home\n than a temporary place to stay.\n <\/p>\n\n

\n The layout we were looking at offered things that become meaningful when\n the motorhome is your primary residence:\n <\/p>\n\n