RV LIFE Podcast
The RV LIFE Podcast, created by one of the premier companies in the RV industry, is for the RV Community with a mission to Educate, Entertain and Explore the RV Lifestyle. The Podcast will explore all things RV Life: living, working, exploring, learning. With hosts Dan & Patti Hunt, full time RVers, content creators, educators and explorers.
RV LIFE Podcast
Balancing Family, Work, Homeopathy, and Adventure with Amanda Pelser
Wondering how to navigate through life on wheels with four kids while still maintaining sanity? How about managing jobs, homeschooling, and the constant adventure that is RV life? Join us as we venture into the details of managing full-time RV life with a family in tow. With the help of our guest, Amanda, we explore the importance of building a community with other RV nomads, and the amazing support that can be found within this unique lifestyle.
What if you could remedy ailments that naturally occur on the road, without having to rush to the nearest pharmacy? This episode takes a deep look into the world of homeopathy, a holistic health system that believes 'like cures like'. Find out how we use homeopathy to effectively manage emergency situations, and learn about the top three remedies that every RVer should have in their camper. You'll learn how to use these remedies for things as simple as bug bites to more severe conditions like vascular issues.
Here is the PDF with some homeopathic remedies
https://rootedhomeopathy.com/rvlife/
Finally, jump on board as we explore the fantastic world of the Hershey RV Show. Discover the plethora of gadgets you never knew you needed, meet manufacturers, and attend seminars to gain insider knowledge.
We also marvel at the touching fundraiser that the Circle M campground hosted for a young cancer patient, revealing the sense of community in the RV world. And if you're considering venturing into full-time RV life, we've got you covered with tips and tricks on domiciles, mail service, and trip planning. So buckle up and join us on this exciting journey of RV life!
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Do you know what a homeopath is? This is the RV Live Podcast. I'm Dan Hunt, your host, with my incredible wife, patty Hunt, and today's guest well, she is a homopath and I feel better just sitting right here at this table with her. She travels full time in an RV with four boys, ages seven to 16, and a husband, and that certifies her as a saint. And she was a pioneer in the podcast industry, producing a podcast way, way back in 1984, before podcasting was even a thing.
Speaker 2:Five kids. Four of them are married, so that's nine kids, nine grandkids, and I'm not sure I could even imagine traveling with one of them. But I'm certainly intrigued to hear from Amanda about traveling with four kids on board.
Speaker 1:Patty, I got to jump in there and say you know, there was one night where we took the littlest, the youngest of all the grandkids and took them out to a campground with us, a thousand trails, and he had the time of his life, he loved it and I was so happy that I could take him back to his parents the next day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's way different when they're just visiting. Now, for all our listeners out there, hit the follow button so you don't miss any of our exciting guests. And in three weeks from now, we will be in Hershey, where we will record in front of a live audience, and we have some amazing guests planned for that time.
Speaker 1:Now our plan is to record from the Freightliner booth, which is right in front of the Giant Center. Thank you so much for Freightliner for allowing us to record our podcast in. It's not even or it's a circus tent. It's huge. It is it's absolutely huge in there Hershey, America's largest RV show. It's one that we do every year. Now we are featured speakers this year, so talk to us about what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 2:Right. So buying in Hershey isn't just about buying an RV. Certainly, if you're looking to buy one, it is a great place to go. You could see all kinds of units, different manufacturers. You can meet the manufacturers. So certainly the place to go to pick out your next RV. But it's also an amazing place to build community, meeting other RVers, going to seminars. Education is huge there. But you know, looking at all those gadgets and this is the time because there are a lot of new things that RV shows, you know put out there and this is the time I have to take Dan's credit card away.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you we have found some great stuff. Walking up and down those aisles, we found snap pads. Now we saw them first on a YouTube video and then I saw them in person. I had to go back to the RV measure how big a snap pad we needed. We got them the next day and they have really helped us in leveling out our RVs.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and they have a lot of cool stuff. We actually did a video on our YouTube channel exploring through our lens of the three coolest products at the Hershey RV show, so you could check that out. But I want to talk about community, because right now we are at Circle M campground in Lancaster, pennsylvania, and it is a thousand trails campground. We'll talk a little bit about that later in the show. But this weekend they had a duck race.
Speaker 2:Yes, I said that it was a duck race, so you bought a plastic duck with a number on it and they've raced it across the pool and the money went to a young man, jackson Jackson, a five year old, who has I believe it's a form of cancer. He has to go back and forth to a hospital. Medical bills, travel expenses are really building up. So Circle M campground decided that all proceeds over the weekend would go to him and his family to help him. Now I am going to put the GoFundMe page in the show notes so that you could get all of the information and certainly if there's anything you could donate to help out this family. What a wonderful family and a wonderful group of people that came together this weekend.
Speaker 1:I have to say what a great fundraiser. You know, jackson's five years old and there was thousands of people that bought, for a dollar each, a duck to get into this and the pool. I've never seen so many people at this pool. There were people were everywhere. Now I was in the pool helping with the ducks. So when we were ready to go, we handed Jackson the box of ducks of a thousand ducks. I said here, jackson, just pour it in the pool, come on, just pour it right on me. And that's what he did. He poured them out in the pool.
Speaker 1:We've got video of that. We'll try to put a video of that up on our YouTube channel over on the YouTube side, exploring through our lens. So it was a great thing. It was a great way for people to get together and talk to each other. Everybody was clapping and having a good time. That is what the RV community is all about Now. The Hershey RV show. It's about going up and down the aisles and finding the coolest products and then talking my wife into buying them so we can take them with us.
Speaker 2:This is why I take the cart of cart away from you.
Speaker 1:Now you weren't with me down in Tampa, but the blow up kayak, that was really really cool.
Speaker 2:Inflatable kayak. We don't want to blow anything up. Okay, good, we don't want to blow anything up.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that sound means it's time for today's fun fact. Our fun fact is brought to you by Open Road Resorts, with four great locations in Montana, utah and Texas.
Speaker 2:Wow, what an amazing. There are four campgrounds Truly amazing. One of the owners of the company, chase Becker, was on the show. Dan always talks about this idea of being on a podcast and painting a picture with your voice, and Chase certainly did. After we had him on the show, we decided we were going to go to Montana and Utah over this summer. Unfortunately, because of some medical issues, we did not get there, so that's planned for next summer, but we are planning on going to Albuquerque and on the way from Albuquerque to Florida we will be stopping at the Texas location and that's called Dallas NE and it's just northeast of Dallas, texas, and it sounds like an amazing campground.
Speaker 1:It really looks like an amazing campground from the pictures that we've seen and I have talked to some of the personnel down there. It's just incredible. These are the kind of people that you want to go and stay with because they really care about their customers. So we're really, really excited about going down to Texas and seeing some of our other sponsors NIRBC we're going to see down there and Liquid Rubber. We're going to see down there, so we're going to get them all in while we're down in that Texas area.
Speaker 2:Right, we just have to figure out which ones are down there. There's a lot of them. Now for the question. Oh no, I'm sorry, the fun fact, I'm jumping ahead. We're going to talk about the number of kids that are homeschooled in the US, and these numbers are, according to the National Home Education Research Institute in 2020. So that was the start of COVID. There were 2.6 million children homeschooled. In 2021, 3.7 million and in 2022, 4.3 million kids were homeschooled.
Speaker 1:Now, does anybody see a trend here? That trend is going up every single year, and we've been out of the COVID craze for a year and a half or so.
Speaker 3:So that trend is going up.
Speaker 1:People are being homeschooled, and I know when I talked to Amanda yesterday I said if you could do it all over again, would you do it exactly the same way? And she said absolutely. So. I think that is just really, really a good thing. We're seeing this trend of homeschooling, and not just among the RV community, but among all communities out there. Now I do have to throw a comment in here. We have nine grandkids, and I'm going to only talk about the oldest ones for a second. Can you imagine now? Think back when Danny still lived at home, my son, my eldest son and Amanda lived at home, and Caitlin lived at home and Emily lived at home. Can you imagine waking up in the morning? First of all, getting any one of them up in the morning would have been a trick in three halves Right. But can you imagine homeschooling our kids? And we're both educators, we're both teachers. You have our master's degree in education. I was a professor at Villanova University. I'm sorry. We know how to teach kids, but I couldn't have done that.
Speaker 2:There's no way it does. I do believe it takes a certain kind of person to do it. But what I'm seeing now, with a lot of RVers homeschooling kids because that's what we see being full-time I think there's so many resources and things that to help parents do it. It's not that idea of sitting in the house by yourself trying to organize and figure it all out. And as a teacher, I mean I can't wait to talk to Amanda. She was homeschooling before they even started the RVing and I just think it becomes just part of your whole system. You know, it's just a thing.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you what. I can't imagine taking those personalities and you know, amanda, we met your children yesterday and there are some personalities there as well. I just can't imagine taking those personalities and trying to get anything done with them. Now, whether you are homeschooled or not, hershey is coming up. Patty and I are going to be teaching a class on RV trip planning. We're going to teach you how to do it from A to Z. We're even going to give you some popcorn so you can really get into it. There's no popcorn.
Speaker 2:Don't tease me, there's always popcorn when we trip plan. Okay, if we're trip planning and anybody that's coming to the seminar, bring me some popcorn. I love my popcorn.
Speaker 1:Now we do all of our trip planning with the RV Trip Wizard app and, amanda, I think you do it that way as well. She's shaking her head. Yes, and I will tell you it is one of the greatest things in the world, because it just works.
Speaker 2:When traveling in your RV. How do you navigate? Do you use a paper map, a GPS, or do you use Google Maps? Our sponsor, rv Trip Wizard, has the solution and it just works.
Speaker 1:It just works. This is the RV Life Podcast. I'm Dan Hunt, with my incredible wife, patty Hunt, and our guest today. Well, she met her husband in high school. She's a driven woman, she's a wife, she's a mom, she's a homeschooler, she's an RVer and, yes, she's a certified homeopath. She's not just a woman, she is super woman.
Speaker 2:Today's guest is Amanda Pelzer. Welcome, amanda, to the RV Life Podcast. Thank you, it's nice to be here. So, super woman, as Dan called you, I'd like, for our listeners, just to introduce yourself and your family to our listeners.
Speaker 4:Sure, so my name is Amanda, my husband is Josh. We did meet in high school band camp. We grew up my husband grew up in California. I moved there just before my senior year of high school, so that's when we met. We have four boys. We've been married for 20 years Now. We have the four boys 16, almost 13, 10, and seven and we have been homeschooling. This is our 14th year. We have homeschooled from the beginning. We have been on the road now just over four years in our RV.
Speaker 1:Now, amanda, you told me yesterday you started in a 31 foot class A with you had your first child while you were in the RV. Right Now, a few years later, you kind of moved up to a 43 foot fifth wheel. Let's talk about that decision moving from a class A the queen, the king of the road to a fifth wheel.
Speaker 4:Well, it was a little motor home so it was a little tight. When we first started the boys were roughly three, six, nine and 12. They're not very big at those ages. When they hit 16, 13, 10 and seven they're a little bit bigger. My 16 year old towers over me, my 12 year olds about to pass me in height. So we needed something bigger. We needed floor space. We needed places to be able to cook. We're a food allergy family as well, so we wanted to be able to have more space to cook, to teach the kids how to cook. It was a little hard to do that in such a small space in the motor home.
Speaker 2:I can't even imagine being now. Dan and I for those of you who don't know are in a 40 foot class A, and while that's only nine feet difference, that's a big difference.
Speaker 1:We call 31 foot classes, we call those baby classes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the 40 foot for the two of us, that's. You know, we have enough space for the two of us. So I can't imagine. Maybe you have some pictures that you could share and we'll put on social media, Okay, great. But let's talk now. 31 foot class A for boys, boys not only. Let's talk about homeschooling, because I am really curious 7 to 16 now. But how did it work? How does it work? Because, like Dan and I talked about in the beginning, we can't even imagine.
Speaker 4:Well, the thing you have to remember for me is that this is now our 14th year, so that would have been about our 10th year when we moved into the motor home. This wasn't a new thing. My boys already knew how to do homeschooling. This was part of who we are and our family culture. So we just added doing it on the road. So there really wasn't much of a difference for us in doing it in the RV versus doing it at home. And keep in mind, homeschooling is not an all day thing that we like, we learn all day long, but the book work and the like seat work type stuff is really a really small part of our day.
Speaker 2:And that's what I really wanted to bring out. Again, I was a teacher, mostly a high school teacher, and when we I think a lot of people think about education, it is sitting behind the desk quietly working out of a book. You know those kinds of things that I'm not thrilled about, but a lot of what you do is hands on. Can you speak a little bit more about that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, what's interesting for us is that I am not a hands on type person, I would rather be doing the book work. So we have an interesting dynamic where I just have to teach to each kid individually and I have to give them the hands on work necessary to meet their interests and their skill levels. We do a lot of read alouds. We started in a very Charlotte Mason type of a style living books. We have kind of shifted a little bit more towards classical over the years, but really now most people would probably call us eclectic. We're not unschoolers.
Speaker 4:That's not really my thing, although we do involve the kids a lot in deciding what they want to do and helping direct that. So an example of that is this year, my younger two. They wanted to learn chemistry and so my initial thought was I'm going to go to a textbook curriculum like I've used in the past. We decided not to do that. This year we ended up deciding we're going to go to Wondrium, which is a Netflix on demand style video platform, and we're going to combine that with some resources from masterbooks and they're going to teach themselves more than anything else. And I think that's really what comes out in our family is my kids are learning to learn. I'm not teaching them necessarily, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:That makes total sense. I love that when we put and I'm taking over here because it's about teaching and I'm all about it I wish I know, dan, you want to talk, but I wish we had the opportunity to educate our kids, because of the five kids we have, they are so dynamically different, like totally different children with different interests. So I love what you're doing. Okay, dan, you could talk to him.
Speaker 1:Now for all of our RV life podcast listeners. You know that I was a teacher and I taught filmmaking, and so I want to talk a little bit about the creativity that I see with the kids on the road. And I'm going to talk about your son in a minute, but first I'm going to talk about when we were somewhere in Pennsylvania, somewhere over the rainbow. So, anyway, we were somewhere in Pennsylvania and these kids had just gone to a national park and went and talked about how the dams are made and how the reservoirs are made. Well, at one of the RVs from the kids from and we're going to talk about full-time families in a minute there was a whole bunch of people there. All of these kids were homeschooled and the water was leaking. So what they did is they got rocks from all over the campground and they built a mini national park and they built a reservoir and they had the water coming down and they had it coming down right in one space, so it went out across the river. So it really, really inspired me because of the creativity that they came up with themselves.
Speaker 1:The three of us were sitting in front of your RV yesterday and your one son I don't know which one it was, the middle one probably went I think it was the seven and a half year old and into the RV he got an Amazon box. He cut it up and he made himself a robot costume out of this animal an Amazon box and he was Sir Amazon. And I just got to tell you I was so impressed with the creativity and the self-thinking and taking care of themselves. I look at our kids and it's like what do you mean? Here's a box, go make something out of it. It doesn't work that way, much less going and doing it yourself.
Speaker 1:So I was very, very impressed with your son making that and then coming out and playing with us with it. And it wasn't fair because he had a big sword and I had a pencil, but it was an unfair fight but it really really was something. Can we talk a little bit about full-time families? Full-time families is we see it all over the country. Every RV park we go into, people have flags out like you do. Tell me about that group and what it has done for your family.
Speaker 4:It's our lifeline, it's our community. We would be lost without full-time families. When we started on the road, we actually met a full-time family while we were boondocking. We were trying to find a place in South Dakota to stay because where we had been and wasn't working for us. So we went out and boondocked for the rest of the week, ended up running into a full-time family there. Now we were already part of full-time families and paying members and Facebook group and all of that. But to find someone in the middle of nowhere was pretty cool, but it's our lifeline. When we go into campgrounds, that's who we're looking for. We've got interest groups. We've got chats for various campgrounds. That's how our kids find other kids and parents make friends. It's our lifeline. I don't know how to describe it any other way.
Speaker 2:That's a great way to describe it, because I know and I'm in a lot of different groups and people who are looking to get out on the road, Whether it's just for the summer or full-time. They say, well, what about the kids? And how do I find people and activities? And from the time I heard about full-time families and what's funny, I heard about full-time families from Robin Laws and when you and I Amanda connected on Facebook, I could see you and her were connected. So we met her across the country, in Las Vegas, and here we are in Pennsylvania and it just goes to show what a small it's not a small group, but how everybody's kind of connected.
Speaker 1:And Robin was one of the original guests on the first couple episodes of the RV Life Podcast. You can go back to episode one or two or three and find Robin that she's got a very special skill she's an organizer. And she came into our RV and ripped everything that we were doing and told us how to do it better. And now you know two years later we're doing it better and it is really really. It's really something how that community kind of builds and grows.
Speaker 2:Right, and let's talk about community. You talked about full-time families and it's your lifeline, how important it is, is it being in our RV? Or talk about communities and what kinds of things you do as far as community goes.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So, being on the road for four years, I don't think we'd still be on the road if we didn't have a community like full-time families. Being on the road can be lonely sometimes, like, especially as a family, we pull up next to a retired couple who may not want to have anything to do with us. Thankfully, my kids are relatively quiet and calm and we don't cause too much trouble. But that day-to-day community online and in person, one of the things for us has been we're Christians and so not having a house of faith to go to, not having a church building a church community to fall back on like we would have in the past.
Speaker 4:Full-time families is that, and we do have a branch for Christians as well. So one of the things that we've done when we go back to Texas in the wintertime is we've actually hosted Bible studies and prayer groups regularly, because we tend to stay in a campground in Texas for a period of time as we regroup and we've got to make repairs and we post up out of storage and things like that. So we just kind of have become hosts of that, because a lot of people come through those Thousand Trails Campgrounds in Texas in the wintertime so they know the Pelsers are going to be there. They're going to be hosting a Bible study of some sort and a campfire.
Speaker 2:You know they're going to be there and you can go hang out, that's amazing Again, like seeing people all over the country and then you see them again. Now Amanda did say retired people. I think she met old, I think she was talking about us. But I do want to.
Speaker 2:This is you know, again, the show's not scripted, but I do want to bring up the point that a lot of times the older generation so Dan and I are way older than Amanda, we have grandkids now, we're not retired. We work more now, I think, than we did before, and there is this feeling of I'm sensing it and so I'm putting you on the spot here. But I feel like there's this feeling of a lot of the older people don't want to be bothered with the kids and I love them. There was a baby across the way from us and the parents were doing something and they were taking turns and there were grandparents there and I just want to go over and say I'll watch the baby for an hour. You go on the river, you know, so it's. It's not everybody, but obviously. No, it's not everybody, but obviously there are times it's a concern.
Speaker 4:Every once in a while. Yeah, we have found plenty of older RVers who are very friendly and then they're like oh, you remind me so much of my grandkids. I miss my grandkids so much. They're fine, don't worry about their ball or this or that, and they're very, very welcoming. It's not every older couple that's hostile towards families on the road. Sometimes, sometimes somebody younger couples are worse. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:People without kids. They just don't get it. They just don't get it. We were at a campground and the kids were playing in the middle of the field and and this guy called the Rangers because they were yeah, they were playing on the rocks, and the rocks weren't even part of his campground, they were just playing on the rocks. It's like yo, dude stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we went down a slippery slope there. I'm sorry, I just you know it's supposed to be all positive.
Speaker 1:We're not supposed to talk negative here.
Speaker 2:I just want everybody to get along and I just wanted to, you know, put it out there to people that do have families. You know, obviously it's not everyone. We love the kids We've, even you know we'll babysit some of them sometimes, Okay.
Speaker 1:We are talking about community, we're talking about homeopathic stuff and we are talking about RV life. On the RV life podcast, I'm Dan Hunt with my incredible wife, patty Hunt, and after this break, we're going to talk about, we're going to answer the question what is certified homeopath? What is that, what does it mean, how do you handle emergency situations and what do I do for a bee sting, a headache and a sprained ankle? We're going to talk about all of that right after this.
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Speaker 1:Okay, amanda, let's talk about and I promise we'd get into this what is a certified homeopath. But before we do that, before we go down that road, could you tell our listeners how they can get ahold of you If they love what you say? Next, how do they get ahold of you?
Speaker 4:Sure, my website is rootedhomeopathycom, so Rooted Like Tree Roots. R-o-o-t-e-d homeopathy, H-O-M-E, O-P-A-T-H-Ycom.
Speaker 1:Now be a producer for a second. Where do they find that In the show notes?
Speaker 4:Oh in the show notes.
Speaker 2:She was taken back there. All right, put on the spot, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's get into my first question here after the break. What the hell is a certified homeopath?
Speaker 4:I am certified in a particular system of holistic health, which is homeopathy. It is based on the system of like cures like, and it was first codified by Samuel Hahnemann in the 1800s.
Speaker 2:Okay, back to the 1800s. So I always teach by example. So give an example to our listeners. And first of all is there. You know I'm always concerned about having a disclaimer. So do your disclaimer and then if you could give an example so somebody understands what homeopathy is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I am not a physician, I'm not a doctor, an MD DO anything like that. So everything that I say is for educational purposes and it's based on this system of wellness and we are treating with the idea of like cures. Like we are not treating the particular disease or condition, we are using symptoms to help choose remedies, to build up the person so that the body can heal itself.
Speaker 2:Okay, so now give our listeners an example. When you say like heals, like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so one of the one, one of the examples we use frequently is Allium Sipha, and that is red onion. When you cut an onion, what happens? I tear up, your eyes are watering, burning, et cetera. Those same symptoms can come up when you have a cold, allergies, something along those lines. So we can take red onion in potentized form and we can use that to help the body heal from those symptoms when it's related to some kind of pathology.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I'm going to ask a question, because it used to be I could cut up an entire onion. I wouldn't tear up at all, but now, over the last several years, that's not the case. So I'm putting you, really putting you, on this spot here. Is it so? Is it? Would it be then applicable for somebody who does tear up from that red onion? Is there something about people who don't?
Speaker 4:tear up. Well, it would be about susceptibility. You may still have those similar symptoms in a cold or allergic state, even though you don't react that way when it's the whole onion.
Speaker 2:Got it, got it. And you're saying in a what was the word you used for the form of it? Potentized, potentized form. So I'm thinking that's really strong, potent.
Speaker 4:Actually it's really small, oh yeah, so we're diluting and succusing. So we're going to take a tincture of red onion we're going to take. This is going to get really technical, so let's try and keep it as simple as we can. We're going to take the red onion, we're going to make a tincture out of it, we're going to take one drop of that tincture to 99 drops of alcohol. And now we have a one C tincture. We also have to succuse it, which means to bang it. You can't see me doing that with my hands via audio. We take one drop of that solution to 99 drops of alcohol and succuse it. Now we have a two C solution, and we can keep going and going. We generally use homopathic remedies in three C, six C, occasionally nine, 12 and 15, then we jump to 30, 200, 1m. We go even higher than that. So there's a number of dilutions that we tend to use, but you could even use them in the in-betweens as well, right.
Speaker 2:And people could just get this already in the formula you're talking about. I don't have to go through and do all that. Oh, correct, yeah.
Speaker 4:There are homopathic pharmacies in the US and around the world that make homopathic medicines Okay and we're going to get you to give us some of those.
Speaker 2:I'll put them in the show notes for people. So anything you're talking about, if they want to try it, that'll be available.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about emergency situations. You know we're RVers. We live out on the wild. Any given day you could open your door and a bear would be outside. We walk up and down stairs and ladders all the time, so we're more susceptible to what I would call an emergency situation than most people. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach those emergency situations?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we have a homopathic remedy kit on hand at all times. I carry it with us in the truck when we're driving, when we're out and about at national parks and such. We have those on hand. So I had, in particular, I have a kit that has the 36,000. I have a kit that has the 36 top homopathic remedies in it and I know how to use them.
Speaker 2:Now you said you're going to offer our listeners a PDF with some of these things and how to use them. Right, yeah, the three top or whatever. Whatever you could provide for them, that would be amazing, yeah.
Speaker 4:I've got a PDF in process for you that'll have the top three remedies that I would suggest that every RVer have on hand Awesome.
Speaker 1:And that PDF will be available on your website and our website. And guess what? There will be a link to it in the show notes below, so anybody that wants to get ahold of that can get ahold of it. Let's talk about the normal things that happen all the time Beestings, headaches, sprained ankles, bug bites. We see that kind of stuff every day of our life. Talk to us more specifically, please, about what to do for this mosquito bite right here.
Speaker 4:Letem, letems. That's the first remedy to go to when you have any kind of a puncture, wound, bug bite, animal bite, et cetera. That's what we would go to.
Speaker 2:And you're saying letem. And again, for people listening to the podcast while driving and you don't know how to spell it or you don't know what to do with it, there will be a PDF that gives you all of this information. I'm excited because it is summer, we're in Pennsylvania, we are near a river, I have bites all over. Yeah, dan cut his finger yesterday. It's all this fun stuff, but to know that we'd have these things on hand that could help, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Ticks are another thing in this area, letem is a good first choice for ticks as well. Wow, yeah, that's great because we know ticks cause Lyme's disease, which that's a big thing, so that would be awesome to hear. And so talk a little bit about side effects of these things. We talked about it yesterday, but you want to share that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and homeopathy doesn't really have side effects per se. Pharmaceutical drug has side effects because it's designed to do one thing and yet other things come along with it. When we talk about homeopathic medicines, we do provings and that means we give that thing whether that's a plant, an animal, mineral, etc. That we have potentized, it's been given to a healthy person to determine what it does for that person. And then we like in our like here's like example. Then we use that information to say now when someone who is not healthy, someone has a pathology of some sort, those symptoms come out. We can use something that creates a like symptom to help build up the body to fight against that symptom.
Speaker 2:That is very interesting and this is probably for Dan and I the first introduction to homeopathy. Is that how you say it? Okay, so I know you're a homeopath and then homeopathy. Okay, I'm getting it Very interesting information, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get a little personal here for a second, but I had a stroke in the last year and I have a health coach that is trying to connect the nerves in my brain to the parts of my body that didn't work.
Speaker 1:So the one of the main things that happens when you have a stroke is you get that drop foot and I did all kinds of exercises that didn't seem like they would have anything to do with my foot, but those exercises actually made my foot come back. Is there the same type of things in our body, type of things in homeopathy?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we have things that can help vascular issues, to help the body regain function and come back to a better state of health.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk a little bit about our being. How long have you guys been on the road? Four years, four years, twice as long as us.
Speaker 2:Four years, four whole years, four boys.
Speaker 1:Four boys.
Speaker 2:And I can't get over the 31 foot class. Say, if anybody doesn't know what this looks like, we're going to post pictures. But I'm sorry, I just have to that. That takes a lot to.
Speaker 1:It's, it's like our friend John and Terry. They have the, the baby class.
Speaker 3:A Right, it's just and.
Speaker 1:I always tease them and say well, I could put that in the bedroom of my class A.
Speaker 2:With all the experience that you have, Amanda, let's talk about some things. Like people ask all the time getting mail on the road.
Speaker 4:Escapes. We're escapees members from the very beginning, so we're domiciled in Texas and all of our mail goes to escapees and when we need it we request it and we have their scanning service. So we get to see a lot of the pieces of mail online and we can choose to say throw it away, don't send it to me.
Speaker 2:Right, we are also escapees members, and escapees is a club and one of their services is the mail service. Now we had Travis and Melanie Carr, who are the co-founders, on our show last week. So if you want to know more about mail service and domiciled, they explained it all. They were great.
Speaker 1:Now you guys set off on your journey from California. I believe you do Correct Not a good domicile state, so let's talk about domicile for a second. Where are you guys domiciled and why did you make that decision?
Speaker 4:In Texas. Part of it was because escapees was our first introduction to options for mailing services, so we chose to do our domicile in Livingston. Texas has great homeschool laws and Texas is where we hope that we will find land and eventually have some sort of homestead.
Speaker 1:Now, rv Life is the sponsor of this podcast, the RV Life podcast, and Patty and I are the main speakers for RV Life. On the RV Life Trip Wizard. Do you guys use RV Trip Wizard? We do.
Speaker 2:We have for four years, wow, so from the very beginning, yeah.
Speaker 1:I do not move literally one inch without first going to RV Trip Wizard. Is that the way you guys are?
Speaker 4:Pretty much. I set out with a basic plan of where we're headed for the six months or year that I'm planning and everything goes in there. Every single stop Like I'll even put in if we're like doing a day trip off to the side, it goes in there.
Speaker 1:Right, and they do that too. So you know. The number one question I think I get asked especially nowadays with Facebook and you have more friends than you ever really had real friends is how do you decide where you're going to go next? What's your thought process there?
Speaker 4:We're in the process of trying to figure out where we want to go next year and I don't have an answer for that yet. So I will have to say it's a lot of thought and prayer and waiting to see where God tells us to go next. I will say to start with it was more about the places we wanted to go. It was the National Parks. It was visiting all 50 states, or at least 48 lower states. Now it's more about people. Over the years it's become more about seeing family members, seeing old friends. I actually had a college friend who passed a couple of years ago who we had tried to go see and it didn't work out to see her and six months later she was gone. So we have made a much higher priority out of seeing people and going out of our way to see people than we did even four years ago.
Speaker 2:And that is such a great message. You know, being on the road, people think, oh, you go from, like you said, one National Park, one big event, to another. But in between, or as much as as important as those places is the people. And for us, you know, getting around and seeing the kids and the grandkids, and then, like you said, the friends and other family members. You know, we it's interesting because you're making it You're not sure where you're going to go next year. We're trying to figure out where we're going next month.
Speaker 4:So I have to plan more than that. Yes, If my husband we're still standing here, he would tell you there's no way like she's going to know at least a rough plan for the next four to six months.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's what's great, because people again ask that all the time what about planning how far out we got to do what works for you. I mean, I was always a planner, so this idea of getting in an RV we had four or five months or all planned out. Within the first week Plans were changed and now it's like we fly by the seat of our pants. If you don't national endure one, you know, the owner, brett, calls and says hey, we want you at this event. We say, ok, let's see if we can make that happen. So I guess my point to our listeners is do what works for you. We have friends coming in next week and he is planned for the entire year ahead.
Speaker 1:I actually use him in our speech with RV Trip Wizard because he literally has 12 months planned in RV Trip Wizard where we enjoy this lifestyle. You know, Patty, we just had a recent family situation when Patty's mom passed and because of our lifestyle we were able to change what we were doing and then go spend the last two months of her life with her, not get on an airplane and go there for the funeral. So I just love that aspect of this lifestyle. And we, early on, and I'm going to say in our first trip, when we were on our way from picking up the RV back to Las Vegas where we lived at the time, I'm going to say that the people that we stopped at in Albuquerque and we stayed with them it was a harvest host where Boondockers welcome one of those two and we were sitting talking at night having dinner, and you know we talked about we have maybe five or six hard dates throughout the year and then we have hard dates added to our schedule.
Speaker 1:This winter in Florida was one of those cases. So we stopped calling it our plans and we call it our current thought. So we now have a current thought and it's really easy to change and it gives me that mindset to change of well, that was just a thought, we were going to do that anyway. Right? So we have our current thought and then we have our actual thoughts.
Speaker 2:And of course I'm going to jump in because of course people talk about oh my goodness, if you don't have reservations, campgrounds are booked. You're never going to get a reservation. I think we hear that all the time. So I want to talk a little bit about 1000 trails because, as Dan said, I was six months with my mother. You know, during that time we had no reservations at all because we didn't know when she was going to pass. We didn't know how that was all going to play out, so we had no reservations. She passed and we had the funeral and I decided a week later we were going to get back on the road and I was able to book through 1000 trails, one campground after another took some doing last minute summer in Pennsylvania, but you're also 1000 trails members. Who can you speak about that membership?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we've been members of 1000 trails since the beginning of our time on the road as well, so June July of 2019. And we do tend to plan out our 1000 trails reservations. We've got the membership that allows us to go out 180 days, so I typically have reservations on the books. One of the great things about 1000 trails, though, is the flexibility there to be able to change our reservations as needed. Because my husband works a full time W2 job during the week, we tend to only move on Saturdays and Sundays. That's a really big part of our schedule, so that's a place where we're not as flexible. We can move during the week when we absolutely have to, but we have as much as we can planned out 1000 trails in advance. But we know like we have a friend who likes to say, the plans are nailed and jello and we make the shift when we need to make the shift, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And again, it's what works for different people. We have 1000 trails membership and we had to change everything. In the winter we had to change every. We were in Florida for the whole winter. We had it all planned out because if you don't, you're never going to get a campsite. And when I had to pick up and leave, I was making changes for Dan for those three months and I don't think you spent one single night on this side of the road, right? So not one night, not one night. So we've really made it work and we love 1000 trails. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about full time families. How do people get involved? You know, is it a yearly membership? Can you just explain that a little more?
Speaker 4:Yeah, full time families is a yearly or a lifetime membership. You have your choice. I am not officially affiliated with full time families, just so that's made clear. So everything that I say I might say something wrong from the official standpoint, but as a member, I can tell you we've been members since summer of 2019. And you can choose to do it for a yearly or a lifetime.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I'm sure more will put a link to full time families website in the show notes. I'm sure it's fulltimefamiliescom is what I would think. Yes, okay, and I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:And I just want to jump back into 2000 trails for a second. We love 1000 trails and there's a lot of press, both good and bad, about 1000 trails out there. Our experience has never been as bad as the bad people talk about it. Is that your case too?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean there are definitely places we wouldn't go back to again, but it's more. It's usually more about our rig size or our family dynamics than it is the particular campground. We've never had, I would say, a really bad experience. And even when it comes to kids in 1000 trails, I know I've heard stories from people who say you know, there's vindictive managers or things like that. They don't like kids in their campground. We've never had any problems, but we also keep an eye on our kids. They don't go running around by themselves all over the place. We have ways of keeping tabs on them If they are out by themselves. We have pretty strict rules about how we handle ourselves and our family and our kids know our expectations of them. They represent us when they leave our site.
Speaker 2:And that's what I think is important, because a lot of times and again we're going down a little bit of a sort of negative, but I think sometimes the people that are complaining about 1000 trails it's the individual family or it's you know something that's not in the 1000 trails control. But again, obviously, for the four of us and your whole family, we love the system. I mean, we're very, very happy with it.
Speaker 1:Yes, I don't know that we could live the lifestyle that we do without 1000 trails. And we are very, very lucky to have affiliated ourselves with two great sales reps that are not salesy, and you can get ahold of them in the show notes. There's a quick questionnaire down there talks about what kind of camper are you, what are you looking for, and if you call Jim and Brandy, they will help you through the process without the hard sale.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know that there are some people that are out there and they hard sell it and that's the way you know the way of life these days, but in real life it just wasn't a hard sale.
Speaker 2:Right, jim and Brandy, as Dan said, were amazing. I wanted, honestly, when we started, we wanted no parts of 1000 trails. It's kind of a crazy story because we saw videos and you know, oh no, they're going to just try and sell us whatever we saw and thought. And when we called Jim, he said here's the information, do what works for you. So that's why we'd like to share his information. You could text him, you could call him. I just give his number out to everybody.
Speaker 1:Now you have four boys. You're full time, you have a job, your husband has a W2 job bad word, w2 job. How do you do it all?
Speaker 4:I don't Good answer. There's no way I could. I have a husband. I have four boys. I mean I don't do everything for them. Like, part of being mom is training up those boys to be self-sufficient and being not just a productive part of our family but a productive part of society.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's awesome. And when we were trying to get together yesterday, you said well, I'm outside studying, so you know, stop over. And the boys were obviously doing their thing, taking care of themselves. I think that's great. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:You're listening to the RV Life Podcast. We're going to go into our third segment. We have a question of the week coming up and, amanda, will you stick around and help us out with that question of the week, because I know it's about full time families, okay, okay, here we go, and we'll be back right after this on the RV Life Podcast.
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Speaker 1:National Indoor RV Centers. With over 1000 motor homes available across multiple locations, national Indoor RV Centers continues to provide an outstanding, hassle free motor home ownership experience. National Indoor is the number one New Mar dealer in the nation and also features brands like Integra, winnebago and much more. Visit NIRVCcom and become a part of the National Indoor RV Centers family Now. When I recorded that spot, they were the number one dealer for Newmar and I have since been told they are also the number one Integra dealer in the country. That is just absolutely Amazing. So congratulations, brett, angie, everybody over there at NIR VC, because I got to tell you that that is just really something and they deserve it, because they really Really care about their customers.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they're not just a sponsor on this show, they are, truly they're. We've met Brett, who is the owner, brett Davis Truly amazing people. So the show is about educating and entertaining and introducing people to other great people, and the people at NIR VC are just great people. So if you are looking for a class a, they do see and be right. They are the people to reach out to, with six locations across the country.
Speaker 1:And there are almost every RV show, so you just want to go out and try to find these people, because they are really, really class people. Now that sound means it's time for Patrick Buchanan and our RV life pro. Tip of the week.
Speaker 3:RV life has added landscape mode during navigation for the RV life mobile app, both for Apple and Android. Yes, you can finally turn your phone to landscape mode if you prefer. When using the RV safe routing provided by the RV life app. Landscape mode works for trips you plan with trip wizard and for routes you choose within the app. Both an iPhone and Android Tablet users can use landscape mode for navigation too, but remember, tablets only work properly if they have their own cellular data plan for RV life. I'm Pat Buchanan.
Speaker 2:Pat, thank you so much for another great tip. These tips are really helpful. Rv trip wizard has so many different features and Learning all of them takes a little bit of time. But listening to the pro tips also, if you go on to trip wizard on YouTube, they have some great short videos that also help with some tips.
Speaker 1:Now coming up. Patrick Patty and I will be at the RV Show in Hershey, pennsylvania, and we are sponsoring an event called the RV life live event. Yes, border hookups, prizes, games, booze, food, all of that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let me give the details on it. The Hershey, which is called America's largest show, is September 13th to the 17th and you could go check out RVs, you could go, like we said, get educated community, all kinds of cool stuff to look at. And the RV life of live event is Thursday night, september 14th, from 6 to 10. It is $15 a person and, as Dan said, wine, beer, food. There is a buffet dessert, which is my favorite part. There's amazing prizes or amazing giveaways that are worth Thousands of dollars. I'm gonna list some of them, but they will all be listed on the website.
Speaker 2:I'm giving away an electric bike, Okay we'll decide that, but this is a really great. It's a $2,000 electric bike there is. I can't think of everything that's being given away. We have escapies is giving away a year membership and tickets for two to their escapades event. My biggest problem with this is I can't win it, so we're gonna have to buy our tickets to that. It's gonna be amazing that it's going to be amazing. Open Road is giving away a $500 gas card. There's so much. Go to the website. Check out all the giveaways $15 a person All the food.
Speaker 1:You want to eat all the beer. You want to drink all the wine. You want to drink all the Coke you want to drink. I do, just come and have a great time. You can't go to McDonald's for $15.
Speaker 2:Yes meeting other people and I did just check with Patrick and we are three weeks and a day away from that event and tickets are going fast. There are some left. Somebody asked if there were some left, but you've got to buy your tickets. We cannot add extras on. I'm being a teacher right now. Go buy your tickets today, don't wait till the last minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because when they're gone, they are gone. Okay, so that means it's time. That sound means it's time for this week's question of the week. Our question comes from social media. Trisha D.
Speaker 2:And Trisha D. She didn't give where she lived because she said I hope to call the Open Road home. So she is looking to go full time. And her question my husband and I are planning to go full time with two kids, six and three and she just said where should we start?
Speaker 1:And my expert answer to that question from me is you know what, trisha D? You have already started. You're building a community by listening to the RV Life podcast, where we are here to educate, entertain and inspire, and we look forward to reaching out to you and talking to you. But if you don't want to just do it through the podcast way, you can always go out and watch a YouTube video or two. That's what Patty and I did. That's how Patty learned about RVing. But make sure when you watch a YouTube video that there's backup to what that person's saying. You can go and look at one of the videos on our YouTube channel about our Jeep tow car, which we ruined the tires on because we watched a YouTube video that gave us some bad information. So make sure that the information you're getting is good. Verify it. We have the internet out there, but listen to podcast. There's all kinds of podcast out there and there's the RV Life podcast, there's the RV entrepreneur there's three different podcasts there. Rv Miles has a podcast out there.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of great podcast out there that you can get good information with.
Speaker 2:But since Amanda's been doing it with kids, what would you say to her? Just start, while she hasn't even started out yet?
Speaker 4:Herge, you've got to get everything down, especially if you're leaving behind and not having a home base. You're not going to keep a house, a storage unit, et cetera. You have got to purge it down to the bare minimum because your RV has a weight limit. Way that RV and make sure that you're not over. But then my second tip would be to get involved in something like full-time families. Full-time families has a subgroup specifically for parents of littles, and six and three is a little on the older side of what I would call littles. But there's lots of families with preschoolers out there.
Speaker 2:That's great advice.
Speaker 1:Well, it really is, and I'll tell you. That was probably when we moved from Philadelphia to Las Vegas. We decided to get a storage unit and that was probably the worst decision of our life, because we put so much stuff. It was packed to the ceiling. It was as big as this room we're in here.
Speaker 2:And a lot of money, but I don't know that I could have gone through the anxiety of making those decisions in the beginning. And, amanda, you're shaking your head. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, when we left California, we pulled out with what would fit in our 31-foot motor home as we've repeatedly said, 31-foot motor home, a mini van that I chased behind in and a U-Haul pod that was sent ahead of us to Texas. That's everything that we owned. There was a box of photo albums that lives at my in-laws house now, but otherwise everything that we own is either with us or in a very small storage unit in Texas.
Speaker 1:I did a video on Instagram a couple of years ago when the boxes from Philadelphia arrived in Las Vegas. I'm opening up those boxes and stuff that we shipped. I couldn't believe I shipped it. A stapler, a three-hole punch, what was I thinking?
Speaker 4:Those things are heavy. You were a Muslim mom and you needed those things.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. So again to say purge big good answer To say don't get a storage unit. I don't know, you might need a couple months of just kind of trying to make that decision. But I do want to once more comment on CircleM campground and how they created a community, how they put together a donations for Jackson, who is a five-year-old young man who is in need. I'm going to say again go to the GoFundMe page If there is anything you could donate. I know how much that family would be appreciative of it. I just wanted to put that back out there.
Speaker 1:I just want to paint a little picture, because Jackson and his family live here in Lancaster County. We drove down to Philadelphia the other day. It took about an hour and a half and about a half a tank of gas. They go down there every single week and then when they go down there, they stay there two and three days at a time.
Speaker 1:Sometimes a week actually Sometimes a whole week. So Jackson, well, he's got it easy. He gets to go in the hospital and sit in the hospital bed, but his mom and brothers and sister, they all have to get a hotel room. It gets very, very expensive for these families that have to go do that. That's why you should go to that link. It's in the show notes. It's Jackson's GoFundMe.
Speaker 2:It's called something else, but I will put it in the show notes. It's Jackson Claire Sensing S-E-N-E-N-G. The link will be there, just click the link.
Speaker 3:Just click the link. Click the link.
Speaker 1:That's a really good way to do it, because we had the opportunity to meet this family, to sit and hang out with the family, talk to the grandparents, and it was just a really, really great afternoon when we did that. That was yesterday, right.
Speaker 2:Day before.
Speaker 1:Day before yesterday. Time flies when you have fun. We are here at CircleM and we want to thank CircleM for allowing us to use the community room to produce our podcast today. Amanda, thank you so much for putting up with us yesterday at your RV and today here. We truly, truly appreciate it. I'm Dan Hunt with my incredible wife, Faddie Hunt, saying have a great rest of today.
Speaker 2:And an even better day tomorrow.