RV Road Notes started the way most useful things start — out of annoyance. I couldn't find a site that talked about full-time RV life the way it actually happens: the propane bill…
RV Road Notes started the way most useful things start — out of annoyance. I couldn't find a site that talked about full-time RV life the way it actually happens: the propane bill in February, the water pump that fails on a Sunday, the dinner you make with two burners and whatever's left in the cooler. So I started writing it down myself, and eventually that pile of notes became this site.
I'm Dana Prescott. I live in a 1998 Class C on a Ford chassis, bought used in 2019, that I've been rebuilding in pieces ever since — new house batteries, 400 watts of solar, a rebuilt water pump, a bathroom floor that had to come out entirely, and a dinette I built badly once and properly the second time. Six years full-time now. Roughly 65,000 miles and something like 400 nights boondocking, mostly on BLM and Forest Service land across Arizona, Utah, Nevada and eastern Oregon when it's cold, and up into Colorado, Montana and Wyoming once the desert gets unreasonable in summer. My shepherd mix, Rooster, comes with me for all of it. Before this, I was a hospital scheduler, which explains the checklists more than I'd like to admit.
Most RV content disappears after the honeymoon phase — the first year of pretty photos and inspirational captions, and then nothing, because the person went back to a house or just stopped posting once the truth of it set in. I'm still doing this. That's the entire premise of RV Road Notes: a place written by someone who is still living the thing, month after month, with the maintenance log to prove it.
So this isn't a highlight reel. I publish my actual monthly costs, including the bad months when a repair ate the budget and I ate rice for a week. I write up boondocking water and power math because guessing wrong about either one ruins a trip. I review campgrounds I've genuinely stayed at, not ones I read about. And because I still have to eat, a good chunk of the site is camping recipes — Dutch oven meals, foil packets, pack-and-go breakfasts — built for a propane stove and a cooler, not a full kitchen.
The site covers two things that, in practice, are really one thing: living in a rig and feeding yourself well while you do it.
My rule for every post is simple: it has to be something I actually did, cooked, installed, or paid for. I'm not interested in writing inspiration for its own sake — I'd rather a post be genuinely useful at 6 a.m. when you're trying to figure out breakfast or diagnose a water pump than beautiful and vague. Inspiring, yes, but only if it's also practical enough to follow.
That means I test recipes on the equipment readers actually have, not a studio kitchen. It means conversion posts include the mistakes, not just the finished shot. And it means when I recommend a product or mention something I was given to review, I say so plainly — you can read exactly how that works on the Disclosure and Affiliate Disclaimer pages. I'd rather lose a sale than lose your trust.
The full detail on how I research, fact-check, and update posts over time lives on the Editorial Policy page, and how your data is handled when you're on this site is covered in the Privacy Policy. Both are written in plain language on purpose — no legal fog, just what actually happens.
It's me, mostly. RV Road Notes isn't a content farm with a stock-photo author bio — it's one person's rig, one dog, and a spreadsheet that's been running for six years. My domicile is South Dakota, mail forwarding and all, and I'll walk through the practicalities of that when it's relevant, without pretending it's tax advice. When I do bring in outside voices or accept a guest contribution, it goes through the same standards as everything else here, and I'm always open to hearing from other full-timers with something worth sharing — details on that are on the Collaboration page.
If you've got a question about a build, a recipe that didn't work out the way you expected, a campground worth adding, or you just want to tell me Rooster is a good dog (he is), I read everything that comes in. Reach out through the Contact page or email me directly at [email protected]. I try to answer personally, though it sometimes takes a few days if I'm parked somewhere without signal.
Thanks for reading this far. Whether you're planning your first conversion, trying to figure out what boondocking actually costs, or just looking for a Dutch oven recipe that doesn't require a full pantry, I'm glad you're here. This site will keep getting updated for as long as I keep living this way — and right now, I don't have plans to stop.