Author
Hi, I'm Dana — six years full-time, and I publish what it costs. Every month.
I'm Dana Prescott. I live in a 1998 Class C on a Ford chassis that I bought used in 2019 and have been rebuilding in pieces ever since. Twenty-four feet, gas, 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. About 65,000 miles and somewhere around 400 nights boondocking, mostly on BLM and Forest Service land across Arizona, Utah, Nevada and eastern Oregon in the cold months, and higher country in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming when the desert becomes unreasonable.
Here's the thing this site does that most don't: I publish the numbers. Every month, everything — fuel, campgrounds, insurance, repairs, propane, groceries, the lot. Including the months that went badly, like the one where a transmission service ate a quarter of the budget in a single afternoon.
I do that because I'm tired of RV content written by people three months into a sabbatical in a brand-new rig with a sponsor. That's not a lie exactly, but it isn't the thing either. Some months this life is genuinely cheap. Some months it absolutely is not. You deserve the arithmetic before you sell your furniture.
How I got here, honestly: in 2018 I got divorced, my lease was ending, and staying in Denver was becoming a straightforwardly bad financial decision. I spent nine months researching, bought the rig with savings, and went full-time in spring 2019. So yes — this was as much a money decision as an adventure, and I get a bit prickly about content that pretends otherwise.
The first year was rough and I've written all of it down: a blown water pump in a Utah parking lot, a battery bank I bought on bad advice and replaced eight months later, two nights I'd rather not repeat, and a stretch of loneliness nobody had warned me about. That failure content is deliberate. It's exactly what I couldn't find when I started.
Before this I spent thirteen years as a surgical scheduler and then a scheduling supervisor for a hospital system in Denver. Not glamorous. But it's why this rig runs on intervals, checklists and contingency plans, and why I keep a maintenance log that goes back to the day I bought it. I think about everything as what's the failure mode, and how far am I from help? That question has saved me more money than any tip on this website.
Over six years I've learned to do most of my own work — solar and batteries, water pump, roof reseal, brake controller, subfloor repair, winterising. Not because I love wrenching, but because a mobile tech is $180 just to show up and might be four days out.
And I have hard limits, which I state every time: propane systems and LP appliances, chassis brakes, suspension and anything structural go to a certified technician or mechanic. So does anything I'm not sure about. Knowing where your competence stops is a skill, not an admission.
A few things I won't compromise on, because people die of them in rigs every year: carbon monoxide and propane detectors get tested on a schedule, generators never run near a window, vent or under the rig, and a stove is never a heater. If you take one thing from this site, take that.
Travelling with me is Rooster, a seven-year-old shepherd mix I got from a shelter in Flagstaff. He's the reason I know precisely how fast a rig heats up with the fan running and the sun moving, and why the pet content here is mostly about temperature monitoring, redundancy, and being honest about the days you simply can't leave the dog.
Two more things. I'm not a tax attorney, an accountant or an insurance broker — I'll tell you how my South Dakota domicile and mail forwarding actually work in practice, but that's my situation, not advice for yours. And every campground review here is somewhere I have personally stayed, with the date, the price I paid, cell signal by carrier, and whether I'd go back. Comped stays get disclosed at the top.
If you're figuring out whether you can afford this, whether you can maintain it, or whether you'd actually like it — I've got six years of notes and a spreadsheet. Pull up a chair.
