According to the RV Industry Association (RVIA) over a million people in the United States live full-time in an RV. There are a lot of reasons for this but among those are the freedom and opportunity that this lifestyle has represented. Until the circumstances of an international pandemic changed so much of reality.

I spoke with a number of people who live full time on the road about what their experience has been since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closures of just the type of places many full-time RVers rely on. For some it has been simply a change of plans. For others it has meant scrambling.

And, for a few, it has put them in danger.

There are a number of ways full-time RVers spend the night, some of whom choose “boondocking” or camping off the grid as their preferred way of operating. Others find an RV park with full services and stay for extended periods of time. Then there are the true nomads who chase adventure and locale to collect experiences.

For the nomad collecting experiences this has been especially difficult and, in some cases, more expensive. Those who generally stay off-grid can often spend days, weeks or even months in remote places where there is no per-night charge for camping. Indeed the government’s BLM land in Arizona, a popular spot for “boondockers,” has been reported as being completely filled up as of this writing.

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Jason Epperson, with his wife, Abby, whose podcast RV Miles is all about the RV journey with their three school-age boys, talked about how their family handled the change. Their plans were to attend a rally for full-time family RVers, then spend some time exploring followed by a second rally in Tucson, Arizona for members of the Family Motor Coach Association, the largest club for RVers.

While the Full-Time Families rally happened before things started to shut down, that second rally got canceled just a week before it was scheduled to start, leaving several thousand expected attendees looking for a place to stay. In fact we were notified days before we were scheduled to leave for that same rally that it was canceled.

Fortunately the Epperson’s experience led them to a park near Sedona where they secured a longer-term stay.

“We’re hoping to be able to leave May 15 - I don’t know where we’ll go if nothing’s open.”

Their stay in Arizona was made possible by a state whose sheltering practices are more relaxed and the timing and happenstance of their being in Arizona was fortuitous.

Lorri Weisen is a full-time RVer who is a nomadic health coach and was just starting a short-term stay in Palm Desert, California when the shelter-in-place orders came down. Fortunately the park she was in let her stay, but there are others in counties where there were orders to shut down all campgrounds immediately leaving occupants scrambling for a place to go and, unfortunately, forcing them to travel unwillingly.

Weisen’s park followed California’s shelter-in-place guidelines allowing her to extend her stay week by week following the state’s announcements but she finally just picked up and left.

“I had to decide where I wanted to be if I did get sick,” said Weisen. “I wanted to be in my community and among the people I knew the best.”

So she made a bee line for her home state of Minnesota and is staying in a friend’s driveway. In fact, this kind of stay is not uncommon as full-time RVers face park closures across the country.

“It was a 2000 mile drive and I had to figure out just how to get there. A lot of campgrounds weren’t letting people in. I made it home in three days - it was intense and exhausting.”

Among the choices she made in getting home was to spend the night in a WalMart parking lot but even that option is disappearing in a lot of places.

Meanwhile, Nichole Wheeler was also planning to attend the FMCA rally in Tucson. Her company, ProTeng, provides fire protection for RVs and a typical rally could mean 50 or more installations. Instead, she packed up her inventory and took time off the road making a fast trip of getting back to their home base in Florida.

“When you come home off the road you feel strange - I was still living out of one drawer instead of the whole closet.”

RVers who stay for extended periods are often snowbirds, people who change location only a few times in a year based on weather. Often times snowbirds will only move every second season, choosing to spend a summer in one place and winter elsewhere. For many of these people it’s more about the weather than the experiences on the road.

The reasons people choose to ditch the traditional lifestyle and move into an RV are many. For some it’s clearly financial as some Americans find that buying a very tired RV and seeking shelter on the road are the only alternative to homelessness.

But that’s not true of many of these full-timers, who choose the lifestyle for the freedom and adventure that it offers. Living in an RV means that, if you don’t like your view or your neighbors or the restaurants around you, you simply pick up and make a change. Want to try the best barbecue this side of the Carolinas, or just go to the Carolinas for the real thing? Beignets are better when you’re actually in New Orleans and the nomadic adventurers have the freedom to just go there.

Until now.

And full-time RV living isn’t just for retirees any longer. There are a lot of younger people adopting the lifestyle including RVers with families who are “roadschooling” their children. Imagine the difference between telling your children about Mount Vernon and showing it to them? That’s all part of the appeal of the nomadic RV lifestyle.

That’s part of the reason the Epperson family chose to live life full-time in an RV and they have been able to make a living from that RV. They are also part of a growing number of younger RVers choosing this lifestyle of adventure.

And the future of this lifestyle is absolutely in question.

“We haven’t been able to explore the area where we are even,” lamented Epperson. And what does the future hold?

“I think we’re all going to be looking at it differently. There are certainly a contingent of people who think this is way overblown. Whether you feel that way or not you have to be prepared for the fact that we all may be shut down like this.”

Weisen added, “I’m chomping at the bit and want to get back out there.”

The RV industry is counting on a huge boom in sales due to people not wanting to take cruises or flights but still wanting to get out and enjoy this country.

But there is also the fact that we could be in for some serious economic challenges. Epperson guesses that the used RV market is going to open up with some having to or choosing to sell their RVs and, with a glut of used RVs, used RV prices could drop significantly. That could affect the sales of new RVs.

But there may also be a boom in companies seeing the value in letting their employees work from home which means they may choose to work from an RV. “Companies that were afraid of allowing their employees to work remotely due to trust issues are now forced to do so and some of them may continue,” said Weisen.

“I think there’s going to be a big wave of full timers moving forward,” echoed Epperson.

Even services like Boondockers Welcome have adapted and are working to link those with land with RVers looking for a longer-term place to shelter until things settle down. Last week on the StressLess Camping podcast we spoke with Annie Toro-Lopez about how RVers can stay on farms longer term helping the farmer with labor while helping the RVer find a place to shelter.

The industry definitely adapts but there are hurdles including legislative mandates that don’t accommodate those who have chosen this lifestyle.

No matter what, with a million people choosing to live on the road in various forms, the RV industry as well as the thousands of campgrounds across the US are going to have to work with legislators to create a livable situation for the million RVers out there. And with the potential of more legitimate work from the road opportunities plus potentially changing attitudes about other forms of travel, the problem could grow to be a bigger one that isn’t just going to be able to be ignored…or kicked down the road.