Hey there! Thanks for stopping by! I figured I’d make our first post on our brand new website an introduction to our family. There are 4 of us: Steve, Joanna (Jo), Grayson, and Oliver. Steve and I met in 3rd grade, but didn’t start dating until our early 20s. We were both born and raised in the San Fernando Valley in California (a suburb of Los Angeles).
In 2009 we made a crazy decision and moved across the country to Nashville, Tennessee, where we lived for 11 years. We got married in 2011, and Grayson was born in 2012. Oliver followed shortly after in 2014. While we lived in Nashville we made some amazing friends and loved our church. Steve owned a successful business, Joanna had a growing business as a professional photographer, and life was good. But the Tennessee winters were starting to become a drag (gray skies, cold, rainy, and windy), and we wanted to try something new.
So Steve spent months (if not years) looking for the perfect business to purchase in Florida. He finally found the one, and we moved to the Jacksonville area in May of 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. We settled into our new house in a gorgeous neighborhood, with wonderful neighbors. I decided to homeschool our boys, and life was good…until Steve took over the business in June.
The business was advertised as absentee owner, and it was anything but. He was working 16+ hours a day, and everything in the business was disorganized and horribly mismanaged. We were both miserable for months. Then, he started to get into a groove, and the business started improving, and by the time the one year anniversary of owning the business rolled around, Steve had built it into a great success!
But we knew that something was missing. We had an amazing house near the beach in the wonderful state of Florida. Our kids loved our neighborhood and all the friends they had made on our street. We finally found a church that we loved, and attended regularly, but we wanted more time together as a family. We wanted to experience things together and put more focus on memories over things.
So in July of 2021, after much thought and prayer, we decided to sell our house and the business, and most of our belongings. We wanted to buy an RV and travel the country full time for a year or more. Our house sold within 12 hours of listing it, and we downsized into a 2 bedroom apartment while we waited for Steve’s business to sell. We assumed it would take anywhere from 9-12 months, and we were prepared to live in the apartment that long, if need be.
But by what must have been an act of God, we had 2 very interested buyers within 2 weeks of listing the business, and we ended up closing on it in just 4 months.
But we were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. We didn’t yet have an RV or a truck, and we were living in an apartment, where we wouldn’t even be able to park an RV if we found one we liked. Trucks were proving to be very hard to come by, so we ended up ordering a new Ram 3500, knowing that it could take several months to be ready.
Thankfully, my parents graciously agreed to let us move in with them at their home where I grew up in California, while we waited. We vigorously started our search for the perfect RV for our family. We new we wanted a 5th wheel, but weren’t sure if we wanted a bunk house or a toy hauler. Steve flew to 3 different places around the country looking at used RVs for sale, but none of them turned out to be the right one for us. We even had a brand new toy hauler almost under contract, until Steve flew out for the inspection, and it had tons of problems, one of which was that the two main slides didn’t work at all! Not something you want in a brand new RV.
Then, one day, I happened to see a post in an RV Facebook group from someone in northern California selling their barely used 2021 Grand Design Momentum 397TH-R. It was within our budget AND located in the state where we were currently living. It seemed too good to be true. We drove about 5 hours up north to take a look at it, and everything was working properly, and it was in great condition. Turns out, they had only taken it out camping twice! We decided that this was the RV for us, and the sellers even agreed to drive it down to my parents’ house as part of the deal, since we still didn’t have our truck.
We spent the next 2.5 months renovating it from top to bottom. We painted pretty much every surface, installed a new backsplash, converted the master bedroom into the boys’ room, and completely overhauled the garage area to be our new master bedroom. We’ll go into much more detail on the renovation in future posts.
Steve picked up our truck a few weeks ago in Louisiana, and drove it all the way to California through an ice storm. Talk about nerve-wracking! I was so thankful he made it back to us safely, and only lost one hubcap in the process.
Now, as I type this, we’re one week away from starting on our journey. The past 8 months has led up to this moment, and we couldn’t be more excited! We’ve got our route planned out for at least the next year, with campground reservations booked. Most of what’s left of our belongings is already in the RV, and we are counting down the days until we pull out of the driveway and head out on the adventure of a lifetime.
We hope you’ll follow along on our journey, and maybe even learn a thing or two with our tutorials and tips on RV living. We’d love it if you’d subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
— Joanna
McVeycations 