Wander Worldschool: Helping Families Plan & Fund Slow & Long Term Travel

49. Roadschooling Teens: Full-Time RV with Older Kids while Remote Working

• Suzy May | Worldschool & Family Travel Money Coach • Season 1 • Episode 49

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🌎 Tasha Martin shares how her family of four to traded their suburban life in Arkansas for a 37-foot travel trailer and a multi-state odyssey. She dives into the realities of full-time RVing with older teens, proving that you don't need a traditional home to build deep family connections or an interest-led high school education.

👍 Tasha discusses the Martin Mayhem of road life. From managing frequent tire blowouts to navigating growing kids, she explains why the mental and emotional health of her family makes every mechanical mishap worth it.

✨ 5 Questions Answered:

  • How do you roadschool high schoolers? Tasha took on English and history using local ruins and volunteer work, while her husband tackled math and science, allowing their kids to choose their own educational path.
  • What is the 3-3-3 rule for RV travel? Learn the standard RVer strategy for avoiding exhaustion: staying in one place for three weeks, traveling no more than 300 miles at a time, and stopping after three hours of driving.
  • How can families budget for full-time RV life? Tasha gets transparent about Thousand Trails memberships, used membership hacks, and the mindset shift of swapping a mortgage and electric bills for a rig payment and diesel costs.
  • What are the unique challenges of health and food logistics on the road? Discover how they manage Alpha-gal syndrome (a tick-borne mammal meat allergy) while traveling and the importance of pre-planning grocery stops.
  • Can you work a full-time remote job while living in an RV? Tasha shares their tech setup and the boundary-setting required to balance 9-to-5 careers with a life of constant exploration.

CONNECT WITH TASHA MARTIN: Visit learntorv.com and learntorvthepodcast.com and follow on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

RV Life: Thousand Trails, Good Sam, Passport America, Harvest Hosts, RV Overnights

Roadschooling: Facebook Group, Lasagna Love

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CONNECT WITH SUZY: We live in Spain, CO and soon Japan. 🌞 I help families financially plan for slow + long term travel! Need help making a budget? Saving for a gap year? How to rent your home out? 

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Suzy:  Today's episode is all about RV life with teens. Tasha Martin took the bold leap from a standard suburban life to a multi-state Odyssey. In a 37 foot travel trailer, she breaks down the logistics of full-time RVing with young adults, including the transition to a custom road schooling curriculum. They navigate the highs of finding the Mata community and the lows of Martin mayhem. 

From tire blowouts to chasing the perfect 72 degree climate, Tasha offers a candid look at what happens when you decide it's time to hit the road. Stick around to the end to find out the best resources for RV life and road schooling. 

Welcome to the Wander World School Podcast. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today we get to know Tasha Martin. Welcome to the show. Please tell me more about you and your family.

Tasha Martin: So I am Tasha and I am married to Matthew. We have been—it'll be 23 years this April. And we have two kids. Our oldest, Rosewood, just turned 21 in November. And then our son, David, turned 18 in November. And they are both still with us on the road.

We full-time RV. We've been doing this for about three years now. Matt and I had always said that like one day when we retired, we were going to get an RV, hit the road, see the world and pack up our kids and their respective families and have them come with us. And we didn't really think about the logistics of asking our grown kids to give up their lives and go do that with us one day.

2022 was a doozy for us. Matt's mom had passed away unexpectedly from an accident. Matt had a health scare. I had a health scare. We really were just faced with this realization that life is not promised. And we were wasting this really valuable time with our kids and time that we were just giving away. We were both working remotely. We were just all four sitting in our house at our computers doing our work because our kids were still remote schooling from COVID lockdown. And then everybody was so tired from being on their computers all day that then we went to our respective corners of the house at the end of the day and no one really interacted.

I mean, we were just so worn out from this life that wasn't even fulfilling us at all. I literally had this moment and I just said, "Why are we doing this?" I called for Matt and I said, "Just sell it all. Let's just get the RV now. And let's see if the kids want to do this." So we had a big talk as a family. The rule was, all four of us had to be on board or we wouldn't do it. And everybody voted yes. So we sold everything. We've been on the road since 2023. Fifty states in three years, and I don't think we're slowing down.

Suzy: And we met—I was lucky enough to be able to go with Buzzsprout to help. And we'll talk about your podcast as well, which is in the RV world. But we bonded talking about world schooling and road schooling. And I was really drawn to you and your family's story because I speak to a lot of families that have younger kids. It's very common to maybe hit the road or travel full-time with younger kids. And then for a ton of different reasons that shifts as kids get older. And I was really excited to talk to you because again, your kids are older, 18 and 21. And you even started traveling when they were, let's say like 15 or so and 18.

Tasha Martin: Yeah, David was 15 and Rosewood was 18. So Rosewood just graduated when we hit the road and wanted to take a couple gap years. They weren't sure what they wanted to do next. Rosewood uses they/them pronouns for anybody who's listening at home. I don't want them to get confused. So when I say they/them, I am talking about one person.

And David was finishing his freshman year of high school. We were changing our domicile state, which is like a sticky situation in the United States because we were in Northwest Arkansas when we launched, but we were changing our home state to Florida. And so we were having to check with both states, like, what are your homeschooling rules? And are we meeting the requirements of both? He's in his senior year now. So we've successfully maneuvered it. Rosewood did some courses online through a community college in Florida. We just kind of made learning fit our life, which I think is the way that it should happen. So it's been good.

Suzy: So exciting. Has it always been online learning with a curriculum or with a district, or how did that switch?

Tasha Martin: It's not. We have been really particular about letting him tell us where he wanted his education to go. Because when I was growing up, I was like, you have to go to college or you will not have a good life. But it's changed. The landscape has changed so much of late. I know that that's different and I want my kids to have that choice and I don't want them to have the debt that I have. I wanted him to be able to say, "This is what I want to learn because this is what I want to do."

We've used different online curriculum and then we've made some curriculum for him. So I was a really big nerd when I finally did go back to college and I was a double English major. And so I took on teaching him the English side of it. So we did homegrown English literature studies and he wrote essays about, "Hey, we're over here near these ruins and I want you to study the history of the indigenous people who used to live here and then write a paper about this thing." Or, "Hey, we're gonna start volunteering with Lasagna Love. And so I want you to write me a research paper on safe food practices and who makes guidelines and things like that."

We've tried to be creative with his schooling so that it applies to what we're doing, where we're traveling, and how our life is developing as we're on the road, while also making sure that he has the ability, if he wants to do advanced chemistry AP style classes, we make sure that we look into programs that he can do online to get those. So I know that like for math and science, my husband has kind of headed that up because he's an engineer. I'm a word girl and he's a number guy so that we separated that and I was like, "This is your responsibility." And they found some really great resources with Khan Academy that was kind of like their launching off point of "This is where we'll start," and it just kind of grew from there.

Suzy: That is helpful to hear because I do know that record-keeping and transcripts are even more important at the high school level. And so there's a variety of ways to do it from what I'm hearing. Eventually, will this be a diploma from the high school district?

Tasha Martin: So he has two opportunities there. Basically, we can say he's graduated and he's done. He can go do his GED, and he can have that. And that can be what he uses to move forward. Or he can go and do like a sit-in-a-seat and take a testing with the Florida School District to prove that like he's meeting the standards for graduation. And that will give him his diploma.

Right now, he is leaning towards waiting to go to college if he goes to college. He's thinking maybe more tech school if he does computers, something like that. But he's still not sure. With both of my kids, they were like, "I think I need a gap year. I don't think that I'm ready to make that decision." And I fully support that. Rosewood took some online courses, like I mentioned, and they're going to go work at a national park in Maine this summer. It's not anything that I ever would have imagined my kids doing one day when they grew up, but being on the road has sparked like new longings and new adventures in them. There's a lot of doors open for them that wouldn't have been if we had just stayed in Northwest Arkansas.

Suzy: And Rosewood was at PodFest and they were so excited about their summer opportunity in Maine. And as well as helping with your podcast a little bit too. So that's a skill that can carry over into a professional aspect or might just stay a side hustle skill. But I think that's really cool to incorporate family into our work or things that we like to do as passion projects.

Tasha Martin: Yeah. It's—the world is just an incredible place and moving really opens that up in ways that staying in one spot doesn't present. It's been amazing. The last three years have just been such an eye-opening experience for us.

Suzy: Exactly. Where did that bug to hit the road and RV originate?

Tasha Martin: For me individually, I have always had the bug. One of my earliest memories is telling my grandma—we were making cookies—and I have this memory of sitting at her counter making cookies and being like, "As soon as I can, I'm going. I'm gonna hit the road, I'm gonna be gone." I just knew that I wanted to travel and I wanted to see things and I didn't even know what things there were to see, but I just remember telling her I wanted to go.

My dad played bluegrass music and we had a pop-up camper that we stayed in at these shows. And then in high school, I went on a missions trip to Mexico and I went to Canada, to a camp in Canada, and loved that. And I feel like that just made the itch a little bit itchier. So when we got married and we had the kids, we knew that we wanted to travel. We lived in Northwest Arkansas for 12 years. And when we were like, "It's time to go," we didn't know where to go. This was just such an amazing opportunity to be able to see more and to do more. When Matt and I imagined it as a one-day thing, we didn't expect it to become a long-term thing. But now neither of us can imagine settling back down in one place.

Suzy: Once you get started, you realize how many more things are on your to-do list as well. Now, I do have to ask a little more about the RV setup because I think that's the other thing that families think about RV living is, "This is great when we have little kids." And then now as kids grow and they want some more space and independence, how has that transitioned to your kids being older?

Tasha Martin: We are currently in a 37-foot travel trailer. The way that it lays out is it goes our bedroom and the bathroom and then the galley that's like the living room, the kitchen and a table to sit at. And then there's the bunk house and the bunk house is probably a little bit bigger than our bedroom. And it has beds in it and like a little bench for storage. And that's where Rosewood and David sleep.

When we got the trailer, we were like, "This is perfect." The beds are the right size. They're actually extra-large twins. And so it was the perfect size for our kids. And then David grew a foot after we moved into the trailer. He's now 6'4". We're actually in the midst of trying to buy a larger rig to give him more room.

Suzy: Oh my goodness.

Tasha Martin: Because this poor kid has outgrown the length of his bed. But in terms of sharing space and everything, we try to go out of the camper and do things on the weekends. So that part is not that difficult. Whenever we're working, we all have our own little spaces that we work in. I kind of bounce back and forth between our room and the couch, depending on what kind of mood I'm in, or we'll set up outside at the picnic tables. We also travel with like a canopy thing that we set up outside and it's got like a bug screen around it and it's a 12 by 12. I mean, it's a huge space and we've got tables and chairs.

So it's been okay for us. I think the kids now—I think Rosewood's like, "Listen, now I'm 21 and I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to launch."

Suzy: They're ready to go off to the Maine woods this summer for a little bit.

Tasha Martin: Yes, yes, they are ready to go. But if we get into this rig that we're looking at this week and they decide to come back, they'll have like their own little loft space and it'll be more separated. There are so many options out there is what I guess I'm trying to say. There are rigs that have three bedrooms in them now. It's really incredible how RVs have changed over the years and the limitations are just really not there anymore. That's kind of part of our podcast is like, if you've got that itch, like, we want you to know that that's something you can go do. The possibilities are open. You can make it happen.

Suzy: That's a good topic for a podcast because I'm just thinking of all the questions I have as someone who'd be pretty new to RVing. And so I'm just thinking of endless questions. What I'm also hearing is that you can start with something and then if you're like, "Wait, this is actually an awesome fit for our family," you can always adapt or change or grow in the size and the space that you pick. Just because you pick one at first doesn't mean it's going to be the one option that you need to stick with forever and ever.

Tasha Martin: Exactly. We've met so many people who have gone in and have like DIYed their rig. Our friends went in and their toy hauler back garage space now looks like this incredible loft bunkhouse for their kids. There's so many things that you can do with an RV and it be safe and it be completely customizable to what you need.

Suzy: I'm also curious—do you typically follow nice weather?

Tasha Martin: If my dream climate is 72 degrees—if I could find 72 degrees everywhere, we would be perfect. That's like chef's kiss. But there's also some limitations that get put on you weather-wise that maybe you wouldn't think about. We were just trying to plan out our year, and there are parks further north that close because of weather. So campgrounds that maybe don't take reservations beyond the end of September or October. So once you start hitting that, then that like knocks out states that you can get to. Yes, we definitely chase the 72 degrees, partly sunny.

Suzy: What has the speed looked like over the last few years? How long do you stay in one area? What have you found works best?

Tasha Martin: We early on got a Thousand Trails membership to help us to be able to budget well for our plans. And that has not only helped us budget our money, but it's also helped us budget our time because our specific membership gives us three weeks at a park before we have to move to the next park. And then we can also book out 180 days in advance. So we spend our full three weeks at a park typically before we move to another park.

We try to live by the 3-3-3 rule. Basically, this rule is this standard RVer rule that says that you stay three weeks, don't go further than 300 miles, and or three hours of driving at a time so that you don't hit exhaustion essentially—either of you or your camper or your rig. We kind of just drive our planning by where do we wanna be and for what. Some of that is based around we want to go to an RV event—there's a lot of RV rallies. Like our first year out, we took Rosewood to a music festival in Atlanta that they wanted to go to for their graduation gift. So we went there for that. We try to give ourselves three weeks at a location because Matt and I work Monday through Friday for our jobs. It gives us weekends and evenings to go out and explore and get to know an area before we move on to another area.

Suzy: So tell me more about how you're able to make full-time work on the road work for you and your family.

Tasha Martin: The first thing we have is lots of internet. We at one time had four different internet carriers and then our hotspot through our cell phones. We are down to two that are working very well for us and our hotspot. We got rid of our Starlink.

Suzy: Is Starlink one of those? Okay.

Tasha Martin: We got rid of our Starlink because we were having a lot of problems with our satellite. Our satellite kept going down and we kept trying to get it fixed and it was just a problem. I was really nervous about it. I thought, "Oh gosh, that's like our safety net," but we've done really good without it. We're running on T-Mobile and Verizon and we've got a Verizon phone plan and we've got hotspot on that and that has saved us whenever our travel internet has not served us well.

Matt travels for work sometimes, but a lot of his work is done on the computer. He has calls every now and then, and then I have calls every now and then. And if we both have calls at the same time, then one of us will go to the bedroom and one of us will stay out in the living room. It's everything that I was doing at home, just in an RV.

Suzy: Yes, it's very doable. And this is actually where older kids may actually be more helpful because they understand when you're asking them to be quiet or "I need to take a call," they might be more respectful of that than a little kid who's like, "No, mom, I'm going to interrupt this work phone call because I need a snack" or something. So actually, this smaller space may actually work better because you're working with teens and adolescents and young adults who are a little more understanding when there are those things that come up. Well, thank you for sharing the logistical part of still continuing to work. Would your companies let you work outside of the US or is that also been one reason you've stuck to the US?

Tasha Martin: That has been a huge reason. Both of our companies do have "You Need to Be Stateside" guidelines. I could take vacations. I could take time off and go places. We did go into Mexico for a short, short stint, but yeah.

Suzy: Well, and this is where we are very lucky if someone is either based in the US or wants to travel in the US, that there are so many different opportunities. And I appreciate our national park system so much and the state park system is even another hidden gem in many of these areas that people don't know about until you really explore that state. So there is really truly everything within the borders of the US. Have you met a lot of other adolescents, like other families with teens on RVs or how has that social piece been?

Tasha Martin: A lot of families out there that we have met have got younger kids because again, like you said, it's just easier to launch out with younger kids, but we have met families with teenagers. Actually, my co-host on the podcast—they have six of their seven kids on the road and there are three kids that are still with them. They are all three teenagers now. And so like right now we're camping together at the same campground. We meet up across the country and get to hang out and our kids are friends. And so that's wonderful. It happens, but you have to be purposeful.

For example, right now Friday night they're doing a Valentine's Day dance and so you have to say, "Hey, there's a Valentine's Day dance and you can go meet people if you go to the Valentine's Day dance." Now are my kids going to go? One of them might, the other one probably will not. And I know exactly which one will and which one will not because I know my kids. But they have to be purposeful and they have to like curate those decisions—that's how you make those connections.

Suzy: On the flip side, some of the flexibility means that if you did want to, like you said, with your co-host, be in the same location, it's a little easier to make that happen. Like, "Let's make plans to be at the same campground and bring our homes with us." People strike up conversations really easily in those environments. So you get to meet maybe some of the coolest or weirdest people here and there—it makes it really fun.

Tasha Martin: I tell this story that I grew up watching things like the Andy Griffith show and I Love Lucy and I thought that's what it was going to be like when I grew up. Like I thought community happens like that when you grow up and people just like rallied around you and your neighbors came out and yeah.

That didn't happen when I grew up. We lived on a cul-de-sac and none of our neighbors talked to each other. And I was like, "I don't understand what is happening." But when we went on the road, that's where I found it. We would be in a campground and something would break and we'd be outside trying to fix it and all these people would show up and they'd be offering to help. We were at one campsite and there was a knock at the door and we opened it and it was a lady from two RVs down—she had made a ton of cookies and was just going door to door. It was not a holiday. There was nothing special. She had just made a bunch of cookies and was passing them out to everybody on our row, just because that's the neighborly thing to do. Things that I wanted to experience as an adult, I have in campgrounds, and it's been really unique and really special.

Suzy: Sometimes you do have to seek those opportunities out. It's one thing I do like about Spain. Like tonight we walked through the plaza and all these kids are playing at the playground. The trade-off is, however, that most people live in apartments. And so we're in an apartment right now. I hear the kids above me all the time. It's like if I want to have community, I do have to also live near them. And so an RV is a way to seek that out, but also be able to leave if you want a little more privacy. You can go into the middle of nowhere, not near people, or you can choose to seek out community and other people. So I love that balance of what do we feel like, what do we need? And you can seek that out and bring some of the comforts of home with you.

You mentioned the Thousand Trails Adventure membership, and I did want to touch on if someone's like, "Okay, I want to hit that road in an RV around the US," just the spending range that they may anticipate and what can they expect?

Tasha Martin: For us, we got the Thousand Trails membership right at the beginning of our travels. And so I know that the pricing is different now. And I also know that the pricing changes depending on where you are, what level you get, and who you get it from. My biggest tip is: shop around if you are interested in getting one of those.

The other tip that I have is that we bought ours brand new and I don't regret buying it brand new, but there are websites out there that you can buy used memberships. Every membership has the ability to be resold once. People who are coming off the road that don't have a family member that they want to hand theirs down to—they will sell theirs because they never expire. You can usually get it for like half the price that you would get a brand new one. It might not have all of the same perks because as they launch new plans, the perks change.

Ours was a $20,000 buy-in, I believe. And then we pay yearly dues and those—you know, cost of living changes. I think our yearly dues run about $500 a year. And that's what we pay. We pay that $500 and then we're done. So every campground that we stay at is paid for as long as it's in the Thousand Trails network. There are campgrounds that are not included that we can book at where we can get a discounted rate if we wanna use those, like if there's not a Thousand Trails campground nearby somewhere that we wanna go. And we've done a couple of those—like we went to the Keys that way, and that was an amazing Christmas. But for the most part, every campground that we've stayed at for the last three years has been covered under that membership. So it's paid for itself already.

Suzy: I've actually never really heard about it before. But I love that there's a way to group all those expenses together in one way instead of just every night or every time you make a reservation having to pay that RV fee. And I imagine it very much pays for itself if this becomes even a one or two or three-year lifestyle choice or more, of course. Maybe not if someone's doing just like a summer here and there.

Tasha Martin: Yes, exactly. And they have like financing available, so you can do it that way. So it's not like if you're getting started, you have to give them $20,000 out the door. But if you are looking at something for like just a summer, they do have smaller plans for like part-time campers. So those things are available.

There are other camper programs out there. Good Sam has discounts for camping. Passport America gives 50% off at all of the campgrounds that are in their network. Harvest Hosts and RV Overnights is also really great. I spoke to a traveling nurse this week that she pretty much just uses Harvest Hosts. And what it does is people can say, "I have this property available and I have hookups available and I will let someone come stay on my property for this many nights at a time." And they don't have to pay anything, or "I just want five, ten dollars a night to help out with the cost of electricity." And you can go and stay at a farm or at a vineyard or at a museum and go in and check out their museum or buy a beer or whatever, give something back to say thank you. And it's a really great way to get across the country for very little.

Suzy: Wow, that's fascinating. This is good to hear of all the different options. And then I assume other costs might depend on how big of a rig or how big of an RV people have. And then of course, if people choose to eat out a lot or cook in. What are other expenses on top of that typically?

Tasha Martin: For us, we have a dually truck that pulls our rig. So when we talk repairs, we have repairs for our truck and we have repairs for our RV. We have tires—you don't want to skimp on tires. So when you get tires, it's going to cost. You want the good tires.

What I tell my family—because a lot of my family members think that this is just vacation—we made a choice that we were exchanging one set of expenses for another. Living this life does not mean that we just don't have bills. It means that instead of paying a house payment, we pay a rig payment. Instead of paying our electric bill, we pay for diesel for the truck. We just swap. And yes, I think that we are paying less than what we paid living in our home. I really do. I see more in my savings account than what I did when we lived in Arkansas. But we also are very careful to find balance in making sure that we're not living like this is vacation.

Suzy: That mindset shift is important for any version of long-term travel, but when it's more long-term or slow travel, you have to rein it in sometimes because this is real life. I'd like to also hear about some of the challenges, but we'll also talk about the wins.

Tasha Martin: One of the biggest challenges that we've had—besides like David turning into a giant after we moved into the RV—is that after we left Arkansas, at some point, David got bit by a Lone Star tick and he got Alpha-gal syndrome, which I knew like nothing about. It is an allergy to all mammal meat.

One of the trickiest parts of RV life has absolutely nothing to do with RV life. It is finding grocery stores that carry foods that are safe for my kid. Finding meats that don't have pork additives or natural flavor additives. Finding all-natural foods. Finding sugar that has not been ground with bone char. It's amazing the things that you learn whenever you start digging into what Alpha-gal syndrome is. There are things that I didn't even know happened to our food.

When you're RVing, the nearest grocery store may be 45 minutes away. And sometimes that grocery store may be like a mom-and-pop store that is like all canned food items. So thinking ahead and being mindful of, "Okay, the next place that we're going, I've got to make sure that there's a grocery store there that has what we need." And if not, then I need to pre-plan so that I can get what we need where we're at right now.

The other thing is we have coined the "Martin Mayhem" in our house because we literally have had so many tire blowouts. Things break, technical issues—I think something has happened in every state that we have been to. And so every time we think that we've got a handle on like, "Okay, we know how to do it all," then something else breaks and we're like, "I didn't even know that that was attached to the RV. What is this thing that has broken?"

Suzy: And then, "How am I going to fix it?" I just realized even what it is. Yeah, that'd be tricky.

Tasha Martin: That has been the biggest tricky part is, neither Matt nor I had had a pickup truck before. We had always had like compact cars and we sold our cars to get a dually. So learning how to drive this big truck in tiny spaces, getting stuck in like New England streets that were made for tiny carriages in a giant truck that's made for RVs. It's madness, but it's the kind of madness that I sign up for.

Suzy: I can imagine that if someone already likes to tinker on vehicles or has the ability to fix cars or RVs, that that would be a much-needed skill on the road. If you don't have those skills yet, what I'm hearing is it's still possible. It just might be a steeper learning curve.

Tasha Martin: Yes, absolutely.

Suzy: Then what are some of the wins?

Tasha Martin: I think that we are mentally so much healthier, emotionally so much healthier. I think that we are so much closer as a family than what we were setting in our house in Arkansas. I feel like we've grown in ways that we wouldn't have in Arkansas. I've had adventures with my kids that I wouldn't have had in that house.

Just seeing the look on their face whenever I go and climb out on a rocky cliff and seeing that face of, "I think you've gone far enough." I know that sounds ridiculous, but it just shows me how much they care. I love it so much. No, it's—being on the road and trying new things pushes you in ways that are just so healthy. I think that we have been pushed and stretched in ways that have turned us into stronger people and we're a stronger collective because of it.

Suzy: That's really special and powerful, especially with adolescents and young adults. And so I think that's really beautiful to take some intentionality around. Let's spend time together and support you and your next steps, of course, but also get this time together because you realize how quickly the time goes by the time they've reached these ages, right? Before we wrap up, let's do a little lightning round. What's your favorite subject?

Tasha Martin: My favorite is literature, hands down. Not David's, but it is mine.

Suzy: But you can inspire it hopefully a little bit. And what is your favorite travel-related movie, book, or story?

Tasha Martin: The Long, Long Trailer. And if you've not seen this, you have to see this. Okay, it is this fantastic movie with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. And they get married and buy an RV and they move into this RV so that they can travel for his job. And I just relate to Lucy so much in this movie. She's picking up like these gigantic rocks at every location that they go to and putting them in the RV. And he's like, "Lucy, we can't have that weight in the trailer"—except her name's not Lucy, but she's Lucy. And Matt and I have that conversation like every place we go. I'm picking up rocks and he's like, "Tasha, do you know how many rocks we already have in the trailer? Put the rocks down." So yeah, it's fantastic. It's so funny. It's gold. It's comedy gold.

Suzy: It sounds like a wonderful way to get introduced to RVing in a funny way, I'm sure. What is the most ridiculous souvenir that you've ever bought?

Tasha Martin: Everything that I ever buy! We have no room for anything. So I need to stop, but I get like a t-shirt and a magnet and an ornament basically everywhere we go. So there's too many t-shirts and there's too many magnets. There's nowhere to put them.

Suzy: And so there's some forced minimalist tendencies I'm hearing from living in an RV. We'll finish with what's one piece of advice for a family just starting out in the RV world?

Tasha Martin: Definitely find the balance so that you can do both things, so that you can stay on the road as long as you want to. Do the things, see the things that you want to, find the ways to save money where you can. Eat the crockpot chicken for two weeks so that you can go to the luxurious lobster dinner in Boston. Find ways to live both sides of the coin.

Suzy: That's wonderful. And how can people connect with you if they want to learn more about your podcasts or about RVing?

Tasha Martin: We have our podcast, Learn to RV the Podcast. It is streaming everywhere now, which is really scary that people can just listen to my voice everywhere. We are on everything now: Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio even. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok—pick a social, we're there. We have our website, learntorvthepodcast.com.

We are also part of a bigger website called LearnToRV.com that has tons of resources available for people who are interested in learning more about RVing and getting out and starting that lifestyle. Everything from "I'm just talking about dreaming" to "I've been on the road and I can't believe I didn't know this, but this just broke and I don't know how to fix it." I mean, and we've got amazing people, not just me giving tips. We've got technicians and specialists. We've got an amazing team there giving incredible tips. So it's a really good resource.

Suzy: And what are some of the education resources? I think you had talked a little bit about some roadschooling resources.

Tasha Martin: There is a group on Facebook called Roadschooling Resources. And that is a group that my co-host actually started. And it is kind of a sharing group where just tons of roadschooling parents have put all of their resources together. So it's a really great place.

Suzy: I'll make sure to link everything in the show notes so people that want to hit the road in an RV can connect with you and your podcast and all your resources. But thank you so much for sharing today.

Tasha Martin: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.



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