Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
My parents have been "full timing" for more than 20 years now… I couldn't live that way, but they love it. They don't have a home base period, they've been using various relatives and friends homes as their address. They criss cross around the states and Canada for the most part. They've made little forays across the border into Mexico, but haven't spent any significant time there - I don't think even over night. They follow the good weather around and try to visit all the little stuff that mostly gets missed if you are traveling quickly.

One note about dogs - if you do travel with a dog it can still be difficult to visit some places like national parks. Dogs aren't allowed on trails at all - basically not outside of parking lots and some campground areas and you cannot leave them alone at campsites or in vehicles (including motorhomes), so what you can actually do there is very limited. I think my parents (or at least my dad…) might like to have one, but they haven't for that reason.
Yes, I am very aware of this as we've been to quite a few National Parks (without our dog, of course). However, people do leave their dogs in their motorhomes often -- we've seen (and heard!) it as we've walked through quite a few campgrounds. If the campground has rules against it it is either because they worry about nuisance barking, which ours doesn't do (we're lucky if she barks one time a week!) or the pet's safety from heat or cold. If you plan to avoid the hottest or coldest times and leave fans running and plenty of ventilation, fresh water, etc, I don't see the problem. Otherwise you can't even take a bike ride or go out to dinner together. If you have full hookups, you can even leave the A/C running for them, if needed.

When we've stayed in hotels with Paisley, there have often been rules about leaving dogs in the room alone, but we've done it many times because, as I say, she is (very thankfully!) quiet, non-destructive, and just sleeps while we're gone. She doesn't jump up on the bed, so we just put her blankie on the chair (if there is one), so she can sleep there until we return from our bike ride, meal out, whatever. We use the "do not disturb" sign on the door so the housekeeper won't enter the room. We have stayed in many, many hotels over the past few years and have never once had any issues with doing this.

That said, we would be more likely to stay in state parks or boondock. National parks, while a special treat, can be very crowded, so we wouldn't necessarily concentrate on those as we prefer places with fewer people.

We are already nomadic like your folks, we just stay in rentals rather than an RV so far. We have a mail service that gets our mail to us wherever we roam, or we have it sent to my step-father to look at and scan in for us if needed. We are officially Florida residents, but really, we are full-time travelers as we have no home there or anywhere else, for that matter. So changing to an RV would not be as big a change for us as it would be to someone who has lived in the same place for awhile. We've done that, of course, but we are enjoying traveling around in our early retirement years. I am sure we'll settle down again one of these days, but where and when are far from decided.