‘RV Nomads’ gather near Yuma
They and their lifestyles will be subject of documentary
Agroup of fulltime RVers with at least 113,000 YouTube subscribers between them gathered in the desert just west of Yuma recently to shoot promos for an upcoming documentary focused on their lifestyle and the philosophy behind many of their journeys.
Director Eric Odom, disillusioned by years of political activism he felt had no impact on democracy, discovered through YouTube and other channels that hundreds of thousands of couples, families and singles have made recreational vehicles their full-time homes.
The idea appealed to his early love of traveling and the outdoors, and in short order he took to the road, taking a full-time job with a production company where his first assignment was to follow around the same RVers he’d been watching online.
RVing is just one means of breaking away from the ills of modern life and back to what Odom sees as humanity’s nomadic roots,
“We see this really philosophical thing happening with people who hike, or ride bikes, from point A to point B. Everybody out here, we’re not getting around campfires and debating politics, or taking medications. We’re pretty sound, mentally, and it’s through natural, organic means of being outside and traveling, doing the things we started out doing,” he said.
He’s already written an e-book to promote the lifestyle and his upcoming movie, “RV Nomads,” with a foreword written by Marc and Julie Bennett, who have been able to transition away from their former jobs though their “RV Love” YouTube channel (18,000 subscribers) and offering courses through their RV Success School.
Julie Bennett said their videos and courses help RV newbies over the learning curve involved with fulltime road residency.
“There’s a lot to this, it’s not just like buying a different car,” she said. “Inevitably RVs have things go wrong with them, and they’re not necessarily made to the same standards of automobile manufacturers.
“You ask any RVer if they can go a month without something needing fixing — it’s just part of the lifestyle. So you trade out different challenges in your regular life for different challenges on the road.”
Her husband maintains that these are better, less emotionally damaging challenges for the full-timers to be dealing with than the financial and emotional stress of maintaining a stationary home and life in today’s society.
“You learn to handle problems because you don’t have your plumber just down the street, and you don’t have these other resources that you do in a traditional neighborhood and a traditional lifestyle,” Marc Bennett said. “And so you have to be more resourceful in finding solutions to your problems.”
“An analysis of some of society’s woes said we’ve lost our independence, and we can’t fix anything and we don’t know how anything works, and we’re so dependent on our mobile
devices, we have applications for everything,” Odom said.
He admits most RV lifers rely on mobile technology to some degree, with telecommuting making the journey possible for many more people, and at younger ages.
“Only because we want to be, not necessarily because we have to be. I think everyone wants to check into social, share our journey, of course YouTube, and that’s a part of the economic environment.
“But if you wanted to shut it off for two days, you’d survive and probably be better for it. You don’t need to have an app for everything,” he said.
The Bennetts have 18,000 YouTube subscribers and came to the area in midJanuary for a gathering of the Escapees RV Club just west of Yuma in California, off Ogilby Road on the way to Valley of the Names.
Odom found the occasion perfect for meeting with them and many of the other YouTube stars to be featured in “RV Nomads” for some preproduction photos and video.
“We have to do a very massive marketing campaign from now until Oct. 2, but our production won’t actually begin until May,” Odom said, because everyone in his film crew will be available then. The shoot will begin in Colorado and follow 11 different storylines up to Washington state.
A premiere for the movie is slated for October during NomadFest2018 in Wellington, Texas, a creator’s conference featuring the first-ever “Nomadic Film Festival,” showing videos and films related to the full-time traveling lifestyle, which has common roots with the minimalist movement and the “tiny house” lifestyle that’s currently gaining interest.
Marissa and Nathan Moss of Less Junk, More Journey have the biggest following of the 11 YouTube channels to be spotlighted in the film, at just over 70,000 subscribers. They also were inspired to sell their home and set up house in an RV almost three years ago by watching a video.
The arrival of their daughter Hensley was the catalyst, not a barrier.
“When we were getting ready to be parents, our first thought was we have to get a bigger house, we need a bigger car, everything has to be bigger. But then we thought, what if we go the other way, why don’t we have less and live on less, so we can do things together?
“And that was the tough part. What are we doing? We’d never been camping, so we were starting from scratch,” Marissa Moss said.
She is a nurse and her husband is a web designer, so their careers were relatively easy to uproot. Getting everything they needed for themselves and their baby girl into an RV took about a year of planning, and a lot of secondguessing, she said.
“We had never been without a house before, so what happens when we give up our house? What if we don’t like it? And the big thing is we wanted to live with no regrets, and we both thought if we don’t do this, we’ll regret it,” she said.
They didn’t document their first six months on the road, she said: “We didn’t know if we were going to make it.”
Then they began dabbling in an online presence. “My husband and I are both introverts, so it was something that we never intended to set out to do, but what we felt called to do is share our story, and it’s what keeps us encouraged,” she said.
“When we get so many people telling us, ‘we’re on the road because we saw your videos, and that just excites us and keeps us motivated.” Less Junk, More Journey is now their full-time job.
Odom was forced to reckon with how he wanted to live his life by the news of today, including the divisive 2016 election and the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1. What he sees is a broken, violent culture in search of healing.
“Society in general is needing solutions,” he said. “The RV’s not necessarily a solution, but we hope to provoke a lot of thought from people about how they’re utilizing their lives, in the best manner possible, and take advantage of the time we have here on this planet.”