Living out of an RV – a hard 24 hours

The last 24hrs decided to kick our asses.

Living out of an RV has its challenges. Many of those challenges can be avoided with preparation and patience. But just like living out of a house, there are some things even the best plans can’t help. So here’s the story of our last 24 hours as an example of a typical day of RV life when things just don’t work out.

It started off with the perfect plan:

1. Get a rental car for 24 hrs so we can run errands and I can go to a photoshoot for a client 
2. Drop off Cream Puff at the mechanic to get some work done before we go to Mexico 
3. Check into a dog friendly hotel for a few days so we can relax, get our booster, and work while the rig is in the shop
4. I drive myself in the rental to my photoshoot and drop it off next to our hotel right after 
5. Spend the weekend relaxing and having a staycation
6. Rideshare to the mechanic to pick up Cream Puff and head towards Tucson

Seems pretty good, right?? 

Fail #1: hotel had no record of our reservation. Turns out our 3rd party booking app canceled our reservation. Hotel prices were more than double as walk ins. It would have cost us $1,000+ for a couple days. 

Fail #2: RV won’t be finished until Monday or Tuesday and we had nowhere to go

Ok… so we end up calling the mechanic and explaining the situation. They stopped all projects on Cream Puff, and we picked her up just before closing time. 

We drove back to our neighborhood where our house is to sleep overnight in our clubhouse parking lot since Airbnbs and hotels were basically all booked or ridiculously expensive. 

Even though we had been driving two vehicles most places, it was still nice to have the rental car so that we could easily run errands and go to dinner. At this point, we decided to cut our losses for Scottsdale for the weekend and head south after dropping off the rental car the next day. 

We woke up and called enterprise to confirm we could change our existing reservation drop off location since we were now on the other side of town. They said yes and there would be no additional charge. Woo hoo!  

With a little good news, I went to my mom’s house to get ready for my photoshoot since part of the reason for the hotel was to prep for it. 

Side note: we didn’t stay at my parents’ house because their HOA doesn’t allow it – read our moochdocking blog for tips on how to stay outside friends’ houses without getting them fined.

So far, the luck continued after an easy photoshoot and dropping off everything we had previously loaded into the rental car back into the RV. Off I went to the rental car place now that we were ready and excited to leave Scottsdale after yesterday.

Fail #3: the location we called to reschedule the drop off closed an hour earlier than every other enterprise location. And because we arrived 10 minutes before we thought they closed, we didn’t have enough to make it to any of the 15 nearby locations.

The ONLY location open all day on Saturdays is Sky Harbor (PHX airport). Just one more stop on this weird adventure. It wasn’t our first trip to the rental car complex – we knew Cream Puff couldn’t navigate the lower clearances of the roads, so Mike and I parted ways. 

Mike went to the 44th street Sky Train stop while I went to Sky Harbor enterprise. 

By this time, the drop off was over an hour late and in a totally different location. 

That’s when I learned a fun new tip. While there isn’t a fee for drop offs at different locations, there is a $200 fee to drop off at the airport. Our $50 rental was now $260.

Thankfully, after explaining the situation to enterprise representatives, they waived the $200 fee! Now I needed to figure out how to get back to Mike via buses and trains. I ran outside to barely miss the first bus’s departure and continued to load up into a bus full of airport travelers looking to escape their North Dakota winters.

From the bus, I booked it across the terminal to the Sky Train – next stop – 44th street where Mike was waiting for me.

After 6+ hrs of driving in circles, a bus ride, a train ride, and endless hours on the phone, we drove out of Phoenix in Cream Puff trying to make it as far south as we could before the daylight ends. 

You gotta know when to fold ‘em.