I’ve had a lot of time in the last six months to think about what’s going to happen when it’s time to leave the east coast this fall. I have had a lot of thoughts rattling around in my brain that have been difficult to articulate precisely. These thoughts have been about the collision of my dream for a full-timing life and the reality of it.<\/p>\n
My dream of full-time RVing is an American one. It falls apart in the face of Canadian reality. It is impossible in Canada to have the kind of freedom I wanted RVing to give me. There are a number factors which have led to my growing disillusionment with the full-time RV lifestyle in Canada:<\/p>\n
-The Cost: living in this country is expensive and you don’t gain anything by being an RVer because Canada doesn’t have nice open tracts of land where you can spend months on end. I’ve stayed in places where RV park rent was twice the monthly payment on my house.<\/p>\n
-The Constraints: It’s impossible to travel freely around Canada if you want to abide by the laws governing health care, vehicle registration, and insurance<\/p>\n
-The Climate: There is no decent place to winter in this country.<\/p>\n
My two months in the US last year confirmed that for me to continue RVing, I need to be able to travel in the US for a good part of the year. My expenses drop by 50% when I’m there. I can’t work there, so I need to spend the other part of the year in Canada to work and save money. But I can only do that if some nice folks will let me park in their yard or their driveway, otherwise all my income disappears into rent.<\/p>\n
Since even before I hit the road, I thought of buying some land to use as a home base. The more I realised how much Canada was constraining me, the less I wanted to buy land to play by the rules. But going to the States changed my attitude. I can get that lot to satisfy the US’s concerns about my having ties to Canada. Now that I have satisfied my Canadian bucket list, I wouldn’t mind going back to the same place every year for four or five months to work without worrying about paying rent or overstaying my welcome.<\/p>\n
Having traveled the breadth of this country, I knew that the only provinces where it made sense to buy land were Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Every other province is too expensive and too restrictive, with rules governing how long the lot can stay empty and forbidding turning them into RV pads.<\/p>\n
Manitoba’s real estate prices have jumped 158% over the last six years. Saskatchewan is ripe for a comparable boost as it now boasts the only truly affordable acreages along the US border. The word on Bay Street is that now is the time for savvy investors to buy Saskatchewan property and that that investment will pay for itself shortly, just as those who were wise to buy in Manitoba a few years ago have made good on their investments.<\/p>\n
So that’s why I decided to meander through the Saskatchewan countryside yesterday. I was checking out several possible pieces of property.<\/p>\n
Today, I drove back out to Assiniboia to make a formal offer on the ideal piece of land and a backup offer on a slightly less suitable lot. And that’s all I have to say about that at this time.<\/p>\n
Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about <\/em> Many precede and many will follow <\/em> I’ve had a lot of time in the last six months to think about what’s going to happen when it’s time to leave the east coast this fall. I have had a lot of thoughts rattling around in my brain that have been difficult to articulate precisely. These thoughts have been about the collision of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1053,632,4,635,11,5,807,3,1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assiniboia","category-canada","category-haven","category-north-america","category-personal","category-rving","category-saskatchewan","category-travel","category-weyburn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out <\/em>
\n To find a dream and a life of their own <\/em>
\n A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone <\/em><\/p>\n
\n A young girl’s dream no longer hollow <\/em>
\n It takes the shape of a place out west <\/em>
\n But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"