Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go cross-country in an RV exploring scenic, one-of-a-kind locations while having your spouse and furry friend along for the ride? Do you dream about leaving your full-time staffing job and feeding your adventurous spirit? If your answer is "yes," buckle up and get ready to learn all about how Chase and Lindsay went from nursing school sweethearts to full time RVers, all while completing 12 travel nursing assignments across the country. They gave us the down and dirty about RV life and how they work together to make travel nursing work for their lifestyle.
We both originally had our sights set on CRNA school and the was to get there was becoming a nurse first. Throughout school and working at the bedside, we both really grew to love critical care, critical thinking, and caring for our patients. CRNA school isn’t completely out of the picture, but after we found travel nursing, it will be even harder to go back.
We love the freedom our current career brings and the idea of settling down and going back to school isn’t appealing to our current fun, adventurous lifestyle! Plus, we really like working in the ICUs and providing the best care we can to our patients!
We didn’t start dating until our junior and senior year of school. Nursing school is exhausting and time consuming so it really helped that we were both on the same page and putting our education first. We would still go out and have fun, but school was our number one priority. This led to a lot of study and schoolwork dates. It was nice that we could still be together even while we had to dedicate our time to homework or studying. We also could help each other understand different material better and helped each other study.
We had briefly learned about travel nursing from some staff nurses that what previously done travel nursing. We had wanted to get two years of ICU experience and apply for CRNA school, but we were enjoying newlywed life and traveling so much that we decided to pursue travel nursing first. We intended to do it for 1-2 years to pay off some debt and save for school but here we are starting year five and can’t imagine stopping!
When thinking about jumping into travel nursing, the years of experience is important. You can only learn so much in a short period of time. We highly recommend at least 2 years experience prior to traveling. Some hospitals and specialties will require it. Beyond years of experience, your actual skill set, independence, and confidence level as a nurse is extremely important. We share a lot about this on our social media accounts on @wereoutnabout to help you determine if you’re ready to try travel nursing.
Ever since we started travel nursing, we’ve traveled in our RV! We knew that was the only way we wanted to travel. We loved the idea of taking our home on wheels with us and always being able to sleep in our own bed. We both grew up taking RV trips with our families and we both cherished those memories and wanted to experience it together.
Our favorite part about living in our RV is having a vacation home anywhere we want! If we want to take a vacation to the beach — we can take our camper. If we want to go camping in the mountains — we can take our home there. It’s a great way to see the country! It’s also pet friendly too! We’ve traveled with our cat, Moka, ever since we left for travel nursing and she’s adapted so well to camper living. She loves it!
We think that travel nursing is a great way to avoid burnout. We have he freedom to take time off in between our contracts and we take advantage of that. Our goal is to always take at least 1 month off in between to travel and refresh. Taking care of yourself is the first step to providing high quality patient care.
Since we take much needed time off for ourselves, anytime we enter a new contract we try to go above and beyond for our patients and it shows. We receive compliments all of the time from patients and families that are so appreciate of the care we provide. When you’re happy and not burnout, it carries over to your patient care and they are refreshed by it.
One of our favorite compliments (not related to patient care) is when patients and families encourage what we’re doing. They love to hear our story and meet us both. Most often than not, they love to hear that we’re traveling together while we’re young and before having kids and say they wish they would have done something similar when they were younger.
The motto we live by is “why wait for someday when you can do it now.” We’re not promised tomorrow or that we’re be healthy when we retire. We take that to heart and live our lives to the fullest right now.
Our favorite contract was in Arizona. We loved the hospital and our coworkers but we also loved the recreational activities there too! Arizona had so much to do and explore. It was hands down one of our favorite places to travel and we’ll be back!
Our goal is to take our RV to all of the states and explore — were currently in the upper 20s! We’d also like to travel to all of the RV accessible National Parks!
We usually do a google search of campgrounds / RV resorts near whichever hospital we’re interested in. So far, we’ve always been able to find a campsite within a 35 minute drive of our facility. We love to choose RV resorts with amenities (pool, hot tub, restaurant, gym, laundry, etc) so we have things to do on our days off.
Costs for monthly RV sites vary based on season and amenities, but we typically pay $600-1300/month which we find is cheaper than renting an apartment. However, keep in mind that you do have the initial RV purchase/loan in addition to your monthly campsite costs.
For us, we knew that we enjoyed RVing and that we’d use our RV regardless if we continued travel nursing or not so to us it was a great investment. Plus in the end, you can always sell your RV and make some of the money back so it’s not a waste of money if RV life isn’t for you!
For travel nursing advice, RV living insight, and tips for getting out of debt, follow along with Chase and Lindsay on Instagram @WereOutNAbout and TikTok @wereoutnabout.