hey everybody catherine here if you are new to the channel my name is catherine gregory and in 2019 i
sold and got rid of almost all of my worldly possessions i bought a truck a truck camper and
i hit the road full time to live the nomadic lifestyle a new film called nomad land was
filmed recently and it follows the story of a fictional character named fern who lives
this lifestyle i did have a chance to see the film and her story is very different than mine
and it got me to thinking how we are all out here for different reasons there are many of us out
here doing this living this lifestyle and each one of us has a different story so i thought i'd tell
you my story and why i chose the nomadic lifestyle i'm currently going into my third year of living
in my trek camper and traveling full-time it's really hard to believe that it's already my third
season doing this but i don't see myself stopping anytime soon and i'll get more into that later
if you would like to see a tour of my truck camper i did film one recently and i will link that below
so what is my story how did i wind up out here living this lifestyle
i know that a lot of people do it for financial reasons and maybe it's their only option i know
that there are a lot of older folks that have a limited income or a fixed income
and this is an affordable way for them to live but for me it was different
on paper it seemed that i had a great life and i did actually i had a wonderful career i worked for
a fantastic company with amazing people my bosses were like family and they treated me very well
i had great benefits i drove a company car i lived in a beautiful apartment on the coast of
southern california i had 180 degree view of the ocean and again on paper everything seemed great
however i was not fulfilled i felt like i was in kind of a robotic state where
you know i did the same thing every day get up at five a.m commute to work work all day come home
you know my only free time was on the weekends it felt a little bit like groundhog's day to
be honest and one of the biggest issues for me is even though i worked for this company for 12 years
i had a cap of 15 days for paid time off that was never going to increase no matter how long
i worked for the company and that was beginning to become a problem for me i began to start thinking
of ways that i could escape the rat race the first bug that was ever put in my ear about
potentially living this kind of a lifestyle was uh by my friend dan merkel he's a legendary surf
photographer and before i discovered the mountains when i was still doing some surf photography as a
freelance artist i spent a lot of time in hawaii i would go to hawaii every winter to shoot these
big surf events and you know i just didn't want it to end i did not want it to end and i'd get into
kind of a depression when i came home i started to try to think of ways to possibly parlay my
photography into a career of travel my friend dan merkel has been living this lifestyle for years
and he kept telling me you need to quit your job you need to you know get on the road full time
but at that time back in i guess this was 2013 i think i just couldn't imagine how i could pull it
off so the idea just got tucked away into the back of my mind where it stayed for several more years
fast forward to 2015 when i first discovered the mountains i've been a beach girl all my life i had
you know all of my recreational outdoor activity pretty much revolved around ocean activities
and i really never thought of myself as a mountain person it just wasn't something that intrigued me
i'd never given it a chance in 2015 i went up to the sierra with a friend that had some work to do
up there and i wound up kind of exploring the area on my own because the person had to work just to
do photography and i was absolutely blown away by the beauty and the majesty of that mountain range
i just had to pinch myself like this can't be real this place is so unreal and immediately i fell in
love i could not wait to spend more time in the mountains and i found myself increasingly spending
more and more time up there i would just hop in my car as a weekend warrior and drive up there almost
every weekend just to get that just wonderful feeling that the mountains gave me i wanted to
become more a part of them so i took up hiking and not that i didn't hike throughout the years but
nothing serious just kind of little trails by home so i did start hiking and i then wanted to
even get deeper into the mountains and started you know just accumulating all the gear i needed for
backpacking watched a lot of youtube videos that's kind of it just kind of snowballed from there
every year my entire vacation time would be spent on backpacking trips essentially and it wasn't a
lot of time as as you know it was only 15 days but i would try to schedule it so that it also
coincided with maybe a holiday just to you know stretch it out a little bit further and you know
try to be creative about how i plan things however i did start to become increasingly frustrated
about my lack of time off and it was just much harder for me to come back from these trips and to
insert myself back into this corporate lifestyle and i just knew that i had to make a change i just
you know felt it feeling a very strong feeling that i needed to do something big i did not want
to work until my official retirement age and then never at that point never be able to climb
mountains anymore or potentially not be able to climb mountains anymore and just not be in the
health and and the shape that i am in now where i could you know do all of these amazing things
and to be honest with you i didn't really know that people lived this lifestyle
i discovered it when i started spending more time on youtube and although my friend merc
had been doing it for years i always kind of felt like it was something he was forced into i didn't
really realize it was something that he loved doing and that bug that he put back in my mind
back in 2014 or 2013 started pushing its way to the front and in 2018 i started seriously planning
my escape i did not want to leave this planet regretting that i had never tried so i started
to put my plan in motion and my plan was to make youtube my business i had been making videos for
several years at this point so i thought once i hit the road full time that would be
an opportunity for my channel to grow quite a bit more since i would be devoting and concentrating
all of my energies on my channel and creating content i began researching rigs to see what
type of rig i thought might best suit me and i came up with this one because i am a backpacker
i wanted to make sure that i could get into remote backcountry trailheads and just so i would have
a better opportunity to get into more remote places essentially even if it was just to camp
and boondock this was the best fit for me and to this day i don't regret it believe it or not the
most difficult part of the process was getting rid of all of my worldly possessions it is much
much more difficult than packing your items in boxes and moving them from one location to another
you know i had to go through every single piece of paperwork every single item every single box that
i had i had to touch everything i owned and decide where it was gonna go how it was gonna go if it's
gonna get pitched in the trash sold it was just a very long process it was a little bit emotional as
well because it seemed that every box that i got into was a bit of a time capsule in my life so
it was just a little bit strange i didn't really care about getting rid of my furniture and things
like that i didn't have an emotional attachment to those and i had had that stuff for so long i was
just thought well if i ever do start over again i'm going to start over with completely fresh new
furniture so that wasn't a big deal but it was very freeing at the same time just to not have
so much stuff my plan was to prep for a year and then hit the road probably one of the other most
difficult things to do is to tell my employers i was leaving because again they were so good to me
and it was a great company i just did not have any passion anymore for what i was doing
and uh you know it wasn't them it was me that's for sure to my surprise they were very supportive
my boss even told me he was proud of me he couldn't believe that i was going to go off
and do this and he was a bit envious as well so on may 1st of 2019 i moved out of my apartment
and officially into my rig i went and stayed at a campground local to home for about a week because
i was so green i did not know how anything in my rig functioned really so i wanted to make sure
that everything functioned properly that i got to know how to use everything i hadn't even dumped my
black tanks at that point now i'm an old pro at it and it's super easy so if you're ever letting
that intimidate you don't it's very easy process i have zero regrets about choosing this lifestyle
for me i'm an outdoors person so it absolutely made sense the more time i spend in nature
the better person i become i really truly believe that it is amazing to explore this great country
of ours there's so much beauty in this country it's unbelievable and i have an opportunity to
do that living this lifestyle it's it's incredible it's not always peaches and cream or rainbows and
unicorns there are definitely issues a life still happens so i'm going to talk about some of the
cons first before i go into the pros if you see a big shift in lighting back and forth it's because
the sun is dipping in and out of the clouds so i apologize for that for moving from dark to
light hopefully it's not too distracting one of the cons is not always knowing where i'm going
i'm here at a campground close to my hometown and i can't stay here too long because it's expensive
so i need to decide what my next move is and it is still winter technically so a lot of places
are still cold so you know that's that's that's the thing that's the thing is just not knowing
not having that peace of mind always of what your next move is it always seems to work out though
and it works out the way it should and i know that it will this time too i have some ideas
which i'm excited about so it's all going to work out the other thing is as i mentioned i had
some truck maintenance that i had to deal with so dealing with issues on my own it all falls on me
and i'm not a mechanic i don't know engines very well so i have had some issues just recently and
i don't know really how serious they are so i just have to take care of them as best i can
i did come back to california because i have a trusted mechanic here and i had them taken
care of it was very expensive so i don't always know if i'm making the right choices in terms of
engine situations and what they're telling me is wrong what i need fixed but i do trust them yeah
it all falls on me that's part of being out here and being free and being on my own and the other
you know plus to that is i get to make all the decisions without having to run them by anybody so
that would fall more in the pro category i get asked all the time if i have any regrets as to the
rig that i chose and i would say the only regret i have is that it is not a four season rig so i do
have to watch the weather and you know really try to stay out of temperatures that go below freezing
unfortunately my pipes will freeze if it gets very cold so i would have to run heat all night long in
order to keep them from freezing so that is a concern it gets cold in here it's not insulated
very well and it prevents me from going to some places that i would probably like to go during the
winter i do like snow i like being in the snow i don't necessarily like driving in it or traveling
in it but it would be nice to experience some you know winter camping in areas where it snows and
it's definitely prevented me from doing some of those sorts of things during the winter months i
have to seek warmer climates and that's something that i did this year but sometimes it's difficult
it's difficult to stay where the temperatures are above freezing so that is only probably the only
regret that i have in terms of the actual rig and one of the cons for sure and probably the biggest
con for me is missing my family and friends we've always lived in very close proximity
we've you know we're very tight knit very close however now they are all starting to move all
across the country and it's a great opportunity for me to visit them in their various states
i do make it a point though to not go too long before i do visit family and friends and i get
asked a lot if i am lonely out here i'm not you i think to live this lifestyle especially doing
it solo you have to be okay with being alone and spending time with yourself which i am i'm very
busy a lot of the time it's not a lonely life for me it doesn't mean that i don't miss people though
i constantly have a change of scenery the view out my back door is ever changing
and i'm one of the people that does like to move around a lot i don't like to spend
you know usually more than a week in one place so my views are always changing there is
no time for boredom for me my work is now creating these videos as well as some
digital marketing that i do on the side but the main gist of what i do now is creating these
videos it's a wonderful creative outlet for me i've always been a creative person i come from
a photography background so videography is an extension of that i'm always striving to
do better and get better at this craft i'm not a professional by any means but it's just been
fun to learn i've come a long way for sure since my very first videos and also creating content
pushes me to do more whereas i might be lazy i am being pushed to get out there and see more and
do more and that's really a fantastic thing for me and the biggest pro of all is that i am free
i don't have to check in with anybody to get time off or to do a certain trip
i am free to come and go as i please and that is amazing i never would have imagined that i would
be living this lifestyle it's not for everyone i will definitely say that i don't think that
being out here and especially if you're doing it solo is something that
everybody could do so i would encourage you if you are thinking about doing this lifestyle
to maybe give it a shot first maybe rent a rig there's all kinds of rigs and bands and things
that you can rent these days maybe try it out for a little bit or do something like i did plan
to do it for just a short period of time and see if it's something that suits you
luckily it has suited me i don't see myself stopping anytime soon and if you are asking
the question when will i stop when it's not fun anymore that's when i'll stop when it doesn't
feel right anymore that's when i'll stop but until then just gonna keep on rolling i hope you enjoyed
hearing my story if you have not subscribed to the channel please consider subscribing
if you found this video useful or entertaining make sure to give it a thumbs up hit that bell
icon notification on my channel's main page to be notified of
any new upload that i do and i will see you all on the next one thanks for coming along
on this journey everybody i really appreciate each and every one of you see you soon bye
you