- Clayton Balabanov converted a dilapidated truck and used trailer into a spacious home on wheels.
- Now, he and his wife Teresa spend their retirement exploring North America in the "Nomad Monster."
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Clayton Balabanov and Teresa Davies, who sold their home and last year moved into the "Nomad Monster" mobile home they converted themselves. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
If you want to retire, just have fun, and not do any work, then the nomad life isn't going to work out for you.
It's certainly not for everyone.
You can't just sit back and think: "We'll just pull up over here, we'll have some fun over there."
It's a lot of effort planning where you're going next and if you can even stay there, what the regulations are over there, and how easy it is to find spots.
That's not even mentioning the amount of work it takes to care for the vehicle.
But for us, it's a great fit.
Life on the road
When we retired and started life on the road in September last year in the "Nomad Monster," which we converted ourselves, we weren't quite 100% finished with the build.
We'd looked at RVs, but they tend to fall apart after a couple of weeks. We considered bus conversions or motor homes, which were better, but it was a lot more expensive.
So we ended up building it ourselves, which took a long time. I'd rather have spent those years on the road.
We wanted to get going and we figured our first journey was going to be somewhat of a shakedown cruise.
And, of course, we did break down. One time, it cost us big bucks to get the thing towed and repaired. It also meant three days off the road.
But the owner of the towing company said he had a little lot beside a creek. He invited us to stay there. He towed the trailer up to this beautiful spot in the woods.
That experience just seemed to be typical of people on the road, always helping each other out.
It keeps us young
One time, with a company called Harvest Hosts, we stayed at a cattle ranch. We met the owner and were invited to a pub.
I'm not one for pubs, I don't drink. But we did go that evening and met a bunch of nomad travelers and the locals.
I did have a drink, the first in several months. It was really that atmosphere of different people being so friendly and getting along.
To have something major to attract attention, the "Nomad Monster," sparked the invitation for people to talk to us and for us to get to know each other.
On the one hand, we're very visible, depending on when we are and what we are doing. But, we can also go stealth, if you can believe a 73-footer can go undetected. It looks enough like a regular semitrailer, with thousands going down the highway every day.
Nomads are like a family
In the five-and-a-half months out, we've come across no negative people. We've never had a problem with anyone giving us trouble or anything like that.
It's always been very friendly and full of good adventures.
You meet a lot of new people and make new friends quickly, and everybody talks about where they have been and where their favorite spots are.
Nomads are like a family.
It's a really interesting human experience, meeting lots of different people with lots of different attitudes.
While this might not be a normal retirement, it's certainly a lot better than sitting on the La-Z-Boy chair, watching TV all day, every day.
So we're out having adventures and I think that keeps us young.
At the end of the day, we're in a nice comfortable home that we can live in — as long as we can find someplace to put it.