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Molokai Mike · 11-20-2019, 10:49 AM

Aloha All, I am retired military and my wife and I live in Molokai Hawaii which we absolutely love. We have a house on the beach, there is only about 7000 people that live here on Molokai, there are no traffic lights, no traffic, I can hunt and fish every day if I want as well as Kayak and snorkel right in the reef out front.
The problem is we also love to travel. We were planning on Full Timing (until we moved here), and we still may in the future. Our new plan (if we can work out the kinks) is to Buy a camper (TT or 5th wheel) and a tow vehicle and leave it on the mainland someplace and take a few 4 - 6 week trips a year.
The kinks we are working out are
1. We need to lighten our load here on Molokai. We own/operate the 1st B&B on the island, so we would have to have someone take care of the place while we were gone, or shut down operations. We will still need someone to take care of our animals and mow the lawn.
2. Find a place (or places) to store the trailer and vehicle. Shouldn't be to difficult as we know people all around the country and both of our boys are in the military (currently living on opposite coasts of the mainland).
3. Buy a camper and vehicle and get it registered and insured. We will probably be looking around the Palm Coast Florida area as my wife's parents live there and we go there quite a bit to visit. We may end up using their address for registration. The other option is we own a house in South Carolina that we bought for my Mother to live in, so we could use that for registration. Not sure which would be better. We will be looking for something in the 22' - 26' range as we will not be Full Timing, but we want something comfortable and easy to tow.
4. Everything else we haven't thought of yet.

We hope to be able to do this starting next year, as soon as we sell our vacation rental condo. It's funny because as we mention our plan to our friends here, a lot of them would like to do the same thing. They may be flying over to use our camper and vehicle when we are not using them, that way they are not sitting idle for to long.

I was just wondering, has anybody else done this?

creativepart · 11-20-2019, 11:09 AM

Outside of family, I'd think you'd want to be a quick 5-hour plane ride from HI. Hawaiian flies to Phoenix and Vega direct - as well as LA and SFO - but those two aren't great for RVing. Phoenix is. When we go to HI from Texas, we take Hawaiian direct to the island we're visiting (usually the Big Island). Their flights are great and the prices are right, too.

You're plan sounds good. Too bad you don't have a friend that you could share ownership with part of the year.

grindstone01 · 11-20-2019, 11:25 AM

How about swapping lifestyles with a RV couple/person that wants to spend time in HI. There must be someone out there in RV land that is looking for a change or even a way to exit (or temporary change) the RV life.

Mr_D · 11-20-2019, 12:09 PM

Friend of mine has done it for years. Lives on the big island, stores his RV in Vancouver WA and flies into Portland OR.
Now they have a 5th wheel in Alaska and fly there to fish. They were trying to sell their MH and have never heard if it sold or not.

Molokai Mike · 11-20-2019, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by creativepart

Outside of family, I'd think you'd want to be a quick 5-hour plane ride from HI. Hawaiian flies to Phoenix and Vega direct - as well as LA and SFO - but those two aren't great for RVing. Phoenix is. When we go to HI from Texas, we take Hawaiian direct to the island we're visiting (usually the Big Island). Their flights are great and the prices are right, too.

You're plan sounds good. Too bad you don't have a friend that you could share ownership with part of the year.

I have been looking into options. We can leave them at Travis AFB, since we are most likely to be flying into there most times (we can fly AMC for free). Also we are hoping to be able to allow our friends here to be able to use it. We have found that sharing ownership brings a lot of different issues. It's just easier and less problems if we own them and just let others use them.

Molokai Mike · 11-20-2019, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by grindstone01

How about swapping lifestyles with a RV couple/person that wants to spend time in HI. There must be someone out there in RV land that is looking for a change or even a way to exit (or temporary change) the RV life.

That sounds like a great idea. I was also thinking it would be great to have a "Time Share" RV, but I'm sure it would be difficult to do. Probably a lot of issues with registration, insurance and other things.

Itchytoe · 11-20-2019, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Molokai Mike

Aloha All, I am retired military and my wife and I live in Molokai Hawaii which we absolutely love. We have a house on the beach, there is only about 7000 people that live here on Molokai, there are no traffic lights, no traffic, I can hunt and fish every day if I want as well as Kayak and snorkel right in the reef out front.

I'm sorry. I can't help you with your problem, but wish you the best of luck in finding a good solution. I just have to ask, what do you hunt on an island like Hawaii? I can understand doing all the fishing you want, but wouldn't a group of hunters easily wipe out the population of whatever land animals they are hunting in a few years? I've gotta be missing something.

momdoc · 11-20-2019, 06:39 PM

Welcome to the forum.

You are joining a good group of folks here with good info to share.

We have a similar problem (until the villa sells) for the past couple of years and it works out fine. We are now alternating between our villa here on the north coast of the Dominican Republic and time in our motor home exploring the mainland. We spend usually 3 months in the DR then 3-4 months in the motor home. Before this we lived full time in the DR for nearly 12 years. We store our motor home where ever we end the current US trip (currently stored in Phoenix ). WE use Florida as our domicile and it has worked out well. Feel free to contact me if you want info on how we are doing this all.

Good luck and enjoy the adventure!

Molokai Mike · 11-21-2019, 10:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Itchytoe

I'm sorry. I can't help you with your problem, but wish you the best of luck in finding a good solution. I just have to ask, what do you hunt on an island like Hawaii? I can understand doing all the fishing you want, but wouldn't a group of hunters easily wipe out the population of whatever land animals they are hunting in a few years? I've gotta be missing something.

Aloha Itchytoe,
You really wouldn't think that hunting and Hawaii would go together, but you would be surprised. My friend is a bird hunter and says this is one of the best places for bird hunting he has ever hunted. We also have wild boar and the island is covered (infested) with Axis deer. They estimate the population at 70+ thousand. They are considered pest and are hunted all year long. No tags and no limit. Axis deer are also considered to be the best tasting game animals with almost no gamy flavor.