Long-Distance Friendship Tips From a Full-Time RV Family

Traveling in our RV full time means that all of our friends are long-distance friends most of the time. It’s one of the hardest parts of life on the road: the regular rhythm of saying goodbye. Luckily we have found a variety of ways to stay in touch from afar.

Group Chats

Even since before we started traveling, my closest homeschooling mom friends and I have had a very strong group chat. It would be unheard of for a week to go by without at least a handful of texts exchanged in the group chat. More often than not, we have a series of conversations in the chat every week. But it’s not about just having a group chat, it’s how you use it.

Questions

One of my very dearest friends, KP, is the queen of connection. She is always the one to dive deeper, ask another question and remember that tiny little detail you told her three years ago. Several years ago she started asking a series of questions in our group chat once or twice a month, which has inspired the rest of us to sometimes be the ones who ask the questions and get everyone talking in the group chat.

Her questions are always fun and inspire us to share what’s going on in our lives, things like:

What are the best dinners you’ve eaten this summer?

What are your favorite memories from this summer?

What’s working in your homeschool?

Which books have your kids loved recently?

Which recent moment made you think “it doesn’t get better than this”?

What are you looking forward to right now?

The questions inspire us to share pictures, recipes, book recommendations and curriculum ideas. The conversation goes beyond simple answers and keeps us all connected, no matter where we all are in the world.

Coffee Pictures

Another group chat includes a wider circle of friends, the wonderful women I got to spend my birthday weekend with when I flew up to Seattle in the spring. Since my visit in April, where we had a birthday slumber party and were all thrilled to get to drink our coffee all together while watching whales from the backyard, we have started a tradition of sending pictures of our morning coffee from wherever it is we may be drinking it. Since I travel full time, I often send a picture of my mug in our newest campsite, with a quick “Hello from [Lake Tahoe, the Oregon Coast, etc]” The rest of the group is quick to reply with their own coffee picture, whether they are at home on their deck, at the school bus stop or on vacation to a new, beautiful place.

These brief coffee photo exchanges keep us all connected and remind me that even though we are all in different places, we can still drink our coffee “together.”

Location Updates and Travel Tips

We also have group chats with the other families we have met while traveling full time. The conversations in these group chats usually come in two forms: location updates and travel tips.

Every few weeks someone will send a “Hello from ___” text with a fun picture or a video, the rest of the group following suit sharing where we all currently are in the world.

The travel tips texts are sometimes of the fun and exciting variety:

“Check out this cool campground if you’re ever near Jasper National Park!”

And sometimes of a warning nature:

“Don’t try to “easy lube” your bearings: here’s a picture of our trailer brakes covered in grease!”

We also all share our campground bookings so we can try to meet up in new locations!

Marco Polo

Marco Polo is another great way to stay in touch with friends, especially when you have different schedules or live in different time zones. Marco Polo allows you to record a video talking to your friend, which they watch on their own time and then respond with their own video. It’s like voicemail for facetime. Marco Polo is fun because you get to see the other person’s face and hear their voice and feels much more personal than texting. I have several friends in various places: Luxembourg, Canada, Washington, Utah, with whom I regularly chat with over Marco Polo.

Good Old Fashioned Phone Calls

I am the rare millennial who actually loves chatting on the phone. I always have and have successfully convinced several phone-call-resistant friends to change their stance on the matter– or at least talk to me on occasion. Some friends I talk to only every few months but we can talk for hours, as long as our children will allow it. With other friends I try to have regular weekly or semi-weekly calls . I’ve found that when we talk more regularly our conversations are less about “catching up” and have the ability to dive deeper: discussing parenting, marriage, spirituality, etc.

I remember as a child overhearing my mom saying over the phone to a friend or family member “It’s good to hear your voice.” As a kid, I thought that was such a strange thing to say. Now as an adult I find myself saying the same thing. I feel so much connection with someone when I get to hear their voice.

Messenger Kids

The kids also like to stay in touch with their friends and use messenger kids to chat and video call. They chat with other traveling friends about the places they are visiting and give each other recommendations if it’s somewhere they have traveled before. They love to video call each other and show off a new lego build, a piece of art or a cool new birthday present.

We love messenger kids because parents have to approve every friend that your child can talk to and parents can see all messages exchanged. Our kids talk to their nana and a handful of friends over messenger kids and the features of the app ensure they are only talking to real people that we know.

Distance Doesn’t Have to Mean Disconnection

None of these things replace the real thing — the hugs, the shared meals, the easy in-person laughter that comes from being in the same room. I’ll never pretend that a Marco Polo video is the same as sitting across the table from someone I love. But full-time travel has taught me that connection isn’t really about proximity. It’s about intention.

Every group chat question, every coffee picture, every long phone call is a small choice to keep showing up for the people who matter, even from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Our friendships haven’t just survived the distance. In a lot of ways, they’ve deepened because of the effort it takes to maintain them.

So if you’re heading into a season of long-distance friendship, whether from full-time travel or just a busy season of life, know that it’s possible to stay close. It just might look a little different than it used to.