Thank you for all the helpful replies, and questions that made me think and research a bit more.
It will be easy enough to have mail sent to the Florida address, and just eat the nominal fee they charge for automatically forwarding it to Texas. My complaint is mainly that on their website, Escapees says that when you sign up for their service, they will provide documents (a Welcome Letter and a Letter of Acknowledgment) that you can use to get your driver’s license, etc., and they didn’t. I’ve emailed them about it twice, but their replies haven’t answered any of my direct questions, so I suspect they are form letters. Since this is the Escapees forum, I mistakenly thought it would be a good place to ask about that.
Though this wasn’t the purpose of this thread, for my own sake I want to clarify that I am not trying to be deceptive or fake anything.
Here are a few details about us, and why I think we need to change our domicile to a different state:
By default, we are Alaska residents. I’d lived there all my life until October, and my husband since 2000. We have Alaska driver’s licenses, and that’s where our vehicles are registered and insured. We paid them property taxes up through October 2019, which is when when we sold our house. In many ways, it doesn’t matter if we’re Alaskans for now. There is no state income tax, and we can renew our licenses and registration online. We don’t have to get our vehicle inspected on a regular basis.
But their are a few realities that make it impractical to be tied to such a remote state in the future. Sometime before October of this year, we’ll need Real IDs, which we have to get in person. We have no plans or desire to return to Alaska, especially just to visit the DMV. Health insurance for Alaskans is pretty much useless outside of the region. I checked into some of the “alternative” health plans for nomads, and was told they can’t currently accommodate Alaskans. Our truck is getting old, and we’ll eventually need to replace it. We aren’t going to return to Alaska to register a new vehicle.
If I had my way, I wouldn’t have to choose a state at all. The whole point of selling our house and leaving our state was so we could travel around at our leisure, without having to be at a certain place at a certain time.
But as you all know, that isn’t how our country works. There’s no such thing as general US driver’s licenses, voter’s registration, or insurance. We must be tied to a state. So we have to pick one. We picked Florida because we like it, so we are most likely to return to it regularly (although I can’t honestly say when or how often). If we ever got tired of traveling, we’d probably settle down in Florida. And yes, we’d definitely enjoy the Disney Discounts:) It does seem to have better-than-usual options for health insurance, but that is not really a deciding factor—any state would be better than Alaska in that regard!
Again, I have no interest in being deceptive about my living arrangements or faking anything. I’m simply trying to figure out how to live out my dream of traveling around the country indefinitely, while still being able to vote, drive a legally registered/insured vehicle, and not die of a curable disease because I can’t afford health care out-of-pocket.
Thanks for the help and suggestions.