If you want to do it. Do it.
Don't let other people's fear keep you from doing something you want to.
There are ways to do this on the cheap. I don't know where you live but iirc you used to live in Cali and then Washington state right? Sorry if I have you confused with someone else.
Immersion is the best. I drove around in my 1st get tundra (2001) with a topper on the back and a real twin mattress. I'd stay at national park campgrounds in between cities for $15-20/night - they have showers and restrooms. The real mattress is key. RV Mattresses/air mattresses/camping mattresses suck. I heard recently though that national parks may have raised their camping rates. In that case I would just stay at state park or BLM campgrounds.
Then spend money on a real hotel room when you are playing and need the sleep/shower etc...
Stay sober so you can drive after a night of playing. It's pretty cool to play until 2-2:30 in the am at some bar and have a pocket full of $5 bills and then just get in the truck and head out of town to the next camp spot, get there, watch the sun come up and then sleep for a few hours. Make sure you bring a fishing pole
You can probably buy a used pickup in good shape with 100K miles fairly cheap and sell it when you are done for minimum loss. It used to be that every tournament you went to had several RVs and trucks with campers in the parking lot because many players used to travel tournament to tournament this way.
In your situation it's completely doable. Areas like Phoenix and Denver have a lot of local weekly tournaments. It might make sense to go somewhere with good action and set up a second base of operations. Then when you're not in the field you can just live there and get in a second local pool scene. This will give you a lot of new players to compete with. Then travel to tournaments from whichever 'home' is closer to the event. If you book flights in advance you can fly anywhere in the country for less than $200.
If I were going to do this I would hit up the west coast swing events that are going on now, the Wyoming Open, the Junior Norris in Texas, The Dave Peonia in Concord, CA and the Rumrunner in Las Vegas for sure. If you can play in a BCA league and get qualified to play in the BCA regional events thats another venue to play in.
If you are a good player and play well for the weekend there are enough amateurs in these tournaments that you can cash if you get a decent draw.
Take the west coast swing events, for example, even though there are top pros there is almost always a tough amateur in the top 4-5 spots. This year Chris McDaniel from Denver is doing well in the West Coast Swing one pocket. A couple years ago local player Jason Williams got in the finals of the 10-ball.
The experience is priceless. It will help your pool game and you'll meet a lot of great pool players - pro and amateur both - that you will run into all over the country. It's a lot of fun to hang out at these tournaments too.
This is definitely a west coast centric post. If you're not in the west finding campgrounds and things might be much harder.