Downsizing Home, empty nesters, freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, usa travel

A QUICK TRIP TO WILMINGTON, NC – Food, Fun and Wonderful People!

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Linsley and I were preparing for our next adventure.  I have landed a workamping position at Jellystone Campground in Warrens, Wisconsin for the summer season 2020, we had bought our car, and now needed a way to take the car with us on our journey to Wisconsin.  We leave South Carolina on February 29, and wend our way north and west over a 5 week period, so lots to see and do along the way……

We had bought our RV from Billy and Ada, a lovely couple who had bought it brand new and lovingly used it for over 20 years.  When we bought the RV, the price included a tow dolly, but at the time we picked the RV up from Billy and Ada, we were unable to take the tow dolly with us, so our friend Janet ( a fellow RVer we met) came with me to Wilmington, NC to pick up the tow dolly.  It was about a 6 hour drive, so it was lovely to have Janet’s company for it.

The drive there and back we made in torrential rain, which really made it much harder than it should have been, but when we arrived in Wilmington, the sun came out and stayed out for the whole time we were there.

Janet met Billy and Ada, and was totally bowled over by this lovely lovely couple.  Billy pulled out the tow dolly and showed me everything I needed to know about it and how to attach and secure the car onto it.  He even gave us the magnetic lights that attach to the car once it is attached onto the tow dolly.  The one thing he did warn me about driving it back to SC was that without a car on the dolly, it could bounce, so drive carefully and at a reasonable speed.

After the tow dolly was all hooked up and ready to be driven down the road, Ada and Billy gave us a huge bag of collard greens from their garden that Billy went and picked while Janet and I were talking with Ada.  I shared pictures of our travels, our grandchildren and our newest great nephew, and then Janet and I were on our way to find some dinner and check into our hotel.

We arrived at the hotel, and had a lovely suite, which we shared, and then went for a walk in search of somewhere nice to eat.  We had thought about going to the canal district, but decided that parking with a tow dolly attached might be a problem.  Luckily, on our walk, we found The Bonefish Grill not too far up the street from our hotel.

Dinner was amazing!  I have always been allergic to zinc, which meant that I was never able to eat shellfish as it tasted like old gun metal to me.  Recently, however, while cooking shrimp, it smelled really good to me (which is a huge change from previously, when shrimp smelled awful to me), so Janet and I went to Bonefish Grill for dinner, and I told our waiter Lucas (who was incredible by the way) about my prior inability to eat shellfish.  He suggested that I try the bang bang shrimp, and if I couldn’t eat it, he would take it away.  I was ok with that, and soon he arrived with a steaming plate of bang bang shrimp that smelled divine!

I tried one of the shrimp and to my surprise, as soon as I put it into my mouth, it tasted so good, like nothing else I had ever tasted.  I couldn’t believe that suddenly, I was able to eat something that for the whole of my life I had not been able to eat, and I was loving it!

What a great start to  dinner that was.  Janet and I shared the bang bang shrimp as there was so much of it, and Lucas, our server, was very happy to hear that it was a big hit.  He brought our drinks and we had another little surprise, no, I wasn’t drunk, but my glass was!

The restaurant was very quiet, it was a Tuesday evening, and there were very few people around, so I think we got his full attention and he had more time to talk to us than he normally would on a busy night at Bonefish Grill.  He was so knowledgeable and helpful, possibly the best server I have ever had (and he was pretty cute too!)

Main course and Janet had Tuna Sushimi, and I had Salmon in a lemon caper sauce, which was delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, both Janet and I were really full, but when we saw the chocolate lava cake, we couldn’t resist and decided to share a plate between us.  It was well worth it!  OMG it was good!

After dinner, Janet and I walked back to our hotel, and basically both fell into a food coma………..

I was a little worried about the tow dolly being parked outside, and hoped no-one would steal it overnight, we had put a small padlock on it but it would have been easy to break it off…. Fortunately, no-one stole the dolly and the next morning, we were up bright and early and on our way back to South Carolina with the tow dolly in tow.  Again, we drove through torrential rain but actually made pretty good time.

We are now one step closer to heading out on our next adventure. And those collard greens…. we made a huge dinner for all our friends at the South Carolina campground and cooked two huge pots of collards.  Ada and Billy, the collards were delicious, and everyone here enjoyed them.  Some of our friends had never had collards before, but said they will make a point of eating them now they have tried them.

Downsizing Home, empty nesters, freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, Uncategorized, usa travel

A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED IN OUR FIRST FEW WEEKS FULL TIME RV’ING – PART THREE

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Linsley and I are so glad that we stayed put in South Carolina for the winter, we have learned so much in this very short time.  We have also had a chance to learn about all the systems on our RV.  The following is part three of a three part insight into the things that Linsley and I have learned over the last 4 months of full time RVing that we didn’t know about before taking on this lifestyle.  We had done a lot of research before we made the leap into full timing, but we have learned so much more than we imagined in the few weeks since we started.  This may be only the tip of the iceberg in our learning curve, but for anyone thinking of starting full-timing, maybe it will be of value:

 

  1. You CAN full time RV without a car, but we have found that it is very inconvenient if you don’t have one. So, we bought a car at a local used car lot.  It is a 2004 Hyundai Sante Fe, and it runs beautifully.  It had some oxidized paint on it when we first bought it, and the hood looked purple rather than the jet black it was supposed to be.  So I searched on the internet to find how I could remove the oxidization, and found that it can be easily wet sanded off with a regular drill and some wet sanding paper (800 grit).  I did get a quote from a local paint shop to have the care re-sprayed, but it was far too expensive, so I decided to spray paint it myself.  I went to Auto Zone and found some black auto paint with a high gloss finish, and after masking up the windows and trim pieces, I sprayed the car with the black paint, and now it looks like a million dollars.  It is a little time consuming, but well worth the investment of time. We now have a pretty darn great car, with no car payment as it was cheap enough to pay cash for it, and no worries should it get chipped or scratched while being towed behind the RV on a tow dolly.

 

  1. Being newly retired, I have found that I’m needing something to do throughout the days. My answer to this is Workamping.  We have made some friends who worked at the campground we were staying at.  They gave me some pointers into Workamping.  There is a whole network (workamper.com) that find jobs for people traveling around in an RV, they provide job listings, training, and lots of resources for anyone who wants to join.  They have a Facebook network too.  They help with building a workamping resume, give employer ratings, allow you to post a position wanted ad in their online newsletter, and make the whole “finding a job on the road” thing relatively easy.  Workamping has other perks which are really great too, many campgrounds provide their workampers with full hook-up sites for the period of time they will be staying to work at the campground, together with laundry allowances, electric allowances,  free or very reduced passes to local events and attractions, and many more perks.  The great thing is that apart from the hours you work to offset the cost of your camp site for the period, many campgrounds also pay an hourly wage, which although is not a career salary, it does help out and pay for those extras you would like.

The one thing I would say about planning your workamping experiences, is to apply early and make sure you can fulfill the commitment you make.  It does mean that you stay in one place for the summer, or the winter, certainly more than a few days/weeks before moving on, but when you full time, sometimes it’s nice to be able to stay somewhere for a season, living in a beautiful place for longer than just a vacation, experiencing everything it has to offer, and getting to know the people you meet there.  I know for us staying here in SC, it has been a truly great experience, and the people we have met here will be friends for life now.

 

  1. Expect to have to clean often. The beauty of this is that cleaning the whole RV only takes about half an hour and it sparkles again.  I store my cleaning fluids in a bin underneath the RV so they don’t take up precious space inside.

 

  1. Our RV has carpet everywhere! Carpet is very hard to keep clean, especially when in an RV there isn’t room for a full size vacuum cleaner.  I have a small Bissell vacuum, which works pretty well, but it never gets the stuff deep in the carpet fibers.  I am going to remove the carpet and replace it with vinyl flooring which will be much easier to keep clean and fresh.  I know this project will be difficult, but it will be worth it.  I already had to remove the carpet from our bathroom, when the toilet overflowed in our first week, so should that ever happen again, it won’t be quite so devastating as it was with the carpet totally soaked in nasty poopy liquids from the black water tank.

 

  1. Whenever you can do it, let an insect bomb off inside your RV, many of our friends here have had a big problem with ants, but as I have made sure to let an insect bomb off regularly, we have not had any problem with insects, at least inside.  Insects can be a huge problem when RVing, as they can get into your heating unit, your hot water unit and your food, clothes, storage bins underneath the RV too.  Prevention is way better than cure and its pretty easy to make sure you don’t get any insect infestation anywhere.  We also spray around the outside of the RV to make sure we don’t have ant hills, or anything else anywhere near us or the RV.

There are many more things that we have learned these past few months, but I would have to write a novel to include everything.  As we continue on our fantastic journey, I will document some of the greatest things we have learned, and should anyone have a question, I am by no means an expert, but I am learning a lot of things that would have made the transition for us a whole lot easier had we known this stuff beforehand.  Please don’t hesitate to ask your questions……….

 

Downsizing Home, empty nesters, freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, Uncategorized, usa travel

A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED IN OUR FIRST FEW WEEKS FULL TIME RV’ING – PART TWO

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Linsley and I are so glad that we stayed put in South Carolina for the winter, we have learned so much in this very short time.  We have also had a chance to learn about all the systems on our RV.  The following is part two of a three part insight into the things that Linsley and I have learned over the last 4 months of full time RVing that we didn’t know about before taking on this lifestyle.  We had done a lot of research before we made the leap into full timing, but we have learned so much more than we imagined in the few weeks since we started.  This may be only the tip of the iceberg in our learning curve, but for anyone thinking of starting full-timing, maybe it will be of value:

  

  1. THINGS TO BRING WITH YOU AS YOU START YOUR RV LIVING:

Bring with you the things that you will need.  We were under the impression that while traveling, everything had to be stowed away in cabinets, so a lot of the camping and cooking equipment we had, we sold off in the estate sale we had.  Now we find that we could have brought it and we are buying a lot of that equipment again.  We have found out that the luxuries you believe go with brick and mortar living can also be part of an RV lifestyle.  We were under the impression that we could only bring bare essentials with us, so that is what we did.  Don’t do the same thing.  If you think you will need a piece of equipment, bring it, we have met people whose RV is filled with plastic bins full of equipment for cooking etc, that once they get to a site, is all unpacked and left outside, around and under their RV and awnings.  This is the part that we didn’t know.  We do now!

  1. With winter coming on, temperatures started to drop and we realized that we didn’t know how or even if our heating worked in the RV. We knew it was gas heating, but weren’t sure how to turn it on.  Our new friend Doug (who has been such a fantastic help to us) came over and showed us exactly how to get the furnace started.  Looking back, it was so easy, I felt pretty stupid that we hadn’t worked it out ourselves.  You basically open the outside furnace and turn the switch to ON, then switch over to heat mode on the thermostat, turn it all the way up until the heating kicks on.  Once the furnace is blowing warm air, you can then set the temperature on the thermostat.

At the worst possible time this winter, our heating gave out and would run for a little while and then stop blowing warm air and revert to stone cold.  Our friend Doug (my hero), took the gas valve apart and replaced it with a new one we bought, we tried it and it worked for a short while and then the gas turned off again,  Doug took it apart again and checked the gas pipes had no blockages.  This is where I have to stress to you… DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF GNATS!  The gas pipe had about 6 dead gnats in it, but this was enough to restrict the flow of gas and cut the heating off.  We cleaned out the pipes and the heating has worked like a champ ever since.

3.   With storage at a premium, I decided to store canned foods (and well packaged foods that could withstand it), pots and pans, and various drinks in a plastic storage bin with a lid, which can easily be stored underneath the RV when we are parked at a campground, easily accessed when we need to get something from one of the bins, and quickly and easily lifted into the RV when we are traveling. This has made my life much easier inside the RV and given me so much more storage for things that need to be inside.  We don’t have big storage bins built into our RV as it is an older model, so the storage bins (from the dollar store) are ideal.  I found a few storage bins that are waterproof, and was able to put dried foods such as rice, pasta, even sugar (without it clogging), and they were relatively inexpensive from Walmart, which has made a huge difference in the amount of storage available in the kitchen area now.  I was able to fit them into one of our storage cubbies underneath the RV, so they are totally protected from the weather at all times.  I would highly recommend these bins for anything that wouldn’t stand up to any type of dampness.

  1.  MEMBERSHIPS

You can pay a fortune, and spend hours finding and booking campgrounds to stay at, but we have found that by having a few memberships, this process becomes much easier.  Not only does it help finding the campgrounds, but it also can save you a lot of money along the way.  We travel about 200-250 miles a week and then camp at a campground for the week, moving on to the next place on a Saturday morning, this gives us a very relaxed travel schedule and allows us time to explore the area we are staying at.  We find that this suits us very well, and our older RV thanks us for not trying to drive huge distances all in one go.

Passport America:  We joined Passport America and they have a great website where you can look up campgrounds all over the United States, get an overview of those campgrounds, and get their website, plan your route, and also in many instances enjoy 50% off the normal nightly rate at a campground that is affiliated with Passport America.  Now the 50% discount doesn’t always work in high season, but so far, we have received the 50%, so we can only rave about how great Passport America is.  Also, our friends joined passport America and because we referred them, they, and we received a 7 month free extension to our membership.

Escapees:  Escapees help with finding campground locations, route planning, they provide some discounts, but they also have a mail forwarding service, roadside assistance, and in order to be able to vote and renew your drivers license etc, they can provide a domicile address in a state that is full time RVer friendly (which most states are not), which enables you to travel further afield without the necessity to keep driving back to the state you are domiciled in to renew tags, licenses, voter registration, etc.  Escapees also list campgrounds which are owned by Escapees members (Co-Ops).  These campgrounds are renouned for being very comfortable, and because they are owned by people who RV full time, are very well set up to address the needs of full time RVers.

Good Sam:  We joined Good Sam for a few reasons, the main reason for us was that they provide great roadside assistance services.  Should we get stuck with a flat tire etc. in the middle of nowhere, they will actually bring a tire to where we are or tow us to somewhere we can have a new tire fitted.  It is important to have great roadside assistance and towing when you are full time RVing because when you think about it, your vehicle is your home, and has so many things that can go wrong at any time, you need to have a plan that will cover most, if not all eventualities.

These are the memberships that we have, it may be in the future, that we will join more RVing clubs, but for now, we feel we are well covered between these three.

 

Downsizing Home, empty nesters, freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, usa travel

A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED IN THE FIRST FEW WEEKS OF FULL TIME RV’ING – PART ONE

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Linsley and I are so glad that we stayed put in South Carolina for the winter, we have learned so much in this very short time.  We have also had a chance to learn about all the systems on our RV.  The following is part one of a three part insight into the things that Linsley and I have learned over the last 4 months of full time RVing that we didn’t know about before taking on this lifestyle.  We had done a lot of research before we made the leap into full timing, but we have learned so much more than we imagined in the few weeks since we started.  This may be only the tip of the iceberg in our learning curve, but for anyone thinking of starting full-timing, maybe it will be of value:

  1. THE MAIN THING THAT WE HAVE LEARNED IS THAT MAINTENANCE IS PARAMOUNT:

My advice to anyone starting to RV whether full time or part time is this……. Take care of little problems BEFORE they become big problems.  There are many resources out there to learn how to take good care of your RV, I have listed some resources below that have given me a lot of insight into dealing with the routine problems that come up from time to time (and in these first few weeks, with an older RV, we have had our share of those).

YOUTUBE is a great resource, especially for mechanical type issues, you can look up just about anything and it will give you a video how to with step by step instructions and you can watch the repair being done in easy to follow steps.

RV REPAIR CLUB gives solid instruction for routine RV care and maintenance right to your email inbox.  I keep all their emails just in case I need to use them at a later date.

THE INTERNET…. I would never have believed that there are so many people who full time RV, by performing a simple search on whatever topic you need, you can find all kinds of help, blog posts, videos, instructions to solve your problem.

I would also recommend that you talk to the people around you in the campsite and pick their brains on these routine type fixes, they have all had them, gone through them and worked out how to fix them, so become a student to your fellow RVers, you will learn an awful lot from them, it may cost you a campsite meal and a few laughs, but it is invaluable.

  1. LEARN HOW YOUR GREY AND BLACK TANKS WORK

When you arrive at a camping ground, oftentimes you will have a full hook-up site.  This means that you will likely have a sewer connection directly from your RV into a sewer line.  What we didn’t know is that you can leave your grey tank valve open, but you MUST keep your black tank valve closed, emptying it as necessary.  It appears that if you leave the black tank valve open all the time, you risk developing a “pyramid of poo” inside your black tank, which doesn’t get broken down and will eventually stop your black tank from being able to work, causing back-ups into your RV of all the nasty stuff you really don’t want backing up into your RV!  Find a product that you like, to deodorize and help with the breakdown of solid waste and use it in both your black tank and grey tank, if you do this diligently, you should not build up the tell-tale odor that RV toilets and drains are well known for.  If like us, you find that the black tank is not working as it should, you can simply use a toilet snake to break down any solid build up, then flush well with lots of water and use a good product to aid in the breakdown of solids.  I also put a bucket of hot soapy water down the toilet once a month as this helps to clean away any clingons that develop from time to time.  We had a nasty back up from the toilet in our first week, and discovered, from our campsite friends, how to clear the blockage, and once that was done, we have had no further problems.  I KNOW, I KNOW, TALKING ABOUT POO ISN’T GREAT, BUT IT IS VERY NECESSARY!

  1. One really cool thing that our new friends, Doug and Jimmy taught us, is this….

We have a 40lb gas tank built into the RV, that tank doesn’t last too long when you have hot water, cooking and then heating going on inside the RV.  Doug and Jimmy showed us how to hook up a separate gas tank which can be disconnected and filled easily, without having to pack up the RV and drive to the propane fill station.  You can buy propane tanks in all different sizes, and we are using a 40lb extra tank right now, which can easily be disconnected, refilled and reconnected without any hassle.  It definitely takes the worry out of running out of propane for heating, hot water and cooking in the winter months.  We have met some people who have connected up to 100 gallon propane tanks to their RV’s, but as these large tanks are not mobile, it takes the travel out of this RV lifestyle.  With the 40lb tank, we will never run out of Propane, because as soon as that extra tank is empty, we will fill it and still have the built in 40lb tank full at all times.

  1. One other point that I feel needs to be in this list is condensation…. When you have heating on inside the RV and its cold outside, you tend to develop some condensation. This can be a big problem if you don’t take care of it on a daily basis.  Open the cupboards and closets and leave them open for as long as you can during the day and wipe the windows down when they get full of condensation.  This way, the water doesn’t build up and ruin the woodwork, walls, furnishings inside your RV.  I find that condensation from the windows if not dried off ends up running down the walls and soaks into the furnishings, leaving them pretty wet at times.  I do have a dehumidifier insider the RV, but still find that condensation can build up.  Dollar stores carry small dehumidifier packs, and I have put one into each cabinet, which really does help to ward off condensation, especially in the closets where the dampness can ruin your clothes.

I would say that the biggest thing of all that we have learned is that we have an awful lot still to learn.  LOL!  BUT we are getting there and nothing we have encountered in our short time RVing has made us have second thoughts about the whole thing.  We are loving living our lives now and have a new experience each and every day, we have met a lot of truly wonderful people, and our relationship has improved to no end.  We are happy, healthy and lighthearted, having lots of fun times and getting younger every day.  What more could anyone ask for?

freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, Uncategorized, usa travel

SOUTH CAROLINA AWESOMENESS

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            Traveling to South Carolina, we didn’t know what to expect in terms of scenery.  We decided to take a trip to the mountains to see the fall colors, so we went to Ceasars Head State Park. 

            Unfortunately, the colors weren’t at their best when we went, leaves change color here slightly differently than they did where we came from, so we got there at the wrong time to see the full fall color.  That didn’t  detract from the beauty of the scenery we saw.  We could see for miles and miles and we were so lucky with the weather, it was sunny, but not hot which made it easy to walk around and take in the beauty of the whole place.           

Caesars Head State Park

We went with the friends we made here at the campground, and had a wonderful day.  We did a little hiking, took a lot of pictures, and when we went home to the campground, we all sat around a campfire and had a great impromptu dinner.

Caesars Head State Park
Caesars Head State Park
Caesars Head State Park
Caesars Head State Park

We feel so lucky to be able to travel around the country and see such amazing sights. If we didn’t become full time RVers, we would never have the chance to see this amazing beauty.

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A FABULOUS DAY OUT IN SOUTH CAROLINA

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Do you love farmers markets and flea markets?  I recently went to the biggest farmers/flea market that I have ever seen.  It’s called the Anderson Jockey Lot, and it sits on 65 acres with more than 2,150 spaces. The average daily attendance is 30,000 to 60,000 people.

I was like a kid in a candy store and couldn’t start walking around taking in everything fast enough!

The Anderson Jockey Lot main entrance

I went with some friends that we met at the campground we are staying at, and we had a great time.  I have to say that to see everything there, you would probably need to go every day for at least a week, if not more, so the parts we were able to get to was only a fraction of the whole place.  Many of the vendors are inside under huge metal buildings that all connect together.  On every corner, there were peanuts being roasted, and the smell of roasted peanuts filled the buildings like a warm hug. 

The Jockey Lot outside vendors

There were vendors selling all kinds of wares, from phones, to baseball hats to animals (including chickens, dogs, cats, rabbits and a whole host of other animals).  There was also, thank goodness, a vendor making fresh doughnuts….. I cannot resist them, and I absolutely didn’t this day!  Hot chocolate, freshly cooked doughnuts, fresh air, and good friends, what more could a girl want for? 

Now if you knew me, you would know to never go to buy fresh vegetables with me, because I get very excited over gorgeous fresh veggies.  And this day was no different, there were outside vendors who had a huge selectin of veggies between them, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.  There were veggies that I had never seen before, and I couldn’t resist buying more than I have storage for in our RV.  I figured I would just have to prep them, freeze them and use them at a later date. 

All kinds of fruit and veggies locally grown and beautiful
Amazing veggies

I was in heaven, my day couldn’t get any better…… I would have been more than happy to come home when we left the Jockey lot, but my friends weren’t ready to come right home, so we decided to go to a local winery and check out some of the wines local to this area.  Now, I had never been to a winery before, because I’m not really a wine drinker, but I thought it would be lovely to be able to cross this experience off of my bucket list.

We headed off towards the mountains to a winery that a couple of our friends had been to before we arrived in the area, it was very laid back and we all felt relaxed, even before we had had any wine! 

City Scape Winery

City Scape Winery in Pelzer, SC was a peaceful, tranquil place.  It was rustic and homely, but their wines were delicious.  We tried six different wines varying from dry white wines to red and even a chocolate raspberry wine. 

The only downside for the whole visit were the yellowjackets which were out in force on this day and for some reason found me to be particularly appealing!  I was plagued by the viscious little flying beasts.  They were literally all over me and when I had to get up from the table several times to try to escape them, they followed me wherever I went.  One even decided to take a bath in my glass of wine, which I wouldn’t have minded, except for the fact that he did it BEFORE I had sipped any to try it.  I wasn’t about to try this wine with a yellowjacket swimming around in it.

I also fund out a year ago that I have a very nasty reaction to a sting from yellowjackets, so I was very wary.  That, fortunately, did not take away from the wonderful experience we had at the winery.  They also served a couple of local cheeses and jams with some really delicious crackers.  All in all, it was a perfect day, and we all had a lot of laughs and made a lot of great memories, which to me makes it a perfect day.

City Scape Winery tasting patio

The friends we have made are totally awesome, and we will be friends for life now.  They have become like family to us, and we are so blessed to have met such wonderful people.  When we started full time RVing, we had no idea that we would meet so many wonderful people on our travels.  We are all so different, but we also have in common the passion for living in an RV full time and traveling around the country.  Linsley and I are finding out that this way of life is so much more than we had ever expected it would be.  Each and every day we experience something new and there is a lot of laughter, fun and love in our lives, oh and lots of great food too.

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OUR FIRST FEW WEEKS AS FULLTIME RVERS

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Lake Hartwell, SC

We headed off on our first adventure in the RV (we still haven’t come up with a good name for her) and we arrived at our first destination which was only 4 hours drive from what used to be home. We were late heading out after it took way longer than I hoped to clean the floors at the house before we left. So we arrived not at 3:00pm as we had aimed for but after 5:30pm to find that the office at the campsite was closed. On the door of the office were envelopes for the people who had reservations, BUT there was no envelope for us! We had made the reservation, so we were totally confused, and worried that our first night on the road was going to have to be spent in Walmart parking lot! NOT OUR HAPPIEST HOUR!

Panic could have set in, but rather than that I went online and found a campsite nearby who had a spot we could take for the night and we booked and paid for that spot, thinking we would go there for the one night and then come back and claim our reservations here at our original destination.

We were about to pull out to head over to the nearby campsite, when a lady came driving up to us in a golf cart and asked if she could help us. We explained the situation and she hurriedly went off to get the lady who worked in the office, who apparently lived at the campsite. A few minutes later, a very nice lady came and opened up the office, and found our reservation and we were set. Her and her husband were very welcoming and escorted us to the appropriate site and helped us make all the hook ups and get settled. They also invited us to dinner the following evening, which was really lovely. We graciously accepted their invitation, after all we knew no-one and had no firm plans.

The campsite

What really impressed us was how everyone we met in those first few hours at this campsite was so friendly, something that you just don’t come across when you first move into a brick and mortar house. You can go months, even years without meeting or knowing your neighbors! It was almost like everyone around us took an interest to make sure we had everything we needed. Very refreshing!

We were bummed that there was the initial mix up about our reservation, and that we had had to pay for the nearby site, which was not refundable.

We found out that the nice lady and her husband who had welcomed us and helped us that first night were Janet and Jimmy. We did have dinner with them the following night and they introduced us to a few other people, also really open and welcoming, and now, after being here for 3 weeks, have all become firm friends.

Although we had planned to stay for just a week and then head west with a final destination for the winter near San Antonio, Texas, we decided to stay at this campsite for a while, at least until our house sold, which over the next few weeks changed to… we will stay here for the winter.

The owner of the campsite has been very accommodating and is happy to have us stay for the winter. Because of prior bookings, we have to move a couple of times, but that really isn’t a problem.

The people we have met here are totally amazing and knowing that we are complete newbies, have helped us by teaching us all kinds of things about our RV and the systems on it, showing us around the area, and as we don’t have a car at the moment, have taken us shopping, and even loaned us their car if we have needed it. We are in awe of their generosity and care.

We have taken it in turns to make dinner for everyone, and often sit after the evening meal as it turns dark and chat, laugh and have a good time with this group of fantastic people. It actually feels like we have known them all for years, not weeks.

We have been to a few great restaurants, one wing place, where on Tuesday evenings, they have 2-fer night, you get double the amount of wings you order for the price of the original order, so if you order and pay for 6 wings, you get 12 wings…… etc. They also have happy hour at the same time, so Tuesday evenings is usually wing night.

Wing Restaurant – awaiting our food!

We also all went to a great Mexican restaurant, the food was amazing and loads of it! A great time, lots of giggles, lots of laughs and actually quite a lot of tequila too!

Great Mexican Restaurant

We have our set up pretty much worked out now, we also discovered something that we had not thought of before we left. We had all kinds of camping and cooking gear, we had a crab boil pot with propane burner, which we let go in the estate sale for literally next to nothing, but now we are wishing that we had brought it with us. We were under the misguided impression that while travelling, everything has to be stashed away in a compartment or cupboard, but we have since found out that most people have lots of equipment that is literally put into the RV while travelling and left outside when set up. There is a sense of trust in RV communities that you don’t find in normal neighborhoods with brick and mortar homes. This discovery is very refreshing, and we will be replacing lots of that camping equipment that we just sold off. We just wish we had realized this before we sold everything.

Our RV set up, I’m sure it will change over time, andwith experience

We are learning a lot in a very short time, and one of the biggest things we have learned is that the people that do RV full time, are some of the most open friendly and honest people you could ever want to meet. That is not to say that anyone should let their natural guard down, but this full time RVing I guess attracts a different kind of person, and the ones we have met have all been very similar in the fact that they have all been very caring, helpful, friendly, giving, outgoing people. I truly believe that everyone should try this for a month, it would restore a lot of people’s belief in humanity!

We are having such a great time, and feel so relaxed already, we have seen huge changes in our health, our outlook, our hopes and dreams and neither one of us can imagine living in a brick and mortar house ever again……..this life is AMAZING! We are loving it.

The best part of all is that there is absolutely no rush to get anywhere and we have a whole huge country to explore at our own pace.

We are looking at maybe doing some workcamping in summer 2020, maybe in Colorado, or Nova Scotia, as it seems to us that even though it is great to be free, having something to get up for in the mornings is quite a good thing, and the added bonus is that if you work where you camp, you usually get some kind of break on the site fees, which makes living very inexpensive.

I have to admit that living full time in the RV, I had thought that we may knock heads a few times, over silly things, but so far, we have been really in tune and at peace with each other in such confined quarters. I think that Linsley and I are closer now than we ever have been before, and we have been together for a very long time!

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The FINAL PHASE OF OUR TRANSITION FROM BRICK AND MORTAR TO FREEDOM!

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No-one ever promised that it would be easy, this transition of ours, but how could we have expected it to be quite so stressful. I won’t lie, the last 3 weeks have been probably the most stressful that I have ever experienced.

First of all, we moved into the RV and relocated around the corner to Oak Hollow lake while the estate sale was going on. We didn’t drive by the house, as we didn’t want to see what sort of turnout the sale got. So we were on tenderhooks all weekend while we waited for the final result from David, the Estate Sale guy. I must admit, it was tempting to do a quick drive by, but we didn’t. Instead we tried to take the weekend to decompress from the weeks of emotional and physical hard work we had done to get ready for the estate sale.

I must admit that the weekend, although nervous and worried about how much we would make at the end of the day, the RV stay was very peaceful and for the first time in years, we both slept really well.

My beautiful Nathan hand made teak dining room furniture

By the end of the day on Saturday, we had a total figure from the sale and although it was a little disappointing, we were ok with it.

On Monday, we returned to the house to greet the painters when they arrived to paint the inside of the house. The foreman arrived, but his crew did not! So, right off the bat, I had a sinking feeling that it had been a big mistake to hire this crew to paint the entire inside of the house. At 10am the crew started to arrive in dribs and drabs….. they swooped into the house and within minutes, they had started to paint. The problem is that they started painting the walls, not the ceilings. I’m not a professional painter, but I do know that you start from the top and work down. you paint the ceilings before the walls, and you cut in to the trims and corners BEFORE you paint the rest of the wall. So when they started painting the walls first and not even cutting in to the trim and the corners, I was really worried.

By the end of the day on Monday, there was more paint on my beautiful hardwood floors than there was on the walls. I took the foreman to one side and tried to talk with him about the order in which things were being painted and also the mess that was being created inside my house. He stated that he thought the paint job was good and that he didn’t think the ceilings need to be painted. The contract was that the WHOLE inside of the house would be painted, not his selected areas. This is what he had quoted for, and I wasn’t happy that he was now trying to cut the job in half, but still wanted the full amount of money for the job.

His workers ended up working a total of 3 hours on Monday, then Tuesday, didn’t arrive until 11am and left at 4pm after taking one hour for lunch and a 45 minute break to get a drink! On Wednesday, they didn’t arrive until midday, and I lost my cool and asked for a meeting with the whole crew in an attempt to get the job back on track. The crew, by this time were fighting amongst each other and spending more time arguing than painting.

One of the original painter’s crew

As a result of my requested meeting, the foreman did bring in another guy who had the rest of the crew assigned to certain areas and who also made them work until midnight to catch up. I was actually in the house painting myself and got a lot more done than any of the crew members, apart from this new guy, who was great. The problem was that we had a schedule that had to be stuck to as the house was going live on the market on Monday, and taking an extra week to paint the house just wasn’t in that schedule! I had given this crew the benefit of the doubt long enough, and when they came to me on Thursday and said that they would not get the job done on time, I had to take a few minutes to talk to Linsley, and we decided that we had to fire the painting crew.

Donny, the only guy who knew what he was doing, when I asked him what it would take to get the job back on track, stated that as far as he could see the job would not be brought back on track as long as we had this same crew, who didn’t want to work. So, much as I hated doing it, I went out and told the foreman that I had to fire him and his crew because they were not performing the work for which they had been hired. That was at 2pm, by 9pm, they were all still hanging around the house arguing and taking whatever they could to offset the fact that they had been fired, and I thought they would never leave. They were very aggressive and I was concerned that they might trash the house. I carried my phone with me at all times during that horrible day, just in case I had to call 911.

One of the original painter’s crew members

Donny agreed to stay on and bring his own crew, who he said would get the job fixed and finished within the timeline we had originally scheduled. The first crew that I had to fire had totally trashed my whole house! I was distraught and worried sick. It makes no sense to me that someone would portray themselves as a painter with a fantastic crew, when in reality, he was someone out to make a buck with a bunch of unemployed people who didn’t actually want to work as his crew! The other strange thing was that almost every day it was different people on his crew, so there was no continuity at all.

This is Donny, my hero, who totally saved the day!

Finally, after Donny and his crew set to work, they fixed the mess the first painters made and also got the job done and on time. I will forever be grateful to Donny and his wonderful crew for saving the day.

Still, before we could leave the house, I had to get on my hands and knees and scrub every inch of the floors (almost 3000 square feet) throughout the whole house as there was so much paint and plaster etc. on the floors. It took so long, but I finally got the floors gleaming, and hours after we had planned to leave, we finally closed the front door for the last time, and climbed into the RV and drove away and I have to say, by the time we left, we couldn’t drive away fast enough!

So begins our new adventure! We are now in a lovely campsite at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, we will stay here for a week before making the push down towards San Antonio, Texas over the following week. Our new neighbors are wonderful and have offered us “”newbies” all kinds of help and advice, which I have to say we gladly accept as we know we have so much to learn. BUT we are on our way!

Lake Hartwell, Townville, SC
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Our New BEAUTIFUL RV

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My one reservation with all this downsizing, selling the house and heading out in an RV was that we didn’t own an RV yet . I had this vision of us destitute, no home, no belongings and in dire straights! Sleeping on a park bench, or worse!

We had been searching all avenues for an RV, but as we were looking for an older model that we could buy outright, as soon as they came on the market, they were gone, or they were out in California (there are not too many good used RV’s for sale in North Carolina), or there was something majorly wrong with them.

Then, by chance, one day, when I was angry with Linsley because he had refused to go look at an RV which was 5 hours drive away in Virginia, I started looking at Craigslist, even though I had sworn I wouldn’t look until he apologized! Well, there was an ad which had been placed by the son of a couple who were selling their RV. We had almost been burned before with a scenario like this, so I was very dubious, but thought what harm can a phone call do? So, courage in hand, I made the call and got voicemail! I was ground to a screaming HALT! I left a message, not expecting to actually hear back from a real person, I was sure it was going to be a scam.

Half an hour later, our phone rang and it was from the same number I had called. On the other end of the line was Ada, a wonderfully lovely lady, who confirmed that her son had placed the ad for her and her husband because they were not tech savvy! We had a lovely chat and she told me about their RV, which they had bought brand new and loved so much. From the pictures that were posted, you could tell that this RV had been loved over the years. The great surprise for us, was that it had a new engine and transmission and many other new parts in recent years.

We arranged to drive the 3.5 hours to see it, we also made sure to take the money with us because if it was as good as we thought, we intended to buy it. Sure enough, this beauty was everything that Ada and her lovely husband, Billy, had told us it was, and we were very happy to buy this well loved RV. She is a Four Winds Hurricane, 1996, but the inside looks almost like it did when it was brand new. No wear, no stains, just lovely! The only thing that we need to do to it, is to replace or add our names on the outside where Ada and Billy’s names appear.

We weren’t able to take it with us the day we saw it, because it was a Sunday and we couldn’t find a notary public to take care of the title transfer, so we agreed to come back the following weekend. We put a good deposit on it and left for home.

The following week, we headed back down to Ada and Billy’s home to seal the deal and have the title transferred over to us and we drove home in our new home, this beauty!

I will always be very grateful to Ada and Billy for taking such great care of her, and we will stay in touch with them and keep them updated on our travels and adventures. We couldn’t have hoped to find a better RV or such a lovely couple to buy it from. Thank goodness Ada and Billy didn’t suffer any great damage from Hurricane Dorian that just passed them by.

Since we bought her, our RV has been great, I cleaned her from top to bottom (more because I am anal about that) and she is now packed up with all our belongings, ready for us to hit the road as soon as the estate sale is completed. Our neighbors have been wondering what we are doing, having the house prettied up and then an RV arriving on the front, so we talked to them and explained what we are doing, and to our surprise, none of them thought we were crazy!

Some friends sent a big sticker for the side of the RV, (we must find a name for her!) and we stuck it on her this Saturday. It looks great and Linsley was very happy with the fact that the colors matched perfectly with the original stripes on the RV.

Everything is coming together now and although neither one of us has any regrets about our decision, we are nervous/anxious/scared/freaking out because it is all very imminent now. We will be moved into the RV in 6 days from now, and then all our belongings will be sold, and we will be officially full timers! Very exciting, but also pretty scary!

Although we paired everything down to bare essentials, the RV is packed to the gills, and we figure that along the way, we will realize that there are things that really aren’t essentials once we get used to living free of material possessions, and when that happens, we will have a second pairing down and unload some of the things we now feel are essential. The one thing that our two eldest sons asked us to keep for them….. their childhood teddy bears! So they are just a couple of things that will always be carried with us, at least until they visit and take them. They both live overseas, so that won’t be any time in the next few months.

When we move into the RV next week, we will be staying on the driveway for a few days, then we will move to the campground around the corner from our house at the lake, and this will be our first real test of all the systems and our first real taste of what life on the road will be like. If you weren’t already aware, this will be Linsley and my first time in an RV, we have been camping (or more like glamping) for a few years, but this will be our first experience with RVing. We are anxious to work out how everything works and get used to all the systems on it. Fortunately, Billy gave us all the original books and manuals on everything, so we have a big advantage there.

My next post will be from the lake, I may even post a picture of Linsley emptying the waste tanks for the first time! (That should be hysterical!) He is absolutely dreading it! LOL

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THE DOWNSIZING PROCESS……….

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Have you ever stopped, looked around your house, and really seen all the “stuff” you have accumulated over the years?

That is exactly what Linsley and I had to do, and the thought of sorting through it all was daunting, overwhelming, ridiculous, I can think of at least another good few words to describe how I felt at the prospect of going through everything in our home……. The reality was every bit as overwhelming as the thought of it.

Well, we found out from the Estate Sales company we hired, that we basically had to remove anything we wanted to keep, and everything of a personal nature. So I set to work going through every drawer and cabinet in the house. I have to say that once you start this process, it is totally amazing just how much personal stuff you find that needs to be removed. Old letters that Linsley had used as bookmarks etc. so it’s not only going through the obvious places but EVERYWHERE! I have had a few chuckles over the things I have discovered that I had either forgotten about or thought were long gone!  A few nice surprises, a love letter that was written when we first started dating a million years ago….. hospital wrist bands from when the boys were born, and a few other gems that had been buried in our memories for years.

During this purge, we also had a handiman working on the outside of the house giving it some much needed curb appeal and as you can see from the picture (above), it now looks bright, cheerful and welcoming. Living in the same house for years, you tend to forget about the curb appeal, and I have to admit, we had been guilty of that, but with a good lick of paint and some pressure washing, she looks like a whole new house!

After weeks of combing through everything inside the house, deciding what we really couldn’t part with, we were both amazed at how easily we were getting through it all. It all just told us that we were doing the right thing and showed us that although there were ahhh moments, none of the “stuff” mattered to us more than our happiness. If someone had told me two years ago that all the “stuff” we had accumulated over the years would be this easy to part with, I would have marked them down as insane! Funny how that change of mindset happens when you’re not looking!

It was crazy that some things we had bought for the house right before making the decision were still in their boxes and we were now looking at selling them in the estate sale. I guess that’s how life happens though, you live each day and a decision made one day can affect all the decisions made for months, even years prior to that. This is where having a crystal ball would have been really handy! LOL

I have to say that the mess created by going through everything in the house was a little much for me. I am one of these very organized people, and it drove me crazy to have all our belongings pulled out from their storage places and within sight.  I had to talk myself off the ledge many times as I tried to clean around the insane clutter!  It also occurred to me in the middle of all this mess “who on earth would want to buy our old stuff?” The estate sale guy talked me down from that one, bringing in furniture specialists to assess the worth of the hand-made furniture I had brought from England with me years ago.  It turns out, however much you are used to the furniture you have lived with for years, it will appeal to someone…. We were told that although we lived in the furniture capital of the world here in North Carolina, our furniture was “different” and therefore very appealing to many of the dealers around here.  I guess time will tell on that one!

I did find a rhythm to all the madness.  I designated a big plastic tote for collecting like things…. Office supplies, toys, shoes, etc. and that helped me deal with the mess.  Having said that, I am two weeks away from the estate sale now and I feel totally burned out…

I know that I will keep going, and I realize that although this is a hard process to go through, the only way to come out the other end to freedom is to keep going!  We are close now and soon I will be able to sit here with a totally empty house, a glass of wine in my hand and breathe a huge sigh of relief that it is over.  I also know that one day, I will look back on this time and laugh about it all.  Just not right now…… hahaha

(our life on the road in our RV)

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