Category Archives: Downsizing Home

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?

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

A NEW PERSPECTIVE – CHANGE OF FOCUS

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On December 31, 2018 I was laid off from my job.  After the health problems I had gone through a few years ago, my confidence was shaken to the core.  It is now summer, 2019, and still no replacement job on the radar.  This, I have to admit has knocked me off my feet as I have never in my life had a problem finding a job. Together with turning 60 this spring, Linsley and I have decided that it’s the universe telling us to go in a different direction! 

I know that doesn’t sound like the thoughts of two sane people, but with all that has happened in the past years, life is too short to struggle and try to keep everything together for other people. Our children are all set up, have their own homes and lives, and we are now reduced to the role of listeners.  We listen to their numerous complaints about each other, but they don’t want to listen to any advice we give, so after lots of heart wrenching thought and lots of research, we have decided to “drop out”! 

By that, I mean that Linsley and I have decided to liquidate everything and starting a new adventure.  

“Dropping out” has been an often talked about concept between Linsley and I over the years, but was always placed on the back burner because kids needed this or that.  It always seemed selfish to go off and have a life, but we have recently had an epiphany…

… now that the kids are all grown up….. THIS IS OUR TIME!!!

I will be writing regularly to update you on the details of what that entails, and I’m pretty certain that there will be some set-backs and some heartache along this process, but we will face it all head on, because we owe it to ourselves to make the most of our time here and have no regrets at the end of it all.

We know for sure that we are not the only people who have made this decision, and we know that there are an awful lot of people who wish that they could make this radical move, we are neither wealthy, nor special, we just have the conviction to make it work.  I’m sure we will stumble along the way, I’m sure we will have some absolutely amazing experiences and meet some truly remarkable people in our travels, and I will be on this blog to share it all, good and bad alike!

We will document from start to finish our journey to freedom!

It begins tomorrow…… we have a realtor coming to tell us what we can reasonably expect to make by selling the house.  Then the next day we have a home liquidation company who will survey our belongings and give us a reasonable estimate of what we could realize by selling it all, lock stock and barrel!  Between the two, we should have enough to purchase an RV and hit the road!  We have an RV picked out that we truly believe will serve our living needs, and plan to spend our summers up north and the winters down south.

We are not doing this on a whim, we have done a lot of research and although we will be semi-retired, Linsley will still continue to work (he has worked from home for the past 6 years and can continue to do so once we head off) which will give us cash flow to live on.  I will find ways along the way to make money too.  It is important that we go into this with a solid plan of how we will live.  It wouldn’t make sense to just run off and find that we run out of funds to live a few months into it, and we want to be self-sufficient for the long run.  One thing that we have discovered is that we are both ready to let go of all the “stuff” that for years we held sacred (belongings) and have carried around with us each time we moved.  Life is too short, we don’t want to grow old and regret not having our adventure.

This is the start of the rest of our lives and we are so ready for it!  Come along with us on our journey, live vicariously through us as we take the bull by the horns, or maybe learn how it can be done.  If we can do it, anyone can. We are totally down to earth normal folk who just want to be happy and travel and meet new people.