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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?

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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

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.