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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.

 

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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