Four Years And Counting (July 20, 2009-July 20, 2013)

leaving the house in 2009

Four years ago Paul and I made the decision to sell our house, buy an RV, and explore the country.

Our original idea  was to travel for a year or so, to see how we like the full-time lifestyle.  If we didn't like it, we figured we’d look along the way for a place we might like to live, since we didn't see a compelling reason to stay in Michigan. But, as it happens, we've discovered that we love this lifestyle, and now we have no specific idea on when we might stop traveling.  For us, the two Full timer mottoes really hold true:

“Home Is Where We Park It”

“House-less, not Homeless”

Our 5th wheel really has become our home- as Paul says- once we come inside and close the door- we’re home, no matter what town we happen to be in.  And sadly, too often we forget where we are!

Some things about our life are different than I expected them to be. 

I thought we’d use the boat a lot, and we don’t.  We pull it out once in a while but that’s about it.

Experienced full-timers told us we’d soon slow down and not move as often.  New full-timers tend to travel in what we call “vacation” mode, rushing from place to place, trying to see everything. So, I thought that after a year or thereabouts, we would slow down, like most others do.  But we haven’t.  Even during the winter, we rarely stay in one spot for more than a week or so.  It seems like the only time we stay someplace longer, it’s because we are visiting friends or family. 

I thought I would brush up on  my Spanish, and I haven’t.  I think I looked at it twice.

That really is the crux of it.  We have learned what we like and don’t like and are lucky enough at this stage in our life that we are able to indulge ourselves and do exactly what we want.  Apparently I don’t care enough about Spanish to spend the time to learn it again. Apparently I don’t like geocaching, because although it seems a perfect fit for our lifestyle,we don’t do it.

There are challenges along the way, of course.  Every once in a while, we get into trouble because we only receive our mail every 6 weeks or so. That can be annoying- one time, because of a mail delay, we found out that Michigan had revoked our drivers licenses. We got the warning that they were going to do it, and the notice that they had done it, in the same batch of mail.  Oops. Figuring out where and when we can have things shipped to us is also a challenge..

  Not having consistent medical  care in our lives is causing me some anxiety.  We are both healthy, luckily, so it hasn't been a huge issue yet, but it’s one of those things that we are aware of.  At some point, we may need to make adjustments to our travels because of that. On the plus side, if either of us has a serious medical issue, we can go anywhere in the country to get treatment.

One of the biggest day to day challenges is the attempt to stay physically fit.  Yes, we hike, and we love to do it, but there are a lot of places where it just isn't possible. Plus, hiking does nothing for upper body strength.  We have all the “tools” to do a reasonably decent work out, we just don’t have the ambition to actually do it. It was much easier to just go to the gym 4 times a week.

There are things about this lifestyle that I really enjoy- some of them have come as a complete surprise to me.  For instance, I've never been a huge history fanatic, but I have really enjoyed learning about the history of our country, and piecing together the timeline of its development, as we visit each area.

I am happiest, it seems, in our National Parks.  Before we went on the road, I hadn't spent much time in them, and now I realize that they were made into parks for a reason- they have something incredible to see and experience!

Most of the time I love the fact that we don’t know where we will be next week.  What I love more though, is that if I want to know where we’ll be next week, I can just make reservations in advance.  Problem solved.  We, like most full-timers, make our plans in chalk, or Jell-O. Not very strong, and easily erased, but we do have what Paul and I call “bookends”- reservations that are made pretty far in advance, that we need to keep.  Our next bookend is September, in Michigan, for doctor appointments.  Until then, we’ll meander around.

Dozer, at the ripe old age of 10, has learned to adjust to life on the road. He’s adapted to the point that instead of sitting outside locked up in a cage…

  …he gets to explore new areas on a leash.

Dozer's explorations

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One of the things we “gave up” when we went on the road is our friends.  But then, anytime you move, you give up most of your friends.  What’s really awesome is that we have made a lot of new friends since we went on the road.  These are people that enjoy the same lifestyle we do, so we have something in common right from the get-go.

  And then there are the people who, once you've met them, will be your friend for life.  We are lucky enough to have those kinds of friends.  Some we met before the road…(at age 3)

some we have met while on the road…

 

One of the perks of our lifestyle has been that we actually get to see family more often than we did while living in Michigan. We travel from my family in Boston to his brother in California, stopping by Paul’s mom’s every time we pass through Texas.

We supplement our visits to the kids by either flying to see them, or flying them to see us!

 

A lot of people are curious about our lifestyle, and many say they are envious (although I don’t think they really are).  Many people think we’re a little nuts.  I will say, this lifestyle is not for everyone.  If you have a partner, you have to be best friends and able to live in a small space together.  That’s really the only “must have” that I can think of. Anything else can be adjusted to suit you. If you don’t want to travel a lot, stay in one spot.  If you get nervous not knowing where you’ll be, make reservations.  If you don’t want to sell  everything you own, put it in storage until you decide what to do (some of our stuff is still in storage).  If you need to keep costs down, volunteer in a national park, or work camp.  If you aren’t sure you’ll love the lifestyle, have an exit plan. Ok, I was wrong, having an exit plan is the second “must have”.

There are two questions that we get asked with amazing frequency:

First:  How do you get your mail?? Easy, since everything is done online these days, there isn't much mail to get.  The rest goes to a mail forwarding service, who ships it to us whenever and wherever we want.  The second question is tougher to answer :

Where is your favorite place so far?

Paul has gotten to the point that he is consistent with his answer-Yosemite National Park.

I usually say “any national park, with my favorites being Yosemite, Yellowstone and Big Bend”. 

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Paul and I play a game with each other every once in a while, asking the question “If we had to settle somewhere right now where would it be?”  Answer: Arizona.

So, anyway, here are a few numbers from our last 4 years of full timing. 

We started with one plan- to spend as long as we wanted touring the country in our 5th wheel.  To prepare for this, we sold one house and one boat, had two garage sales, and made countless trips to Goodwill.

We have driven two trucks 106,115 miles and towed three trailers 48,541 miles, using  five GPS’s to guide us.

We have visited 25 national parks, 38 states and two countries spending $26,624 on fuel to get there.

We've stayed in 258 campgrounds and met hundreds of people living the same lifestyle as us and Zero of them are doing it in exactly the same way we are.

We've endured temperatures ranging from 9° to 108°.

Dozer has caught three mice in the trailer, and one baby squirrel that he tried to bring into the trailer. 

We've seen three different primary care doctors, three different dentists, two veterinarians, and dealt with one broken bone.

And, of course, you are reading this because I have written 355 posts on my blog, and I choose the pictures from my 8.7 gigabytes of photos.

 
  

   
 
 
 

Celebrating 11 years

Paul and I are celebrating our 11th anniversary today.  I am not a "mushy" type of person, but the last 11 years have been the happiest of my life.  Having someone as a partner who is supportive, intelligent and fun, and always puts me first has made my life more amazing than I thought possible. 
    We're spending the day hiking in the Chiricahua Mountains.  We've basically been hibernating for the last few days as Arizona suffers record low temperatures.  Last night it got as low as 14 degrees here in Willcox.  We haven't had the snow that other parts of the country have had, but around here, no one is prepared for such low temperatures and they are struggling to cope.  We were planning on being in El Paso today, but the snow and the cold have caused us to delay moving again.
    Today it's supposed to finally warm up- 58 degrees in the mountains, 64 down in the town, but we are slow to get moving because its still only 28 out right now.  Hopefully we will get to hike and I can post some pictures.


February 5, 2000



Albuquerque, NM

On February 5, 2000, Paul and I were married, with my daughter Jessica (age 9) as my maid of honor, and my son Stephen (age 13) as Paul's best man.  The years since then have been the best years of my life. I gained a best friend, and my kids gained a dad. 
This trip to Albuquerque New Mexico was our anniversary trip.  Since the Everest is still in the shop, we borrowed Paul's dad's Jaguar and traveled in style.  We left on Thursday the 4th, and meandered up the highway.  Its about a 4 hour drive to get there, but of course we stopped along the way, so it took much longer than that.  We veered off a little and landed in the town of Truth or Consequences.
         Naturally, my first thought after hearing the name of the town was "you're kidding....was the town named after the show, or the show named after the town?"  Answer:  The town was named after the show.
In 1950, the show Truth or Consequences had been on the radio for 10 years and they were looking for a unique way to celebrate their anniversary.  The decision was made to look for a town that would be willing to change its name to Truth or Consequences, and then the anniversary broadcast would take place from that town.  Quite a few towns actually put their names in the hat, but the chosen town was Hot Springs, New Mexico, which was very well known by that time for their.....hot springs.  Apparently some of the townspeople (according to one we spoke with) were afraid that the current drought would continue and the springs would dry up, so they were looking for another claim to fame. A vote was quickly taken and by a margin of 4 to 1 the townspeople agreed to change the name. The next day, the Anniversary Show was broadcast from the new Truth or Consequences.
     After checking out the local museum and having our first "Chile Cheeseburger" we continued on to Albuquerque. By now Paul was very excited.  This is Chile country- everywhere you look you see Chiles growing or being sold.  (Paul loves both Mexican food, and  Hatch Chiles, and goes out of his way to find them for when he cooks Mexican food. ) They say that if you dine out in Albuquerque you will invariably be asked "Green or Red?"  The adventurous answer is "Christmas" which tells the server that you would like both green and red chile sauce on your food.
    The main reason for our visit to Albuquerque was really to put Paul's  memories to the test.  He has been telling me for years that Albuquerque has the best  (New) Mexican food and sopapaillas.  Every time we have sopapaillas, he compares them to the ones he has had in Albuquerque, and they always come up short of the mark. This was his opportunity to prove it to me!
After checking into our hotel, we called Teresa, a friend of Paul's, and made plans to meet her at a local restaurant for dinner. La Hacienda definately had the best Margaritas of the trip, and the food was good too.
I laughed when the waitress asked Teresa if she wanted green or red, and Teresa replied "Christmas".  I guess they really do use that terminology!  We sat in the restaurant for hours eating and talking.  Sadly, we did note that we were the only people in the restaurant the entire time.  We discovered over the next two days that the town is indeed THAT quiet at this time of year.
      Back at the hotel we headed for the hot tub after checking it out and finding it empty.  By the time we got back to it there was another couple there, and we had a great time talking to them. They are both young (24-25) journalists from Vermont.  We had lively discusssions about politics and places we've visited.
Friday, our actual anniversary, we decided to walk to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in the morning, and then head to Old Town for lunch and shopping in the afternoon. Actually, once we parked the car at the hotel, we didn't drive again until we left to come home. Everything was reasonably close and  it just made life simpler to walk. Anyway, the museum was ok, nothing fascinating, but still, interesting information. After a few hours of that, we started strolling through Old Town.  We had lunch at one of the top rated restaurants in town, (Church Street Cafe) but since we tried to keep it light, it wasn't much of a test of the food.  The Sopapaillas, however, were the best I have ever had.  At that point, Paul started saying "see??"
       We spent hours walking and shopping and talking.  We talked to the owners of many of the stores.  Many times we were the only ones on the street, as well as the only people in the store. I guess everyone was pretty lonely because we'd strike up a conversation and it would go on for quite a while.  It was a fun way to spend the afternoon and the only thing we bought all day was a vase for the trailer.

Our original idea was to go back and change into "nicer" clothes, but at 6:00 we decided that we had no reason to bother doing that, since no one was there to care what we wore.  We went straight out to dinner from there, then headed back to the hotel bar where we had another Margarita.  We had brought Champagne with us, but since its not our favorite drink, we still have it.

       This morning we managed to sneak in one more meal in Albuquerque at another top rated restaurant(Monica's El Portal).  The food was really good, and yes, the sopapaillas were as good as the ones we had yesterday.  I really wanted to order more, but I managed to refrain. Time to head back after that, but instead of the main highway, we took the scenic road, through a very rural part of New Mexico.  Good thing we didn't need gas (didn't see a station for about 100 miles) and weren't hungry. We would have loved to have seen more wildlife, but we did at least have two semi-close encounters.  A bobcat ran out into the road, turned and saw us quickly approaching, started to turn back, then finally crossed the street in front of us. We were close enough to get a pretty good look at him, but not so close that we left tire marks on the road.

Later on a coyote ran out in front of us as well, but we were much further away from him.  We saw a lot of hawks, but no eagles- that would have been awesome!
        Back in El Paso again, Paul has a short list of repairs that need to be done to his parents house, and we'll get as much done as we can before we leave again for a while  in March.

General blurb for anyone who hasn't read previous posts....

 Paul and I are in El Paso with his parents. On November 30th Paul's father fell through the floor in the attic. He has no broken bones, but is currently still unconscious. We are traveling on a limited basis and will stay in El Paso between trips.