Retrospective -- Addendum I

I hadn't any more than posted our retrospective on full-timing than Gary asked, "why didn't you write about all the churches?" I didn't write much about them during our travels and it was something very dear to me so I will write this addendum.

When we set out, I avowed that I would get to a physical church every weekend that I possibly could. I simply did not wish to rely on TV Mass; it is just not the same and I doubt I would have been as faithful to it. So I found a website, The Catholic Directory ( http://www.thecatholicdirectory.com/) that located church choices for me all over North America. Out of about 190 weekends I went to a physical church about 180 of them with TV church on the rest. When wintering I went largely to the same church for weeks at a time so I would guess that I went to about 120 separate churches. I went to some of the most well know of cathedrals and basilicas -- St Patrick's in New York City, Notre Dame in Montreal, and St Paul's in St Paul. The Mass at Notre Dame was in French which I don't know so I mainly prayed.

But there was many a fascinating tiny little parish like the pine wood church of West Yellowstone, the very simple board church of Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, and the tiny Desert Mission of Torrey, Utah.

Among the ones in between, there was one in Myrtle Beach we coined "the tuna church" because the "Our Lady Star of the Sea" made us think of Starkist -- it had a beautiful "porthole" of a stained glass window. The one in the home of our mailbox in Livingston, Texas had the most beautiful of altars.

Of course, let’s not forget how much time we spent in Las Vegas.  I had a small church within walking distance from the Freemont Street Experience and St. Joan of Arc accepts casino chips in their collections.

I often wished that I would have maintained a separate blog just to record each and every of the lovely churches that I visited. But as this hindsight now is 20/20, this addendum will have to suffice.

And now I have my own church – Holy Spirit in Mims, FL only about 3 miles from where we now live.

Our Full-timing Years–A Retrospective

It is overdue that we recap our nearly four years of traveling full time in our motor home, seeing the United States in a way that only this type of lifestyle would allow.

We moved into our Motor Home in August of 2011 and moved out in April 2015, 3 years and 8 months later.

Each year we summarized certain data about our travels and here it is for the last year and for the total of our full-timing journeys.

Our fourth year started in the Pacific Northwest and ended on the Atlantic coast of Florida; it was the only time we made a cross country trip.   Our new states included Washington, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin plus the Canadian Province of British Columbia.  Highlights included the Willamette Valley, Columbia River Gorge, Portland, Mt St Helen’s, the Olympic Peninsula, Seattle, the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, Teddy Roosevelt National Park, Minneapolis, Chicago, our new Grandson – Victor, Savannah, and our friends at Willow Lakes in Florida.  But we also were saddened by the loss of our very special nephew, Peter.

There is not enough space to write about our full four years of traveling.  Besides, we already blogged about it and it is all still over there in the right hand column of this page.  Our motor home traveled 23,000 miles, and the car another 57,000 miles.  In total, nearly 80,000 miles of amazing travels.  We visited 44 States, the District of Columbia, and 7 Canadian Provinces.  I still have 3 states to go to get to 50.  Gary has visited every state and has been to all of them a second time except for one.

There were a few categories of our travels that we will mention – people, national parks, cities, winter in the south, and breweries.  Even as we traveled the country we were able to maintain our contact and communication with our families and friends.  And of course we made many new ones.  It was not that hard to drive the car back, jump a plane, and our always wireless communications systems did their jobs.

The national parks of the United States and Canada are simply spectacular.  We saw dozens of them.  There is no way we could name a single favorite or even group of favorites.  They each have to be loved for their unique features and characteristics.

We spent much more time in cities than the typical full time travelers.  Some full timers avoid cities like the plague.  We have always enjoyed what cities have to offer and we embraced that during our motor home travels as well.

For many years we had the view that upon retirement we would not spend winters in the north any longer.  We no longer wanted cold and snow in your lives.  After wintering in the motor home in Florida (twice), Texas, and Arizona, we made the right call.  Even if we aren’t traveling full time, we will enjoy the relative warmth of the south for winters from now on.

And breweries?  What is that about?  Before we went on the road, we were home brewers.  Simply stated, we brewed our own amazingly great beer.  As we really couldn’t brew in the motor home (but we did it once), we did the next best thing -- we visited as many as we could of the small breweries that are now all over the US.  Moreover, good brewers tend to be good cooks so breweries often have good food and they aren’t chain restaurants, something we try to avoid.  So, in our travels we visited over 350 breweries.  And while what averages out at about a hundred a year, it still is less than 10% of all the breweries that are out there.

So why is it that we finally stopped with this fantastic lifestyle that we are remembering?  In a word, it was me.  If Gary had his way, we still would own that same motor home, still be living and traveling in it and we probably would be doing so for at least another 5 years.  He might never have given it up.  But for me, the walls were closing in.  Moreover, I wanted a home base with at least some level of roots – and not just owning an RV lot while for the winter while still living in the motor home and traveling. And I also felt the ongoing stress of owning this older super complicated monster rig of a home and car.   It was tough for us when our desires had diverged.  But full time RVing can only be done if both of the travelers fully embrace it and I just couldn’t do that anymore.

But I think we did find reasonable compromise.  Our home in Florida is an RV port home in an RV community – it is a base for continuing to travel on a part-time basis.  We have a new rig that is more suited to a part time traveling lifestyle.  And we have found Florida to be a pretty nice place to live.  And Titusville even has a brewery.

And the part time RVing is about to begin!

The New Rig

TA DA………………. (click on any image to make it larger)

There it is  -- our new rig consisting of a 2016 Ford Expedition (of course it is a Ford) and a 2015 Forest River Rockwood Mini Lite 2504S Travel Trailer.  We bought our new home base in mid November and by mid February we had the new rig already.

We had notions of what we were going to buy and how we were going to do it, but some things changed quite a bit.  Our intention had been to order a Ford Transit Cargo Van as the tow vehicle. But it wasn’t going to fit on the property real well, and with the compromises necessary to make it fit, we suddenly switched gears from ordering a Tansit to buying an Expediton off the lot and had that accomplished in about a week in January instead of a six to eight week order.  The Expedition has 9,400 pounds of towing capacity and is far nicer on the inside than a cargo van.

We then planned to order a new 2016 trailer of the same make, model, and floorplan as this one and to pit a couple dealers against each other to negtotiate a better price.  While Gary was putting together the order and in reality procrastinating just a little, he happend to look on Craigslist.  About 30 miles away was a listing for the same trailer one year old and little used. The owner found that his kids were just too busy with other activities to go camping so he didn’t want to make payments anymore.  We were happy to let him absorb that first year of depreciation and we scored our new to us trailer in a week in February instead of a six to eight week order for it.

So on with the show.  Shown below is how it fits on our home base.  There is just enough space to make it all fit.  It will fit even a bit better once we move a post.  But this is why we waited on the rig until we purchased the house.  We can have our “guest quarters” right outside our front door.

Here is the floorplan.  Note that it has a couch and a Murphy bed upfront.  The couch jack knifes flat and the Murphy bed folds down over the top of it – no added length for a dedicated bedroom – 26 feet total length.

Now for some interior shots.

 

We targeted a model with bunk beds as we will be spending a lot of time in the Summer near our grandson and hopefully one day we will want to come sleep on one of those bunks.  Also, we see that as a good place to store some tubs of stuff as we plan to be traveling for 3 to 6 months a year.

So if you just have to know yet more about the trailer, here is a link that will provide features specs and more.

http://www.forestriverinc.com/product-details.aspx?LineID=204

And if you want to see more, here are a couple links for click and drag 360 degree tours from a companion Forest River model

http://www.forestriverinc.com/product-details.aspx?LineID=203&Image=5387&ModelID=899&TourID=2953#Main

http://www.forestriverinc.com/product-details.aspx?LineID=203&Image=5387&ModelID=899&TourID=2954#Main

The New Home Base–Interior

Took some pictures taken of the interior, so it's time to up load them (just click on any picture to make it larger).

Shown below is the floor plan. The port area is at the lower right which is where the main entrance is into the great room.

Shown below are a couple views of the great room. You can see the very high ceilings -- they are almost to the roof of the RV port. Now that we are out of the motor home, Gary wanted a much bigger TV. He found a 58" diagonal plasma on Craigslist for a great price with the only problem being that it didn't begin to fit in the corner cabinet. He says he knew that ....... Somehow with the help of a neighbor down the street he got it mounted outside the front of the cabinet. It kind of dominates the room.  There is a half bath off the great room as well.

Behind the great room is a laundry room with a washer and a dryer, not the tiny washer/dryer all-in-one of the motor home.

 

The kitchen is probably the best feature of the house as it is very large for the size of the house and features a lot of cabinets and counter tops. There is an area off the kitchen for a smaller dining table in addition to the counter seating. And there is a small desk near the entrance from the porch/screen area that constitutes my "office".

Next is the office Gary claimed. You can see who got the better part of that deal.

A quick shot into the bathroom (hard to take picture of that one).

And the bedroom with a king size bed with just enough room to get around it and which we already have dressed it up with some Florida motif.

Finally,  a shot of the smallish patio area which is probably just fine as it will be a hot area with the afternoon sun on it.

It should work as our winter time home base for our summertime travels.  It is probably not the place we would have it we didn’t have an
RV.  We already have something in mind for when the day comes that we stop RVing, but that will likely be in another five years or more.

Next blog -- the rig. Yes, we do have a new RV rig to report on as well.

At Long Last–Something to Report

When last we were seen blogging, we had become MotorHomeLess. We sold our motor home and moved into a park model while we figured out just what we would be doing next. Well, it has taken a while but the plan came together -- in due course -- and now has been implemented.

We debated if we should continue blogging. But we are just too close to 500 blog posts to quit. We'll update on our changes and try to report on some of our activities going forward, at least for awhile.

We moved into the park model last April and stayed there until December. We slowed way down from our traveling routine of the past few years.  We experienced a Florida Summer. Yes, it was hot and humid. The ocean frequently called our name.  We watched a fisherman catch and release a shark.  (Gary WAS swimming there.)

My Dad was discovered with terminal cancer. He died in August. I spent around 3 months in Michigan.

I had shoulder surgery in November to repair a torn and detached tendon. Gary handled a lot of all this on his own.

We decided to make Florida our Winter base, purchase some property, cease full-time RVing, but "re-invest" in a part time RVing rig for the next several years.

We wanted to live in an RV community and we chose just to remain at Willow Lakes RV Park in Titusville, Florida, where we had wintered twice and rented the park model. We looked for a part-time home to complement our future part-time RVing. And we wanted the new RVing rig to fit on the home property, so we really had to find the home first.

So without further adieu, here is the home we have purchased.

It is what is known as an RV port home. The overall structure is one of an RV port (car port on steroids) but part of the port is built out as a home (a big part on this one).

And as you can see there still is space in the port and driveway for some form of RVing rig to be reported on soon.  There is around 900 square feet of living space.  After over 4 years living in under 400 square feet, it seems huge.

We are on the Par 3 golf course. This is a view from the back of the house. We are between the second green and the third tee. And yes, we are hit by golf balls from time to time.

That’s more than enough for one blog post.  Next post we'll show the interior of the house.