We started our fulltime RV adventure over 9 years ago in May of 2013. Our travels have taken us across the USA, coast to coast, and we have thoroughly enjoyed the journey. The past couple of years brought some major changes to our lifestyle.
- For one thing, COVID cramped our style the same as it did for everyone else. We hunkered down in a comfortable urban campground for the duration.
- Meanwhile, I kept getting requests to serve as interim pastor in different places. What with COVID making it difficult to plan and the satisfaction we get from helping churches, we took the departure from our touring lifestyle in stride and enjoyed ministering to some wonderful people.
- Also, medical stuff has occupied more and more of our calendar. Thank God, the concerns haven’t been major. They have, though, impacted our travel plans as well as our bank account!
- While we full well know that there’s a lot to see and do in this country, we’ve had a bit of a feeling of “been-there-done-that.” There are many gaps in our travel, but we’ve seen a great deal over the past several years and have visited some favorite areas more than once.
- We’ve gotten kind of tired of living in a RV. I think this is related to slowing down our travel the past couple of years. Doing typical RV chores and living in a small space is well worth the inconvenience so long as the tradeoff is going places and seeing new things. For us, the less we have done, the less we have enjoyed the RV as a residence.
- Finally, skyrocketing fuel costs have influenced our thinking. Fill ups costing hundreds of dollars do make one think twice about hitting the road.
Had the slowdown not happened we might have continued the RV life a bit longer. You might say that we lost much of our “momentum” waiting out COVID, etc. Frankly, we never retired to live in a RV – rather we retired to travel in a RV.
All this to say we are retiring from fulltime RVing, at least for the foreseeable future. Even as I write this the motorhome is on a consignment lot waiting for the right buyer to come along. I expect to get a smaller rig at some point in the future so we can do some seasonal, short-term travel. Time will tell.
All of this, though, doesn’t mean our unconventional retirement adventures are over. In a few days we will begin an entirely new adventure. I’ll write more about that in a few days. We’re excited about this next step!
As we’ve enjoyed the fulltime lifestyle we’ve met some interesting people. Many fulltimers tell me they have a blog, and if they do, I bookmark their site intending to keep up with them. To be honest, I tend to forget those bookmarked sites and seldom look at them.
Our 2017 Adventure had both ups and downs. It was a year with several unexpected expenses that included a broken windshield and various camper repair projects. Later on we decided it was time to put new tires on the camper. At four and a half years they still looked good but camper tires are notorious for failing at about that age. We also ended up putting new tires on the truck, but, sorry to say, that came after a major tire failure that did damage to the truck. Not long after that the truck ended up in the shop for a bigger repair. After working through the issue with the warranty company, the repair ended up costing us hundreds rather than thousands of dollars. Still, it was an expense that hit the bank account pretty hard. The lesson learned wasn’t a new one, but still hit us in the wallet: when it rains it pours.
During 2017 we towed the camper nearly 5000 miles, visited 17 states, and stayed in 34 different places. This year, when we arrived in South Dakota we completed visiting all 50 states (although not all in the RV). We started and finished the year volunteering on Battleship Texas. This marks our fourth season of wintering in this unique location on the Houston Ship Channel. We are still working on our 2018 Adventure and expect to continue our journeys in this New Year.