One Year of RVing - Nov 2, 2008 -

Can you believe it? It was November 5, 2007 when we took possession of our Carri-Lite and had the dealer take it to DeSoto State Park near Mentone, AL on Lookout Mountain. For the next eight days we brought in our belongings and began to get accustomed to our new home. Lynda had borrowed a friend’s video camera to record all the instructions Jason gave us about setting up and operating the heat pump, holding tanks, stove, etc. The only problem was that she thought the red light meant stop and the green light meant record. This seemed logical for someone who had never used a video camera before. The opposite was the case, however, so we got videos of the ground, the sky and numerous other useless shots. Oh well, the idea of videotaping was a good one. My how it all seems so long ago.

Looking back we have made many mistakes and learned a lot. As I’m sure you know, mistakes are great learning opportunities. An article in one of our recent Ode magazine even touts the value of failure. With that in mind we have had a very valuable year!

During the past year we have made new friends (even a few of our political persuasion) and become familiar with new places. We have learned what we like in RV parks - nice wide level sites with full utility hook-ups, convenience to services (e.g. groceries), good cell phone and air card signals, and a clean shot with our rooftop satellite dish. Our favorite parks so far are: Pleasant Valley, Howard, CO; Buckhorn Lake, Kerrville, TX; and River Country, Gadsden, AL. We are not into “boondocking” (no utility hook-ups) yet, and may never be. This is about as far as I go “roughing it.”

We have gained a greater appreciation of closely tracking the weather when severe storms are in the offing. We chose to head for the mountains of Colorado last June after getting tired of our NOAA radio giving us periodic watches and warnings day and night. Regular operations of our rig and truck have become routine, including my comfort driving and maneuvering our tandem apparatus; even backing has become fairly straightforward. Lynda drives the truck but has not yet tried pulling.

Would we do it again? Absolutely! We’re having a grand time and love the sense of freedom of this mobile lifestyle. When we feel the itch we can just take-off if we so choose. For us monthly stops or longer are becoming our normal routine. Touring (stops of a week or less) can get tiring and are expensive particularly if you don’t boondock. You pay the highest RV park rates and tend to use a lot more fuel. We met a couple here at Retama the other day who have been full-timing for 19 years, seldom staying in one location for more than two weeks. I can’t imagine a lifestyle quite that mobile! That feels like too much work for me. They have apparently been trying to see every nook and cranny of the U.S.

We, on the other hand, have seen much of the Country so our emphasis is as much about returning to places we like as it is exploring new territory. Next year, for example, we plan to spend several months in the Pacific Northwest, as I’ve mentioned before. We will explore some of the sights that we have heretofore missed, but we are also trying to determine whether this is where we regularly want to spend a portion of the year, or settle when our full-timing days are over.

In the beginning of this adventure, we thought that we might full-time (along the lines of the couple above) for 15 years, provided our health permitted. I must admit that the bloom is off that lily for me. My new vision is to find a few places we enjoy and spend a couple of months or longer in each with occasional jaunts in between. A possible alternative is to buy a site as our home base and travel occasionally when the mood or the weather dictates. This latter formula is more like part-time RVing.

When one invests in a rig as we did, it is important to remember that we exchange an appreciating asset (except in times like the present) for a depreciating one. Consequently, our Carri-Lite may well be our home for a long time whether we’re on the road or not. The concept here at Retama Village where you can buy an RV space with a small “coach house” (about $50,000) or a one-bedroom “Casita” plus a covered RV-port ($149,000) provides realistic options for a part-time RVing lifestyle. Should we decide to go in this direction sometime in the future it will be someplace other than the Rio Grande Valley.

That’s enough about my immediate reflections of year-one of this journey. It has truly been an adventure worth taking. Thank you Howard and Linda, and Pat and Jim for nudging us in this direction and being so supportive! Also thanks to our faithful readers who make writing this blog worthwhile, even when composing it gets rather trying. I might note that since we got a counter on August 21, we have had 5148 visitors to the site. You either must enjoy it or have a lot of time on your hands.