Getting to Good-Bye. Again.

Just Can't Wait to Get on the Road Again

It has been 30 months since we left our life on the road and we have missed it tremendously. But, family needed us and so we put aside our plans to vagabond around the country and went where we were needed. Now we are finally planning to get back on the road.

We sold our beloved Starcraft. It was a great trailer for occasional camping but became too difficult for the two of us to put up and take down, put up and take down, put up and take down. You get the picture. This time, we plan to purchase a travel trailer that requires little set up when we park at a campground.

We learned a lot from our travels in 2009, the greatest lesson was how much we love the simple life and the lack of a schedule controlling us. We also realized that the USA is full of beautiful places we have never seen, interesting people we need to meet and great food we have to taste.

The Best Laid Plans

It is time to plan our escape and to head back out west to continue the adventure we cut short. This is our escape strategy:

1. Get Rid of Everything. We left a large storage unit full of personal and business belongings in South Florida during our last travel experience. This meant that we paid a monthly storage bill and worried constantly about someone breaking in and stealing our junk. Then, it was very expensive to move all that junk to the Midwest. Most of it wasn't worth storing. We should have sold it all and stored the most important items with family or in a very small storage unit. That is what we plan to do this time - get rid of everything!

2. Buy a Trailer that is Suitable for Full Time Living. Our experience with the popup camper provided a lot of practical information about what is important to our comfort and what does not matter so much. We like a lot of natural light in the trailer and don't like feeling closed in, so we want a trailer that has some rather large windows. We are not planning for anyone to join us, so the floor plan should be designed around comfortable living for two. No bunk beds!!

I want an energy efficient model that can accommodate solar panels and an on-demand water heater. I like the Jayco Skylark. Bill feels we need something larger. Our first chance to see the latest models in person will be at the Chicago Boat, Sports and RV Show in January 2012.
http://www.chicagoboatshow.com/

3. Establish a Homestead, Go Paperless and Automate Banking. I have noticed a lot less junk mail the past few years, but I am addicted to magazines and newspapers so will have to wean myself away from those or get the digital versions for my Kindle. We also need to decide on a homestead, place to receive our mail, and register our vehicle and trailer that provides the best environment for individual taxes. We will probably choose Texas, since we have relatives there and we would not be subject to state income taxes. Some full-timers have chosen South Dakota for the same reasons. This is a subject for more research.

4. Purchase a tow vehicle. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, the tow vehicle or the trailer? We have a Ford Expedition that we used to pull the popup and it is probably adequate to pull any trailer we purchase, so we will probably buy the trailer first and then purchase a truck with a tow package to pull it.

5. Plan for Additional Income. We are lucky to have a couple of sources of income from investments and past military service (Bill is retired USN/SS) so we just need to supplement. There are a number of options that we are interested in exploring. Workkamping is one that sounds good to us, working in campgrounds hosting or providing maintenance or working in a camp store for a season, freeing up the winter season for travel. A trailer/home-based business is an attractive option because it would be portable and we wouldn't have to stay in one place for an extended period.

6. Connect with other Full-Timers. I have just found some kindred spirits online who have been traveling full time for long enough to know what they are talking about. I plan to connect with these like-minded people and learn what they know about life on the road in order to skip the part about learning things the hard way.

A favorite of mine is a writer and newspaper editor for the Gypsy Journal. He also sponsors a rally of full timers and is a collector of information about where to go and what to see. I especially appreciate his warning away from towns, like Flagstaff, AZ, who do not welcome RV-ers. Seems kind of foolish in this economy, but some people are pig-headed about things like this. This is good information to have.

If you are interested, you can find his work here. http://gypsyjournalrv.com/ The author, Nick Russell, has also just written a novel that is rising on the bestseller charts.

7. Plan our Travel Itinerary. Okay, I just found out about the Woodstock for RV-ers in Quartzite, AZ. I didn't even know about this when we stayed in Tucson during our last travels or I would have been there in a heartbeat. So, in 2013 our first major destination is going to be the rally in Quartzite. From there, I am not sure what we will do, but at least we have a place from which to start.

8. Join Discount Camping Clubs. I already have some information on a few clubs that look promising, including the Escapees Club out of Livingston, Texas. Once I found out that these were not nudists, I warmed right up to this group.

We have been connected to the military camping community since 2008 and appreciated the information and reviews provided by Larry Farquhar and his wife. This is a great service for military active duty and retired who use the facilities on many of our bases around the country. http://www.militarycampgrounds.us/

One of our favorite military campgrounds is Agave Gulch on the Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ. The Farquhars also provide some great insight on workkamping. Like I said, these experienced full-timers are going to make our decision to hit the road a lot easier.

Two weeks from now we will head to Florida for the Christmas break and while there take a look at some trailers. I plan to update this blog regularly once again with pictures from our researching expeditions and updates on the progress towards our full time life on the road.