I really don't know when this dream began. I think it's been a kind of gradual evolution and a coming together of several different desires over the years that seems to have coalesced into my dream of living full-time (or at least mostly full-time) in an RV.
I've always thought if I were rich, that it would be so cool to rent an apartment in one city for several months, then another for several months, and so on. It always seems that just visiting somewhere isn't enough. You see a few things for a day or two, but then you never really get to experience the area. You have to chose what attractions you want to see, and you can never see all you want. I love going to new cities and new places, but always feel that I barely touched the surface of what the area has to offer.
I have always loved to camp. I have fond memories of camping with my Girl Scout troop when I was a child. As a young couple with small children, we couldn't afford much in the way of vacations, so we splurged for a dome tent and we'd take the kids and go to the local mountain campgrounds for a week or so during the summers. Sitting around a campfire in the evening, looking at the stars, and just enjoying nature was such a peaceful experience. We haven't been camping in quite a few years now, and every year we talk about how much we want to go camping again, but we are not young anymore, and sleeping bags on the ground just aren't as appealing as they were 25 years ago.
About a year ago we started thinking more and more about our retirement plans. Since Jesus has been out of work for 4 years already (laid off at age 58 after 22 years on the job), he is, for all practical purposes, retired, just not collecting retirement income yet. I am still working, but so many reorgs and changes and work just isn't as appealing as it was before. So, we started thinking that maybe we could really concentrate in the next 4-5 years on getting all the debt paid off, and then I could retire, hopefully when I am 62, which puts Jesus at 66, which for him is full retirement age, and we could pull it off financially. It would be tight, but there is more to life than money, and life is just so short! Both of us are already older by several years than our father's were when they passed away. We knew we'd need to buy a new car before we retired, and we had thought we wanted to get a Honda Pilot, or something similar, and then get a tent trailer that it could pull. That way, we could go camping again during our retirement, but have the bed in the tent trailer instead of sleeping bags on the floor. It was a good plan, and in January (2015), I put in a plan to pay off the debt, starting with an absurd amount of credit card debt that we had acquired. We aren't there yet, but we've managed to pay off about 1/4th of it so far, so not bad in less than a year. We could have paid off a lot more, but we ended up having to buy a car (not the Pilot we planned, but as our dream morphed, turns out what we have might just be perfect!) and also took an amazing road trip vacations (because we could and life is short!).
So, funny story on the car. Out of the clear blue sky in April, Jesus gets a call about a job. He lands an interview and ends up getting the job. It was kind of weird from the first day, but he thought he wanted to work, and we thought the money would be so useful to pay off those bills, so he starts work. Well, he is a field technician, and both of our exiting cars are over 14 years old. Not very reliable for a field tech. We wanted to wait a few months to make sure how the job worked out before buying the car, but then we had problems with one of the old cars, and decided we should just do it. The good thing was that will his job, we were actually able to come up with a down payment without having to put even that on a credit card. To make a long story short, we ended up with a 2013 Honda Fit with very low mileage, which gets great gas mileage. However, in September, the job came to an abrupt end. I can't say we were overly sad about that. It wasn't really a working out for us having him at work anyway, so I am glad he is back home. And, since he is not wracking up miles on the Fit, it should last us many years. Also, according to the 2013 Dingy Towing Guide put out by Motorhome.com, it should be towable 4-wheels down, which, apparently, is the easiest way to tow a car behind a motorhome.
I think the final piece of this dream came into being this summer. We took an amazing 2 1/2 week road trip to Cleveland, OH, and back. We went though potions of 15 states and saw, way too briefly, so many amazing things, like Yellowstone, the Badlands, Garden of the Gods, and Arches National Park. Again, my desire to stay longer and really explore and experience the surrounding area was a recurring theme throughout the trip. While we were in Cleveland, we were fortunate enough to meet up with a friend of mine, Maureen, from CA. In the last year, she had sold her home, bought a Motor Home, and off she went. She was full time living in her RV. She was in Cleveland because her brother was undergoing medical treatment there, and because she could go anywhere, that's where she was. She told us she had become a 'resident' of South Dakota and explained a little about domicile and Escapees and looking at all the info that is on the web, and on Facebook. By the time we got home from our vacation, I was totally intrigued with the idea of working toward doing the same thing. I read her blog and many others, and I have to confess, I am totally addicted to the Full-Time RVers Facebook page. I think I have read every thing anyone has posted for the past month.
So, that's pretty much the beginning of it. We don't have an RV. We still have debt and I am still working. We also have 2 adult kids, 2 grandkids, lots of cats and a dog living in our house currently. So, pulling this off in 3-4 years is going to be interesting, but the more we talk about it, the more I read the blogs and Facebook pages, and the more we just think and dream, the more convinced we both are that this is how we want to spend at least the first part of our retirement.
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