Girls only journey

I'm hosting a "Girls only except for me" thing.

So far it's not going so well but I try.

21 years ago, at 48 years old, my 'ex' and I fostered and then adopted two kids. I love my son, but he is a pretty normal if very smart kid. Out on his own, doing fine.

However my daughter, whom I call Ms Allie, has about 8 disabilities which I can just rattle off, caused by a genetic duplication. She will never leave home, drive a car, or hold a job... and so she really is my "girls only except for me" thing, and of course the love of my life. She loves camping with dad in my '95 Scamp 5th wheel, and I love taking her camping.

I am now closing in on my 70th birthday. I was trying very hard to not take SS until my 70th to maximize my benefits but... well... I did the math and decided that if I took SS a year early I could pay off all my debt (I still work driving a truck, making a very good salary). So the revised plan is to pay off my new (to me) Ford Maverick hybrid TOAD (which I love) in this coming year, then buy a Bigfoot Class C to tow my Toad with, and pay it off the following year, then hang in for another year building out an emergency fund, and finally... debt free and money in the bank, take Ms Allie out to Quartzsite for the RTR.

Of course you know what they say... tell God your plans and provide him a good chuckle. But I have a spreadsheet that says it is possible! And so far the spreadsheet is pointing the way.

We shall see. In the meantime my "girls only except for me" thing is off to a good start with Ms Allie.

I have seen Scamp 5th wheels now and again in the Quartzsite area. Every year in January there is a Fiberglass Trailer Rally held at the Dome Rock BLM dispersed camping area at Quartzsite. The announcements for that event are posted in the rally area of the Fiberglass RV forum
https://www.fiberglassrv.com/forums/f57/

If you are not familiar with that forum do explore it because you will find other Scamp 5th wheel owners have posted there over the years. Including renovation and repair articles as well as a section where there are images of things like the original owner’s manuals, old brochures and advertisements too.

I use my Scamp almost every weekend to take Allie camping, and yes I know about the scamp forums and am a member thereof. For retirement, the scamp is simply too small (for me). The body is the lower half of the 16' Scamp and a custom upper half which extends forwards and creates the overhanging part. It is a wonderful camper but it is only 6 feet wide, and simply too small to live in for the rest of my life... just too small (for me). Even if I did not anticipate having Ms Allie a lot of the time it would still just be too small.

As the one and only Bob Wells (one of my favorite people in this sphere) says, "every thing is a compromise between freedom and comfort". My intention is to compromise as little as possible in the freedom end to gain in the comfort end. After all the intent is to live in it until I no longer can.

That said, I have discovered that a Honda P500 is supposed to fit in the bed of my Maverick. So a comfortable RV with a small truck Toad to get me around, and a 4x4 hauled in the back of the Maverick to get me really back in the boonies feels like a pretty good compromise between comfort and freedom. I grew up in Bard California (the farmland between Yuma and the Imperial Dam) and spent thousands of hours driving my mom's VW bus as a "jeep" around that desert north of the All American canal. That was my playground. This to say that I deeply understand and love the desert southwest and want to get back out there in retirement. As comfortably as possible, with little Ms Allie "in tow".