Greetings Nomads and fellow wannabes,
I'm here because life should be more than just acquiring and surviving. The last year has brought about significant changes in mine and my wife's life. We are both mid-60s. We are Minnesota transplants to Arizona, Chandler to be precise. Wife has been here just over a year and I remained in MN taking care of our home and working a job I actually liked, my wife had relocated here for a very lucrative position. With today's tech, it was easy to stay in touch almost daily, and we had planned that we would make frequent trips to be together. Things don't always go as planned.
Getting together proved to be much more of a challenge than we ever imagined. Her career move turned out tho, very well paid, to consume almost all of her time. Then came the holidays, because of work and money considerations, I spent them without family. In all honesty, it just plain sucked. Just after New Years, I told her that I just couldn't do it anymore. After 19 years living in a relatively large home with assorted out buildings and the collection of "stuff" in it, I was learning how much that "stuff" could restrict my options. In order to put our home on the market, let alone relocate 1700 miles away meant lots of it had to be gone. It was a very busy Winter and Spring making it so and doing seemingly endless prep to the house and necessary upgrades to make it more sale-able. Then in June, the house went on the market, with a whole new kind of stress in that. Fortunately, it sold fairly quickly. Unfortunately, that set the clock ticking on having it ready for closing in August.
As we progressed on the sale of the house, we also had to get ready for a major move across country. That included furniture, appliances, tools, pictures, electronics, tools, clothes.... and on and on...and 2 parrots and our pups, Sadie Mae, our White German Shepard and Leo, our French Bulldog. Hiring professional movers was cost prohibitive. We decided it was best to go with Pods. That left us with the question of dogs and parrots. We decided we would do it RV style, and determined a travel trailer and tow vehicle were our best option. We found a 2011 GMC Yukon that seemed to fit the bill and a 26 ft Sportsman camper trailer at a RV dealer. I had purchased the Yukon about a month ahead and we picked up the camper immediately after closing and hit the road. It was my introduction to both RVing (beyond being someone's guest) and pulling a trailer. It's a 26 ft camper, 30 ft including the tongue. And we hit the road to Arizona.
The trip was thankfully, uneventful but hurried as my wife was under pressure to get back for her work. The RV was little more than a take-along room to sleep in, but provided extra hauling space for "stuff" that either wouldn't fit into the pods or we deemed too important to be in them. We stopped at a couple of RV parks along the way, so I experienced doing the electrical, water, and gray water drain hook up. Also the first attempts at leveling and using the stabilizers, although I didn't ever disconnect the Yukon until we reached Chandler.
So here I am in Chandler, unemployed as of yet, and honestly not finding many promising prospects. And then I came upon Bob's videos. If I can find a way to bring my wife around to a new way of thinking, I'm hearing the call of a life actually lived. I'd love to convince her we should go to the RTR in January and let those living the life share it with her. I guess we'll see, if anyone has suggestions as to how I can get her to at least look at and consider full time RV living, I'd love to hear them. Sorry to ramble on so long. Looking forward to learning and meeting new friends here.
Peace out.
John
I'm here because life should be more than just acquiring and surviving. The last year has brought about significant changes in mine and my wife's life. We are both mid-60s. We are Minnesota transplants to Arizona, Chandler to be precise. Wife has been here just over a year and I remained in MN taking care of our home and working a job I actually liked, my wife had relocated here for a very lucrative position. With today's tech, it was easy to stay in touch almost daily, and we had planned that we would make frequent trips to be together. Things don't always go as planned.
Getting together proved to be much more of a challenge than we ever imagined. Her career move turned out tho, very well paid, to consume almost all of her time. Then came the holidays, because of work and money considerations, I spent them without family. In all honesty, it just plain sucked. Just after New Years, I told her that I just couldn't do it anymore. After 19 years living in a relatively large home with assorted out buildings and the collection of "stuff" in it, I was learning how much that "stuff" could restrict my options. In order to put our home on the market, let alone relocate 1700 miles away meant lots of it had to be gone. It was a very busy Winter and Spring making it so and doing seemingly endless prep to the house and necessary upgrades to make it more sale-able. Then in June, the house went on the market, with a whole new kind of stress in that. Fortunately, it sold fairly quickly. Unfortunately, that set the clock ticking on having it ready for closing in August.
As we progressed on the sale of the house, we also had to get ready for a major move across country. That included furniture, appliances, tools, pictures, electronics, tools, clothes.... and on and on...and 2 parrots and our pups, Sadie Mae, our White German Shepard and Leo, our French Bulldog. Hiring professional movers was cost prohibitive. We decided it was best to go with Pods. That left us with the question of dogs and parrots. We decided we would do it RV style, and determined a travel trailer and tow vehicle were our best option. We found a 2011 GMC Yukon that seemed to fit the bill and a 26 ft Sportsman camper trailer at a RV dealer. I had purchased the Yukon about a month ahead and we picked up the camper immediately after closing and hit the road. It was my introduction to both RVing (beyond being someone's guest) and pulling a trailer. It's a 26 ft camper, 30 ft including the tongue. And we hit the road to Arizona.
The trip was thankfully, uneventful but hurried as my wife was under pressure to get back for her work. The RV was little more than a take-along room to sleep in, but provided extra hauling space for "stuff" that either wouldn't fit into the pods or we deemed too important to be in them. We stopped at a couple of RV parks along the way, so I experienced doing the electrical, water, and gray water drain hook up. Also the first attempts at leveling and using the stabilizers, although I didn't ever disconnect the Yukon until we reached Chandler.
So here I am in Chandler, unemployed as of yet, and honestly not finding many promising prospects. And then I came upon Bob's videos. If I can find a way to bring my wife around to a new way of thinking, I'm hearing the call of a life actually lived. I'd love to convince her we should go to the RTR in January and let those living the life share it with her. I guess we'll see, if anyone has suggestions as to how I can get her to at least look at and consider full time RV living, I'd love to hear them. Sorry to ramble on so long. Looking forward to learning and meeting new friends here.
Peace out.
John
