Because We Can - Fulltime RV'ing

 

And in the Beginning

 

Looking at our Life today and how comfortable we are in it, it is easy to forget what it was years ago when we first thought about living this Life. Back then it was mostly unknown, just like it has been for many others over the years. But now it seems appropriate to recall that time, the what and how of the beginning.

And in the beginning it was just an idea. We were nearing retirement age, nearing as in being in the place in our lives where we knew that retirement was coming some day, but not near in that it was almost here. We had always known we wanted to go places when we retired and had thought that having a small summer house in Montana and another small house in Arizona for the winters would probably be what we would do. This was where our retirement planning had been stuck, as it were, for the last ten years at that time.

We'd always been campers, campers as in tent campers but with the kids long gone and age creeping up we decided to try the RV method of camping. Notice I call it camping, not RVing. We eventually ended up buying a used 24' Class C that we used many a weekend to get away from our jobs as so many people do. It was during the search for that RV that two things happened. The first being visits to RV dealers and shows during our search, the second being the exposure to extended RV travel, something that continued after we bought the C. Off a private party I might add.

It was during a Thanksgiving trip in the C, our first Holiday ever away from family, that we both realized we tired of working, that we had so enjoyed our extended holiday weekend, and that maybe we had actually been allowed to see the future. It was over the next twelve months that we attended various RV shows, sat in on seminars, subscribed to Motorhome Magazine and spent hours on the computer searching the meager pickings on the Internet at that time to learn about the lifestyle we were thinking of joining.

Our first step was to tell our friends that in a little over a year we would be buying a motorhome and taking off. Generally they thought we were crazy, especially the part about quitting work before retirement age. They needed to live life their way, we needed to live Life our way, and we set out to do just that. The key being that Linda and I both wanted very much to do this, and we wholeheartedly supported each other on the path to achieving that goal.

I usually write these homepage articles about whatever pops into my head around the first of the month, but this time I'm going to try something different. I already know what next month's article will be, a continuation of this one, partly to put down for Linda, myself, our kids and grandkids, how we did it before it begins to recede from memory, and partly because simply recalling those times gives me great pleasure. I really didn't start to write the Daily Journal until we left on our new Life, so making the title to this article, And in the Beginning, is quite apropos.

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