"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood... And sorry I could not travel both. I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference." --Robert Frost

Thursday, January 30, 2014

First Year on the Road Schedule is coming Together

Now the best part of fulltime RVing is that we will have the time and flexibility to change our plans whenever we need/want to.  The following is just a loose plan for the year with two concrete stops.

It's starting to feel a little bit more real when I made our first campground reservations today, so our new lifestyle of living on the road has its first planned campground stops.  Really was very exciting!  We still hope to head out in summer, but if the ranch doesn't sell, then these first plans will simply become vacations rather than "stops along the road".  Our only concrete plans are to head from Placerville (just East of Sacramento) to Seattle, WA where we will stay at Dash Point State Park near Tacoma.  We will be picking up my sister who will fly in for the reunion on the 4th of July week.  After a few days there we will all head to our intended destination, the Rest-a-While RV Park near Hoodsport, WA where we are meeting friends for a family reunion.

If our place does sell, then we'll head from Washington, east to South Dakota in August where we will finalize our change of address and get our new drivers licenses.  I'll add more about how we did our Change of Domicile later.  If it does not sell, then we'll do this part later on.

From South Dakota we have reservations for our second rally in September in Indiana with RV-Dreams (hopefully with our new rig)!

After that, I have ideas of where I'd like to be: Upstate NY where we use to live to visit friends, Vermont/New Hampshire for change of fall colors, Virginia where my husband is from to visit our nieces baby, and then down to the Florida Keys for Christmas!  Ever hear the song "Toes in the water, toes in the sand" by the Zac Brown band?  That'll be our new Christmas song!  We hope to fly the kids down to Florida to join us for our first Christmas on the road, but that's just too far ahead to know for sure.

And 2015, maybe head back west along the gulf states :-)  Oh the planner in me loves this part!!  I just LOVE maps!  Finding those special out-of-the way places and boondocking are what we love.  Anyway, back to today's reality :-)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The dreaded garage sale

Actually it was a flea market near town.  Since we are on acreage on a dirt road, it made more sense to do the local flea market.  I was dreading the 4am wake-up as you are supposed to set up at 5am.  NOT FUN for me.  Steve didn't mind it.  He's always enjoyed garage sales/flea markets etc.  Not my idea of a fun time.  But I'm committed to getting rid of all of our excess stuff.  Hubby prefers to make a few dollars, I would prefer to drop it all off at Goodwill and be done with it!  Today was our first time and we made about $235.  Still not worth it to me, but Steve has decided to dedicate each Sunday through February to do it alone while I am closing down our retail business.  Whatever doesn't sell by then, needs to go as I'd like to get the house on the market by April.  Many more closets and the garage to clear out.  So onward we push and hopefully we can clear things out quickly and even make a bit of money doing it. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Looking for Buried Treasure

At the last minute, we decided to take a hike instead of riding our bikes on the American River Bike Path.  We went to Folsom Lake as we have been watching on the news how low the lake has been due to the drought.  Settlements and structures left over from the Gold Rush days are visible.  We brought our metal detector and had a great time seeing what we could find.  While you are not allowed to remove historical items, it is ok to search and look.  We found old nails, pennies, pipes, cans and old pop tops.  Unfortunately no gold.  My arms are still sore from digging.  While it is amazing to see these structures and even an old bridge, we really need the rain/snow!

 
Lake Folsom, CA


Thursday, January 16, 2014

Making progress!

The past two days I have been off work and I finally dragged several bags to Goodwill and several more to the dump.  Dang that felt good!  Actually getting those bags OUT of the house made me feel much better.  I've been sorting and bagging for a couple of weeks now.  Oh, I still have SO many closets, bedrooms and cabinets to go through, but this was a great start!  Now with one empty bedroom, we have made a Garage Sale section and the other part will be for the what-seems-endless e-bay pile.  As busy as today was, I still snuck out with the pooch for a little hike where we ran into some old friends.
 
We are in desperate need of rain/snow in California, but if that isn't going to be the case, then I'm loving the sunny and 70 degree weather!


Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Happy New Year!!

Wow, I can finally say, "We'll be heading out THIS YEAR!!".  Still hoping to be out in Summer.  We've been looking at more RVs and came close to buying a truck today.  I've also almost finished cleaning out one the kids bedrooms and large closet.  Making a little progress.  Some goes to the dump, a lot to goodwill and some that still needs figuring out.  I've found some great future campgrounds from fellow bloggers to keep me motivated in the meantime.  I had a friend visit and we did some nice winter hiking to one of my favorite waterfalls nearby.

Waterfall at Sly Park