RV-Dreams Rally

Plantation River RV Resort
Sevierville, TN

This was our first rally and we had a blast!  Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams put on a fantastic rally full of seminars geared to fulltime RVing.  We learned so much and finally got to put faces to all the names of friends we have "met" over the past few months.  Great food too.  My favorite was the walk-thru in others RVs.  Nice to see how real, lived in trailers look like.  We got many good tips and ideas too.  Some were really decorated very nice!

Most of the Class of 2014 Full time Grads!


 

Before we made it to the rally, we had to drive through severe thunderstorms.  This was the week of horrible storms in TN & AR and surrounding states.  We just missed one really bad cell which was almost bad enough to make us pull over as the rain was so bad it was hard to see anything.  That's when I took this video below.

  

 

Crazy Thunderstorm between Tornados

 

 

This has been a very busy week.  We have had a great time at the week long rally, and now the real fun begins.  We leave for Illinois in the morning to pick up our new truck and then off to Michigan to pick up our new trailer!



Picking up our New Home!

There's a fresh coat of paint (snow) on the mountains by us from yesterdays storm.  Weather will be a very big part of the next 3 weeks for us and will make this quite an adventure.

Originally we had a week's vacation planned to fly from CA to TN for the RV-Dreams Spring Rally.  As it turns out, we found our new truck and 5er out this way so our 1 week vacation turns into 3 weeks.  We'd love to take our time getting home, but we have our sons college graduation on May 16 back in CA so we can't take too long to get back.

We will fly into Nashville on Monday the 28th and spend the next several days near Knoxville at the rally learning and meeting friends that we feel we've known for a long time already. 

Then on the 4th, we drive to IL to pick up our new truck and hopefully meet up with Curt & Glenda that we connected with through RVillage for dinner.  The next morning it's off to Muskegon, MI to pick up our new home!  Our Montana 3582. We are very excited!  We'll spend the next couple of days learning about our new home, how it works and practice driving.  We hope to meet up with another couple, Lonney & his wife, we also met through RV-Dreams.  It's always nice to meet with others that share the same passion and interests as you.  Even though you may have only had a chance to talk for a couple of hours, it's one of those times that you feel you've known each other much longer.  It's also nice to talk about RVs, hiking, fishing etc with someone else that loves it as much as you do.

Around the 8th we'll head back West for CA with hopefully a day or two to visit friends and family in AZ.  Much will depend on the weather.  Already, we're seeing severe thunderstorm & tornado warnings for Oklahoma and the plains.  We may have to switch our route north or south or hunker down depending on any predicted storms.  It will mean driving more hours in one day than we prefer, but that's how it goes.  More pictures as we go along!

Met some new RV Friends, Thanks RVillage

If you haven't heard about the new RV site called RVillage yet, you need to check it out!  It's kind of like facebook for RVers.  One of the really neat features is a real-time map that shows where everyone is.  You can narrow that down by searching just your "friends", "groups" or other options.  This way you can plan to meet up with someone that might be camped nearby or even in the same campground.  It's a great way to build camaraderie or find others with similar interests.  Maybe someone to go to a museum with, kayak, golf, try out that famous restaurant or just have a good time around the campfire.

http://www.rvillage.com/home/action/home


So tonight Steve and I met up with Ron & Rene of RnR.  They actually live about 45 minutes from us.  We met for dinner and had a really great time with them.  We are planning on heading out full time this summer and they are hoping to head out 2015/16.  We actually had quite a bit in common.  It's nice to be able to talk about RVs, truck, and such with others that are as excited about it all as you are.  Sorry that I did not get a picture of the four of us.  Next time!

Had to have something to pull the new rig with, right?

We'll be pulling our Montana with a 2013 Dodge 3500HD Laramie Longhorn Dually.  Should definitely do the job!  The truck is in Illinois, so we'll pick it up on the way to get the trailer the first week of May.  It gives us time to practice with each before we head back to California for our son's college graduation.  I hope I'm going to be able to handle that beast.  I've not driven a dually and really didn't want one.  We'll wait a few months and see how fulltiming goes.  Then we'll consider getting a moped or something to zip to the grocery store or around the back roads to sightsee.  I don't look forward to parking that thing.  I sometimes have a difficult time getting our current Megacab in and out of parking spots in our small town.



Aint she purty?!

Well now that we have the 5er and the truck, we can get back to purging the house to get it listed.  Looks like I'll be getting a storage locker to speed up the process.  Too many boxes of stuff stacked everywhere.  At least rooms, cabinets and closets are getting empty!  Now if we can just get my husband's 1930 truck sold!  - Edit: It's SOLD! - Once we get back from the rally we'll sell our current truck and the two cars.  Whoa!  Things are really moving quickly!!!

Home Sweet Home, We bought our trailer!

We are so excited!  We found our home.  It's a 2013 Montana 3582 5th Wheel.  Only it's in Michigan, and we're still in CA. 

It works out pretty well though.  We'll be in TN for the RV-Dreams Rally in 3 weeks, so we'll pick it up then.  While we'd rather have it before the rally, looks like we'll get it after, just in case there are any problems or bad weather, we don't want to get stuck.  Next up, is the new truck because we need it by the end of April!

It Feels like Spring

Each morning I keep forgetting that I don't have to go back to work.  Then I smile.  Today was a beautiful day so Hurley (aka The Pooch/Hurlsabutt/Punkin) and I finally went on a little hike.  It was so much work closing the business that I haven't had a day off since January.  I needed a few days to catch up on sleep and it has been raining most of this week.  It was great to be back outdoors again and on a trail in the sunshine.

Driving up to the lake, I noticed how it looks and smells like Spring around here.  The seasons have flown by and with it the stages of getting ready to fulltime.  I have a lot of closets and cabinets to finish cleaning out to get the house ready for market.  Each month until Summer, we will have many milestones we go through.  It'll be a lot of work, but we are looking forward to hiking many new trails and enjoying the seasons in different parts of the country.

"Welcome Home"

That was the nice notice I received today in an e-mail from Americas Mailbox.  We now have a "home" in South Dakota!  This is part of our FT process.  We have decided to domicile in South Dakota mainly because there is no state income tax (Steve will still be working).  That alone is a big bonus.  Other benefits are: only a 3% sales tax, very inexpensive vehicle & RV registration, no inspections, no wheel tax and very low rates on vehicle/RV insurance.  They will handle all the transferring of our registrations for us while we are still here in CA.  When we head to Indiana in September, we will stop into town to get our Drivers Licenses, register to vote and see our new "home".  I love that we've completed another step in becoming Full Timers!

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 :-)

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. 

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



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!



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

Our last...

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! This was "our last" Christmas in the "sticks n bricks".  While it seems a bit sad, we are already looking forward to flying the kids out to the Florida Keys next year for our FIRST Christmas as fulltimers!  So while it may be our last this, or last that, we definitely are going to have a great time making new discoveries along the way.

We are looking forward to January 1, when we can say, We're heading out THIS year!  The next 6 months are going to bring much change!  Selling the business, the ranch, vehicles and lots of stuff!  Then the FUN part.  We'll be heading to the TN rally in April, buying the truck and rig and then heading out to who knows where!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Kartchner Caverns State Park & Campground Review

This state park is amazing!  Facinating "live" cavern.  They offer two tours.  Both are about 1 1/2 hrs. and are worth doing both.  Not your usual claustrophobic, climb down 200+ stairs, look around and come back up.  This has a nice, wide meandering path in a very tropical climate for a cave.  The grounds are super clean, spread out and has a nice butterfly/hummingbird garden, campground and hiking paths.

The campground has 62 sites, several pull through, W/E, showers, dump station and nice, wide and deep level sites for $25 a night.  We will definately be coming back to spend some time next October.

Here is a link to the state park campground info:

http://azstateparks.com/parks/kaca/facilities.html#Camping

Kartchner State Park Info

http://azstateparks.com/parks/kaca/

This is a great jumping off point to visit: Old Tucson, Tombstone, Biosphere 2 and Bisbee.

We're going Live!

I guess it's time.  Not that I'll have too many posts until January, but I figured I'd put this blog on-line for now.  It's looking like our small, family retail store will be closing in January if the sale does not go through.  If that is the case, January we'll be busy liquidating.  We hope to get the house up for sale around March and be heading to the RV Dreams Rally in April.  The last two kids graduate May/June and then we hope to head out full timing.

Once the store is sold I'll be spending lots of time on e-Bay selling off Hubby's sports memorabilia, getting rid of "stuff" and getting ready to go.  Holiday time is very busy at the store, so life will be heading down the fast lane.  It will be interesting to see if the timeline works out.  Selling the ranch will be the biggest hurdle.

Reflecting

The beautiful color of the leaves changing, the smell of the air full of fires and leaves burning, the sound they make when blowing in the breeze and crunching underfoot... Fall is always a time of reflecting for me.  I like to think about previous times, choices I've made (good and bad) and how I've got to where I am now.  It always makes me a little melancholy but very thankful for what I have and who I have in my life.

Since we now only have months until we begin our fulltime travels, I'm already starting with the, "This will be our last fall", the "last fill-in-the-blank", etc.  I'm trying to breath it all in and store it away for next year when Fall arrives and I can look back and say, "Wow, who'd have thought this is where we'd be for our first fall on the road".

Seven months.  Life still seems business as usual.  But after the next two months things will begin to fly!  So for now, I'll take a few pictures and a nice autumn hike and enjoy it before I trade my hiking boots in for snowshoes.  Perhaps for the "last time"  I'll be snowshoeing?

More Friends

Last night we had dinner with 2 more RV couples.  Dale & Ruth of RVEscapees and Bill Loretta of WhenPigsFly.  They were a wealth of information as well.  We loved Dale & Ruth's truck set up.  It's nice to get info from others that are still working as Steve will be working from the road.

Today I also met Jane who travels alone with her cute dog.  More great stuff.  She invited me in to show me all the mods she has done to her motorhome.

Meeting New RV Friends

We have been doing lots of reading up on blogs, books and RV internet sites.  We had the opportunity to meet Jason & Nikki of Gone with the Wynns.  What an exciting time they have been having FTing so far.  They work on the road and have so much information to share.  We enjoyed showing them around Placerville and sharing RV plans and some good foothill wines.  Check out their website which has wonderful info on internet on the road and solar set-ups.

Our First Big Purge

Today we sold Wally.   He's our beloved 1996 Coleman Key West pop-up we bought new back in New York.  We have so many great camping memories with the kids in the pop-up.  We camped all over the US in Wally.  We only camped in it once without the kids, a couple summers ago.  It just wasn't the same.  So while it was hard to sell it, it is a big step forward to our new upcoming adventure.  The trailer fund begins.  There is so much more to downsize in a large home on a small ranch, but we're on our way.

Rally Time

We signed up for our first rally next April with RV Dreams.  It's in Sevierville, TN.  We may not have our truck and/or 5er by then, but we will be learning a lot in the seminars about fulltime RVing.  We both have camped all of our lives, but there is a lot to consider when living and working fulltime in a home on wheels.  We are looking forward to the information and meeting people who already seem like friends.

Planning and more planning!

We've been making lots of lists, looking at RVs and trucks and just putting a general timeline together.  Steve is quite a collector and while I can throw what I need in a backpack, this downsizing is going to be much more challenging for him.  He's making progress though, he's thrown out 3/4s of his baseball hats.  That's serious stuff! 

We've talked to family and friends and everyone is excited and not that surprised about our plans.  We've always been adventurous and living here in Placerville, CA for 15 years is the longest we've been in one place other than the 7 years we lived in Brockport, NY.  We are ready to travel. 

Being further away from our kids and my family will of course be the most difficult.  But we will stay in touch and be home for the holidays each year.  Hopefully they'll join us along the way some times.

But we will not be all alone.  Our oldest sons dog, Hurley, will be joining us for the first few months while our son finishes school.  And Hurley seems happy to become a "trailer dog".  He's my hiking buddy and also loves to go out in the kayak, so he's going to have just as much fun as we are.

Deciding to Full Time RV

Big decisions have been made.  We will be selling the store that I own with my sister this year and downsizing... a LOT!  The last of our four kids will be finishing college in 2014 and since we were going to sell our ranch and get something smaller, this was the perfect time to get something... MUCH smaller.  And mobile. 

The blog postings will probably be sparse until things start happening.  When I decide to do something I dive all in.  I've already been researching, reading others blogs and talking to others that have made the jump to full time Rving.