It's REAL! We're FULL-TIME RV'ers!

I HAVE to write something tonight even though I don't have any pictures to go with it!

This is our first "official" day on the road as FULL-TIMERS! It is mind-boggling to realize that this is a reality. We took a two day trip to Green Bay this weekend to visit with Mary's sister, Kitty, and brother, Dennis, but went back "home" to Beloit to finish cleaning out the house, so today is the REAL first day of a new stage of life for Mary and I.

Let me back up. The house in Beloit sold the first of this month (at least that's when we accepted the offer to purchase) with a projected closing date of August 24. So we frantically shelved our plans for the month of August and set about cleaning out the house. We had two BIG garage sales, gave away all sorts of stuff to Good Will and Caritas (the local food/clothes pantry), and gave a few things to our kids. The last week, however, has been a mad dash to the finish. Thanks to Lamarr Pulliam and his crew for their last day visit to the house for a major haul-away of all the trash!

Last Wednesday, we moved the remaining possessions that weren't going in the RV to a storage unit. It is stuffed full to the brim! We still have a smaller storage unit to review and condense and we'll do that in a couple of weeks when we go back to the Beloit area for a couple of weeks (Sept. 1-15).

One thing I know for sure is that we have too much stuff in the RV! We've got to pare the list down some (or a lot). I'll try to get us weighed soon to be sure we aren't overweight. An overweight RV is a hazard!

Right now, we are on the way to the Fleetwood factory in Decatur, IN, to get some warranty work done. From there, we'll go to Indianapolis and the FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) international rally. Following that, we'll head back to the Beloit area as mentioned above. After a couple of weeks on going through what we put in storage, we'll head east towards Glens Falls, NY, and the Adirondack Balloon Festival in late September. It's not that we're ballooners or anything like that but Mary's sister, Barb, lives in Glens Falls and we thought it was a good excuse to go see her and her family. From there, who knows where we'll go and when we'll get there!

Don't think that life will be a perpetual vacation for us. It won't. There will be many routine days with routine tasks like doing the wash, cleaning the house, and other such domestic matters. I won't have to cut the grass, nor will Mary. That's good. But there are many other things we'll take care of on a regular basis. We will get to see new places and do new things. This first year we may even move around a bit more than we will in future years, just to see where we want to be and when.

I will continue to do my life-coaching and mentoring work. We both will be looking into various places to volunteer and make a difference. And we'll put the kayaks into as many different bodies of water as we can and probably hike a few trails along the way. And I hope we'll get to see lots of friends and family scattered across the US of A and make some new friends to add to the group.

Enough for tonight. It's time to rest and relax. I'll be talking at you some more soon!