Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Three Years on the Road

It's been a busy March. We've been camping and hiking our way through the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona and the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. We'll probably spend more time in SE Arizona and New Mexico next year.

April 1st marks three years since we've been living and travelling fulltime in our 5th wheel. Why is three years an interesting waypoint? When we started this retirement lifestyle by going to the New Horizons factory for two weeks of training and to take delivery of our rig, we met an old-timer of the road who told us if we made it three years, then most likely we would be doing this a long time. In his experience, it seems that most people give up on living this way within the first three years. They just miss all of their "stuff" too much, grow weary of the occasional challenges that surface, or worse, grow weary of being together so much.



It feels like we left the factory less than a year ago, but a lot has happened over the past three years. We've camped through exotic bug infestations, weld failures on our hydraulic leveling system, a fire on the rig, floods, weather from 12 degrees to 95 degrees, sink holes, and very deep mud. We've had our rig in all of the lower 48 states and Canada, unexpectedly bought a 100 acre Garden of Eden in Far North Idaho for summer boondocking, have enjoyed countless sunsets along with grilled local produce and rare bottles of wine, have sampled food and drink that will remain memorable forever, and have discovered more solitude and wild, wide open spaces than all but a few people will ever know. We've met some interesting people along the way and have made some new friends that will be among our closest for the rest of our lives.



As we start out on our fourth year of fulltime RV travel, we can't see living any other way. Our list of places to go just seems to grow larger. The thrill of finding the next unknown boondocking spot is always there. I guess that old-timer of the road we first met three years ago would say we have a good shot of making this lifestyle work out for us.


This message has been endorsed by Jake and Karly.





6 comments:

  1. Congrats guys! Everyone is different, but I think that having your property in Idaho adds a little "grounding" that other full timers don't have… and that it will enable you to carry on your travels indefinitely. There is "something" about a home base, even if you don't use it, that is reassuring, that you have a place to land should things change.
    Box Canyon Mark

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    1. We really look forward to getting back up there every Summer. We have one of those moveable Montana Sheds to hold our gardening tools. Who knows, maybe we'll even build a house up there sometime 20 years from now!

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  2. Is Karly really endorsing your message; looks like raspberries to me. Very cute photo! I also travel with two dogs and know it wouldn't be as much fun without their "endorsements".

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    1. You're someone who obviously knows dogs. When we got that picture, we couldn't stop laughing about it. That's their personalities right there. Jake is always having fun, and Karly is the older, more serious alpha dog. If she could do raspberries, she would.

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  3. Just for the fun of speculation, imagine yourselves not interested in growing things on your Idaho spread...

    In that case, wouldn't it be advantageous to flip your lifestyle "180 degrees"? North America becomes drastically larger and more interesting in non-winter, that is, for 9 months of the year. So that is the time to travel.

    In the winter RVers are so compressed into such a small area that giving up traveling for 3 months is not a big sacrifice. That is the place to be tied down to a property.

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    1. That would be like me saying to you..."imagine yourself not interested in dogs or bicycles", but I'll play along. We spend about 5 months a year up in Idaho. During those 5 months we'll travel to Washington, Montana, and British Columbia. When we're not travelling, we're exploring millions of acres of national forests, visiting local lakes in Idaho that are among the best in the country (Google Priest Lake for example), and hang out with really good people we've met. When all of that gets boring, we have a peaceful, beautiful property to walk the dogs or just hang out in a hammock and read a book. The area has a little town of 2500 people with bakeries, coffee shops, nice grocery stores, a brewery, interesting places to eat, and a huge variety of local, fresh produce to enjoy. There are more local events to attend than we have time for. In short, we don't really feel "tied down" for those 5 months.

      The other 7 months of the year we are able to explore the only regions of the US we still want to. By this point in our lives we've been able to travel extensively in every state in the country and have narrowed down our preference to the mountain and western states. We're also not as cold-averse as the typical snowbird, so that doesn't paint us into the SW corner of AZ all winter like it does for the RV masses. In these 7 months, we see enough to keep the terrain ever changing and interesting for us while also leaving enough left over that we should remain interested for the next 20 years or until we're too old to feel like doing this anymore (or fuel costs become so high they eat us alive!).

      So there is the reality and the hypothetical. I could do an entire blog posting on the financial benefits of the property as well, but that isn't really as important to us. During our five months in ID, we grow the tastiest berries and vegetables you've ever had, and our orchard has multiple varieties of cherries, plums, and peaches. We get to sustainably manage our forest to promote the native wildlife, and grow healthy, huge trees. We get to enjoy the freshest, highest quality meats, wild game, fish, and fowl. We get to hang out with really interesting and fun people. We're can't wait to get back to Idaho in a week or two. Five months from now, we'll be sad to leave, but at least looking forward to what's next. So why would we want to "flip our lifestyle 180 degrees"? :-)

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