Joyfully Retired

Our home is an RV (Recreational Vehicle). We get very unusual reactions when people hear that. Most people pinch up their face and squint their eyes as if their brain can’t quite compartmentalize what they’ve just heard. Some don’t really know what an RV is. Most people say, “Yes, but where is your real home?” 

In the spring of 2006 we bought an RV, emptied the house, put it up for sale and hit the road. We haven’t looked back since. My husband and I are life-long campers. My parents had a tent and we spent many a weekend and vacation living outdoors. My husband, J, grew up in a Boy Scout family and with a troop that camped every month. And, our honeymoon was spent camping! Yes, we are campers!

We also raised our children to be campers. We loved camping so much that we figured out a way to pack all our camping gear, tent, sleeping bags, cooking utensils and so forth in a duffle bag. Then we could fly anywhere we wanted, rent a car and go camping.  We saw the retirement years as a time when we could spend long periods of time outdoors.  

And then our bodies began to do unusual things to us. Somehow it wasn’t quite so easy to get down on the ground and get into that sleeping bag. Even cots were rough on our joints on cold mornings. But we just couldn’t give up camping!

I remember exactly where we were when we made a decision to buy an RV. It was that pivotal of a moment. We were flying home from a trip in California and it was over the airport at a layover in Phoenix. We’d been talking about camping and our retirement and the possibility of getting a pop-up tent camper. At almost the same time we looked at each other and said: “Why don’t we just sell the house, get an RV and then we can go camping all the time? We wouldn’t have to worry about the house and yard.” And right there the decision was made.

Of course, during all those camping years we’ve been real tent snobs. We didn’t think anyone could call themselves real campers unless they were down on the cold ground. Now we had to educate ourselves on the whole RV world. We did tons of research and had a very good time going to a kazillion RV shows. Now that was a treat! There is a whole other world out there. We discovered we weren’t the only ones who had the idea of selling our house and traveling in an RV. We learned there were about a million people doing the same thing. And, they were called “Full-Timers”.

I plan to talk about our RV lifestyle and the places we’ve seen in this blog on a regular basis. I hope you’ll join me.

Are you an RV’er? Do you know someone who is? Share your stories with me.