Happy RV-Versary To Us!

July 9, 2018 marks the four year anniversary of buying our motorhome. Can you believe it?

We thought we’d do a little recap of some of our experiences, good and bad.

Speaking of bad...this blog post is sort of a mess of different spacing and alignments. I'm not sure what
the problem is. Sorry.

In no particular order (other than as they pop into our heads) here are some of the highlights
and not so high-lights. Many of these were already reported here in the blog so
if you want more details you can scroll through the archive to the right. I’ll include some links too.

Going to New Mexico.

• Loved the area, the food, the people. It was all very different from Ohio.
• It was our first RVing adventure and everything was new and exciting
• Made new friends.
• Really didn’t like the job.
• In looking back, I realize we were darned lucky to hop into a used motorhome

that we’d just bought, take off across the country and didn’t have any problems.

• Visiting the Jemez Mountains
• We got to go to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
• I now know how to spell Albuquerque

Our time in MN, ND and SD.

• We went to a Native American Wacipi (aka pow wow)
• Found a restaurant with great club sandwiches that was also

in a building that housed a laundromat, gas station and hardware store.

You could look out from eating your homemade pie and see

the latest in bird feeders and rain gauges.

• I loved driving across Devil’s Lake every morning and afternoon.
• Driving 100+ miles each way to get to work.
• We learned that “we’re all going to stay until the job is finished”

doesn’t really mean much to most people.

• We went to a restaurant where the lunch special was shrimp burgers.

We both envisioned something like a shrimp po’ boy, but what we got was a patty that

appeared to be made from mushed up shrimp and then deep fried into a hockey puck.

It was memorably awful.

• The nice man who gave us apples from his tree.
• We attended a nice church in MN for several weeks which came at a good time for us.

Working for Amazon CamperForce We’re sometimes surprised the company is still
operating after they let us bumble around one of their warehouses.  

Taking watercolor painting classes together. We had a good time and made some
interesting paintings. The instructor said, “I always look forward to seeing what you two come up with.”

Barns

Tomatoes 

Modifying our home to make it suit us. We removed furniture and added furniture that
worked better for us. Changed out old TVs for smart TVs and did a few cosmetic changes.

The times when things just fell into place for us.

Joel, the old man with a smelly dog who lived in a purple school bus...we think about him often.

When we were in Statesville, NC and one of us spent each morning in the guard shack,

Joel and his smelly wet dog would come in to chat. At first I was frustrated because

I saw that as a couple hours of alone time for me and the internet, but Chris and I both realized

Joel was lonely and maybe it wasn’t such a big deal to be nice to him. He’s the one who told us

about Carowinds Amusement Park, which lead us to so many other things.

While working at Carowinds, Chris randomly met the Greens

and that lead to our jobs with Southern Cross that got us to MN, ND and SD,

as well as a few other adventures.

We stopped at the Kentucky Horse Park for two weeks to figure out what to

do next and ended up staying seven months.

We never planned to spend as much time as we did in Kentucky,

but because we were relatively close to Ohio we were both able to visit with

our parents a couple of times last summer, which is fortunate since Chris’s mother

and my father both passed away last fall, just three weeks apart.

The times when things didn’t seem to be going our way. Not all of these events
made it to the blog because when you’re having a crappy time, you don’t necessarily
want to share it with everyone. Or at least we don’t. But, with some time and perspective,
we realize that we survived them all and we’ll survive the next round too.

• We bought a used truck and the engine blew up before we’d had it for a month.
• The many times when it was so hot, we had popsicles for dinner.
• The time the motorhome starter died at a Walmart gas station.

The time the steps wouldn’t retract and Chris had to do a makeshift fix so we

could get back on the road. All my fancy education is pretty worthless in those situations

and I am particularly grateful for Chris’s skills.

The incident where the hitch for the tow dolly got stuck in the pavement going uphill

into a gas station. That happened the day after the step malfunction.

That was a period of time when we both felt very discouraged.

We got fired (a first for both of us) from a job by a guy who didn’t even have the

authority to fire us. I still sometimes think of sneaky ways to get some revenge on him.

Feel free to include any suggestions in the comments.

People we’ve met.

We’ve met a wide range of people and even made a few friends. Among them are Tom and Joni,
whom we met while working at the KOA in NM. Since then our paths have crossed
several times in our travels and we even spent a few days with them this past spring visiting Nashville.

I’ve met a nice group of ladies through the library here. There’s knitting on Mondays,
writing every other Wednesday and watercolor painting once a month.
They have been very kind and welcoming to me and I’ll miss them when we leave.

We’ve met a few people we wish we could have gotten to know better and quite a few
people we wish we’d known a little less.

What we’ve learned.

• I’ve become more self-reliant.
• We’ve learned to rely upon each other more.

I think I know more about the operations of our motorhome than I ever really

understood about the operation of a stick and brick house.

• When you don’t know what to do, be quiet and wait.
• We don’t need very much stuff to be happy.

Traveling the country in an RV is a dream that both Chris and I had before we met.
After we got married, I never imagined we could really make it happen, but we have.
It hasn’t been easy, we’ve made some mistakes, we’ve learned some hard lessons,
but we have no regrets and no plans to stop moving any time soon.

Thanks to all of you who have encouraged us.
To those of you who thought we were nuts...we are. And we’re having the time of our lives.