I have spent the past ten years writing honestly about the pros and cons of living in an RV so I think it’s fair to spend a minute talking about what is better (for us at least) living in a house. This is by no means an either-or blog post but I want to capture the things I am really enjoying while it’s still fresh in my mind. These aren’t in any particular order but rather what comes to mind.

Dishwasher – Yes, some RVs come with dishwashers, but we never had one and personally I have hand washed enough dishes to last a lifetime. It’s not only that the dishes never felt as clean but also the never-ending fight to keep dirty dishes out of the sink. With a dishwasher we can rinse the dish after eating and pop it in the dishwasher where it can sit for a few days. With hand washing even rinsing wont keep the bugs away and the unsightliness of dishes in the sink (which was also just two feet from my professiomnal workspace) was a constant pain.

Dedicated Office Space – Speaking of which it is awesome having an office where I can shut the door. My shared office space was also the kitchen and forced Lee to wear headphones all day to avoid listening to my calls. He can now talk on the phone without going outside and I can talk on the phone and not worry how loud I am being. It’s really great and for me at least there is really no substitute.

Washer AND Dryer – We had a combination washer/dryer in the RV which was nice but only did small loads and Lee was constantly hanging items to get them completely dry. There was also just more wrinkles with that method and having a full size washer and dryer large enough to do bedding is a real treat. Previously we had to go to laundromats for some items and frankly I have rarely met a laundromat I liked. The ample space for ironing (not that we do that a lot) is also really nice.

Big Kitchen – I have never lived in a house with this big of a kitchen and it’s fantastic. Tons of counter space and room to move around and we aren’t on top of each other so much if we are both in there. It also has tons of counter space and pantry space so instead of our food being stuck in nooks and crannies we can now clearly see everything we have which is pretty awesome. This was #1 on my list when buying a house and I am super glad I stuck to my guns on this.

Bathtub – I was an avid bath taker before going on the road but after 10 years of only showers I will say that is my preference. That being said it is nice to have one and when the weather gets colder, I think it will be nice to go in for a long soak. I already bought some bubble bath for when I am ready!

Stable Foundation – No I am not talking metaphorically, I actually mean a solid foundation to walk on. One of the interesting things about an RV is when you set up your RV is rarely completely level and because your position changes frequently around the time you get used to it, things change. Don’t get me wrong this house floor isn’t totally level, but it is consistently not level if that makes sense so I am not falling over when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. It’s the little things in life 🙂

Owning land – We intentionally bought a piece of property with mature trees and since I love trees so much that’s really special. Sure, there is responsibility that goes along with ownership but there is also pride in the feeling that this is my land. The closest I ever got to that feeling on the road was our National Parks which technically we all own.

Freezer – Over the years we talked about adding a chest freezer but it’s complicated and having a full-size standup freezer is really nice. We can take advantage of sales or buy meat in bulk and especially for Lee who likes a lot of frozen vegetables on hand this is a huge improvement.

Garage Space – Lee has carried many tools over the years in the RV or our truck but he had to make do with the limited space we have. He is really enjoying spreading out all of those tools and creating a workspace which certainly makes projects much easier.

There are many more improvements and it’s interesting how much joy we are finding again in those little things we used to take for granted. Of course there are negative tradeoffs as well, but I think it was worth mentioning what we really like about being in a house again.

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune

We knew going in that the house we bought had its quirks and Lee decided very early on he wanted a series of inspectors to look at different aspects of the house and give us quotes on various upgrades and to get a head start on anything that would need attention. Although some of the inspections came at a cost, overall knowledge is power and since we only had a specific pot of money to work with it was important to get quotes and then prioritize enhancements/repairs. Turns out our house inspector for the loan was VERY good so happily no nasty surprises but we did learn a lot about the house along the way and what was actually possible. Since we have had professionals in and out of the house for the last two weeks I am not going to list them in order but I will group the experiences by category.

Water Softener – We lived in a house with a well and an inadequate softener for six years when we were younger and know firsthand how unpleasant that can be. Iron heavy water stains sinks, and toilet and water doesn’t taste good along with having an unpleasant smell. The water here wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, and I wouldn’t drink it unfiltered. Worst of all the softener was down in the scary dirt cellar, and I had serious concerns about how we would carry a 40lb bag of salt down those steps. So, a high priority was getting that softener on the first floor, but I wasn’t confident it wouldn’t be super expensive. Quick story to show you how serious this is to me. When we left the 6 years with a well I had lots of iron deposits in my hair weighing it down. I went to a hair place that “stripped” the iron out and the smell of rotten eggs from that process was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe how much the texture of my hair changed after that experience and I know I never want to have that many deposits in my hair again!

Thankfully we had an amazing experience. For $3800 we got a new installed softener and better yet filtered water at the sink, and they even ran a new filtered line to the fridge. The salesperson was knowledgeable, and the installers were terrific and best of all I can monitor and fill the salt myself. Truly this was a game changer, and I am so grateful that this change was affordable. We also found out that our land was on an underground lake with a near limitless supply of water which really made me feel good!

Electric: Although our electric panel has open breaker spots, we had no idea what capacity we could add without upgrading the service to the house. or what the cost would be. A good friend of ours recommended an electrician and we learned that we could add a single 50 amp circuit. This was good and bad since we wanted a hot tub and a kiln but we learned we could only have one initially before having to upgrade to 200amp service. The distance we needed to run wire also was a more significant cost than we initially thought, which ruled out running 50 amp for an RV spot on the property. The hot tub with trenched wiring was a pretty reasonable $2700, but the upgraded service, additional panels, garage wiring, and kiln wiring will run $14K. Not great, but at least we know.

Chimneys – There are two fireplaces with separate chimneys in the house but they were both designated “decorative only”, which means at some point someone disocvered that they weren’t safe and didn’t want to fix them, so I wanted to know what it would take to make them working fireplaces. This service call costs around $400 (which was NOT disclosed to us over the phone) and ultimately all we learned was it would be FAR more money than we wanted to spend to make either one of them a working fireplace. We did discuss turning it into a propane fireplace but unfortunately the chimney would need to be lined for that and again, pretty expensive. After that information we decided we will probably buy an electric insert, and we learned Lee will need to put a cap on the two fireplaces before winter for weather and critters.

Septic – Once Lee completed the initial mowing (see picture below), he found a section of yard next to the house that was SUPER soggy. Like a swamp. Stepping on that area you would sink 4 inches immediately. We were both really upset because although we bought the house “As-Is” the seller did sign a disclosure saying there were no issues and and provided a receipt from a local septic company for a septic lid crack that was repaired. We called the same company back out and after researching they validate the septic system was fine (whew) but the sump pump discharges into this weird sepearate system, and someone previously had routed the diascharge from the washer into the same system, instead of through the septic system. Pretty crazy DIY nonsense, but was not causing any immediate issue and should be relatively easy to fix, we just have to live with the soggy corner for a while. No health hazard, no property risk, just a minor annoyance.

Windows – About half of the windows are original and half are vinyl replacements, and the older aluminum windows are the crank open style, and all of the cranks are broken or missing. So we wanted to get quotes to replace those. Also, one of my main goals when buying a house was to have an office with a view. Unfortunately, my window is pretty small and for some reason at like 5’5″, so we started discussing enlarging the window or better yet adding a sliding glass door. We had a recommendation for a small window company, and they came out and gave us somewhat reasonable quotes. ALL of the windows we want to replace and the door came back at $12.5K, but the sliding glass door by itself was $5K. We were pretty excited about that price since a larger hole had to be cut, but when the technician came out to look at the house he stated he couldn’t do it because our house was block.

Turns out around 10% of the houses in our area have block outside (with a frame and plaster inside) and in order to verify that I actually had to have him drill a small hole in the wall. Cutting block is done by a mason and hardly any window companies do it and Lee and I were both pretty annoyed that the salesperson didn’t catch that. Actually, I was beyond annoyed and crazy disappointed. The one window company who said they would do it wanted $8K so Lee decided to go to a mason. The mason will charge less but still a lot, but we would need the hole framed and the sliding door installed which is probably beyond our abilities. Structural integrity comes into play as well and now you are coordinating two different companies. All in all super expensive and tricky. But we are in the process of figuring out a way forward, because this is a VERY high priority for both of us.

Propane – The propane company came out and filled the propane and Lee wanted to check into running a propane line closer to the house for our grill, possibly a propane stove, and possibly a propane dryer and water heater in the future. A second person had to come out and that took a little longer but it’s good because the cost to run the line for the grill is only $400. I say “only” because at this point that’s a steal. There was some confusion though because the propane company has to do external lines, but interior line is handled by a plumber. Oh and one really nice thing is a third person came out and cleaned the propane tank and checked it for structural integrity. We didn’t ask for that but it was a very nice free service the propane company provided.

Floors – Lastly this house has a variety of older wood floors in it and they were all a bit dusty especially after moving in. We were not sure if we were going to need to replace some of the flooring but after some discussion we splurged and bought a robot floor cleaner (our first) and wow did that make a difference. The little guy is really amazingly good at what he does, and the floors have literally sparkled since he took over. To be honest I always thought these purchases were a bit overkill but I am a total fan now and don’t think I will ever want to live without one again. Big big fan.

All in all there was a mix of good news and bad news but at least we have the information going forward. Since we are committed to not going into further debt this is a definite pay as you go situation and we will determine priorities based on a variety of things. We knew moving back into a house our costs would definitely go up and we don’t have a full picture yet of what our monthly nut will be. Once we get that information it will allow us to put together a plan.

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune

After all the craziness with getting the loan approved, the closing itself was relatively low key. The seller wasn’t there, nor was their realtor, so it was just us, our realtor and the title agent. We got an excellent explanation of all the paperwork from our Title Agent (a former teacher) and we were in and out in about 45 minutes. So finally, I am willing to share pictures of the house (didn’t want to jinx it) and the upcoming posts will provide more information on how we filled it!! Some people may get excited by a blank canvas (Lee is one of them) but I felt intimidated to be honest. I also was surprised by my pangs of sadness for the RV lifestyle. We keep trying to tell people that we didn’t just buy a house but rather changed lifestyles but not everyone gets that. I am sure all you readers will though!

When we started looking for a house I wanted a small single floor house on a nice piece of land. Lee also was adamant about it being “move in ready” and I am so glad he stuck firm on that. This is hard enough with minimal immediate repairs. The house itself I largely considered a “throwaway” as we cared way more about the outbuildings and the land, but as we have worked on the house I am really starting to like it more. It has some quirks, as any old (63!) house does, but it has good bones and is in a great location.

One of my major complaints is they (poorly) slapped a white coat of paint on everything including the outside. There is a stone front under all that white paint, and we want to see what’s under there. I get it, white paint sells, but they did do a pretty crappy job inside and out. Thankfully Lee is an excellent painter although the painting is slated for the winter. Speaking of that, we made one of our famous spreadsheets, to list the things we needed and what time period we were slating them for. We have a bit of money set aside but obviously you can’t do everything at once. Largely we have stuck to this list, and I am so glad we did this prior to moving into the house. I love a good spreadsheet!

The inside as I mentioned has some quirks including two fireplaces which may not work, and a closed in area between the garage, which was originally detached, and the house. One of my major complaints is the door to the back yard is in the far corner of the house, but I am certainly getting my steps in. There are multiple kinds of hardwood floor through the house (which Jack is trying to get used to) and three different types of plumbing. Like I said, old house.

When you walk in the front door there is a small dining area to the left and a nice long living room to the right.

Around the corner to the right are three bedrooms and a bath with a deep tub. For the age of the house it’s not a bad shower, but the rooms are on the small side. I am taking the back facing room for my office and Lee is taking the front for his. We talked about having a dedicated guest room, but we both are really looking forward to our own space after all those years of sharing in the RV.

Despite the smallness of the rooms there is a surprising amount of closet space, and with each of us having minimal clothes and an extra closet in our office it sounds like an abundance of riches. I am crazy excited about being able to use regular hangars again. It’s the little things. One of my absolutes for a house was an open kitchen and I really like this one. The kitchen also has a 1/2 bath and laundry off of it and we are going to used the closed in area as a HUGE pantry. Super exciting.

The laundry goes into the original garage which is going to be my pottery studio because there is a HUGE pretty new garage on the property. The big garage will fit both our vehicles plus so much more and all it really needs is electric run to it.

If you are wondering why out buildings mattered so much to us, we looked at tons of property in the same price range that had no buildings at all. Garages, barns and fencing are expensive, and this property has all three. This will allow us to get some immediate use from the outside and work on the inside as we can afford to. Our goal is no more debt (aside from the mortgage) so for us we needed a pay as you go situation.

So let’s get to the best part. It’s amazing how much the weeds grew in the 30 days from the showing to close, but it has a HUGE garden with beds and some metal structures. A practically new small two stall barn (the former owners had alpacas) and 4 fenced in pastures. The property also has a large wooded section in the back and at 3 acres is exactly what we wanted.

The back side of the house itself is nothing special and the entire patio needs replaced. One of our biggest complaints is there are no good views of the back yard from inside the house, but our long-term plan is to build a four-season porch to enjoy the back views year-round.

In my mind the absolute best thing was the mature trees. There are several gorgeous trees on the property, and one in particular that I absolutely loved. Honestly for me the trees were what won me over because you can upgrade a house, but you can’t make trees grow faster!

Lee’s favorite thing is there is only one house we can see from our house. He would prefer none lol, but I like that our next-door neighbor has a fire truck and an EMT vehicle in their yard. It’s great in case something happens. We are 20 minutes from major hospitals but it’s nice to have a trained person close by. Across from us is a giant crop field and on the left of us (facing the road) is a 34-acre farm that actually wraps around the back of our property. They let their cows into the field next to our house the weekend we moved in and Jack was VERY excited. Actually, as hesitant as Jack is about the house, he loves the outside and is already guarding his territory which is great.

It’s all pretty exciting but next up we had to move in and I have a lot to say about that! Save it for next time though.

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune

One of the things I am most excited about in getting off the road is I will no longer have to “explain” my unique lifestyle to traditional institutions. So I was pretty bummed out when I realized during the mortgage loan process I wasn’t quite done with that. Since all of our banking is through Bank of America and my brother-in-law works there that’s where I started and was soon pretty disappointed in how anything outside of the lines raised a red flag.

First, I switched jobs in the last year so that meant double all my information including not only the amounts of my 401K but also the individual plan information documents. Since they are both through Fidelity and those documents are pretty standard, I was annoyed but after spending a day I collected the 27 documents they were looking for. Yes, that is not a typo…27 documents, crazy sauce. Once that was done, I was looking forward to focusing on other things…like how the heck we were going to get furniture, when I got a call late on Thursday that the underwriter needed some additional information.

They wanted a signed copy of my tax return and an email explaining my “unusual” living situation and an explanation of my two addresses. Now I was pissed. First off, my taxes were done via turbo tax and the document I provided was directly from their site. Secondly, they made me provide proof I have paid my taxes so why did any of that matter. The mortgage broker I am working with did send me the one page he wanted signed, but then Lee had to print it, we had to sign and then scan and send back all of which seemed ridiculously unnecessary. What really made me mad though was the email explaining why we had no rental history. It occurred to me that despite my stellar credit and having enough money in 401K to more than cover the entire loan they could use something like this to deny me and it really upset me. Seriously the last 10 years has been a string of incidences where not having a traditional sticks and bricks caused issues and the irony of that stopping me being able to move into a traditional situation really upset me. I am a tax paying, law abiding American citizen and where I choose to live should be no one’s business but mine. OK rant over.

I wish that was the worst of it but it was not. Since we had no rental history, they wanted a list of all the campgrounds we had stayed in over the last 2 years. Once we provided those, they wanted proof of “rental” payments. After some work Lee found all the AMEX receipts for all the payments to the campgrounds, but they refused to accept that. They wanted proof of timely “rent” payment from the campgrounds and sent all four of them a letter so they could verify we paid in a timely manner. At this point we are down to a few days before the bank was going to end the contract, and we had no doubt we would lose the house if we had to go to another bank. Since there was zero reason that the campgrounds would fill out these forms in a timely manner I was feeling pretty down about the whole thing. There are no rules guiding a mortgage company so basically, they can refuse to loan to anyone they want for any reason unless you can prove you are being discriminated against based on race, sexual orientation etc. Being a fulltime RVer is not on that list 🙂

One interesting thing is after we started talking to people about this we found out we weren’t alone. Someone else we know who came off the road had the same issue and ended up solving it by going to a local bank and having a sit down with them explaining the situation. I really wish we would have known that going in because we could have saved ourselves a lot of grief and heartache. After making tons of phone calls, we finally got the receipts from three of the four campgrounds we have stayed at but unfortunately the last campground in Northridge is actually our longest stay and since it is a small operation and privately owned, we are at their mercy. Apparently, they upgraded their reservation system at some point so our receipts are in an older database and the manager (who I knew briefly) couldn’t be bothered to even come to the phone or look at the request for several days. Simultaneously the clock was ticking on our timeline, and we were trying to figure out if with two weeks left, we could go to another bank. The downside of that was we would lose our appraisal (that came in well over the loan amount which was nice) and although it’s possible to transfer appraisals to another bank surprise surprise its not easy. The whole thing has turned me into a ball of stress which is not a great way to start out on a new portion of your life.

Finally, after going round and round with the bank they decided to use the RV loan (which is through Bank of America and we have been paying on for 10 years) as our “house” payments. Technically it is, so that made sense to me and I just had to write an email stating I was going to occupy the house immediately and stay in it for at least 12 months. I think they continue to be concerned I am going to use it as a rental. For the first time I really thought someone was thinking outside the box a little tiny bit as of this writing am waiting to see if that will actually be good enough. The fact that the appraisal came back quite a bit higher than the loan amount really seems to have helped a lot as well. It’s hard to say the loan is a bad bet when the loan to value ratio is 84%.

Finally, after several days of back and forth, the bank decided to use our 10-year RV loan as proof we could pay on time and as a substitute house payment. Kind of them since I have been paying this same bank for 10 years and always on time. Can you hear the sarcasm 🙂 Anyways we got our conditional loan approval and unless I get fired in the next two weeks or the house burns downs, we should be ok. I really feel all of this could have been solved quickly if we could have talked to the underwriter directly so my best advice to you in a similar situation is to find a local bank where the underwriter is on the premises. Some RV friends of ours who had a similar situation did just that and worked through the unusual circumstance pretty quickly. Trust me save yourself the grief!

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune

Hi everyone. I know it’s been awhile, but I wanted to wait until some things happened before giving you an update. We are staying in Columbus in a really nice city park but unfortunately, we are only booked in a site until June 7th. At that point we can go to one of the much less nice first come first serve sites or move to another campground. We have checked out two others though and I wasn’t crazy about either of them so for now we are staying put and seeing what happens.

Our time has been taken up by family visits, Lee’s working pretty steadily, and my taking a work trip to Dallas. Around those things though we are really trying to find our way through the next big transition. Talking about coming off the road brings out big feelings in both of us and we have been talking about it in little spurts over several weeks. This left me feeling very overwhelmed and while I was in Dallas, I decided to put together a power point presentation with pros and cons of the different options. It worked for me and was a great jumping point for more conversation when I go back so I thought I would share it here.

Based upon the above we decided to eliminate renting a house or an apartment. One of the appealing parts of stopping traveling is having space of our own and we both felt we needed to own to get the most from that. That leaves full-timing and while I was in Dallas I had a serious conversation with my boss about the necessity of being on camera and whether that was a job requirement. The short answer is no although it is definitely preferred, but I walked away from the conversation feeling like if we wanted to we could start traveling again.

Simultaneously though we have enjoyed being back home for a variety of reasons and Lee has been in high demand for work here. So, I thought it was time to at least see what was out there, so we started with a looking for place 30 minutes from downtown Columbus. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in our price range that we really liked and after a couple of serious conversations we expanded the map to what you see below. This is an hour range and really opens up rural Ohio which is cheaper and frankly I prefer anyways. Then we started to see more choices and decided to take the next step.

A cousin of mine is a real estate agent, and she has been super helpful in getting us started. I also reached out to my brother-in-law who works in mortgages, and he hooked me up with someone to work through getting a mortgage. It’s been 25 years since I went through the headache of buying a house and frankly things have not improved. Working with family does make it easier though because at least you are talking to people you trust.

Buying rural property has extra concerns that you won’t find in a city and the last thing I want to do at this age is make a mistake. I am looking at this as our last home purchase and would like something I really like and Lee and I both agree if we can’t find it we will walk away and start traveling again. My other challenge is I want a loan that I can pay off before retiring in 9 years so a 10- or 15-year loan is all I am willing to do. Although the interest rates are lower the costs are considerably higher especially since we are not putting a lot down. I can at this point use my savings, but I would prefer to buy the house and pay it off and then save the retirement money for later. That way we can start traveling again when I turn 67 and retire and be in a debt free position.

At this point we are finding that the land matters more than the house, although there are limits of course. I also care very much about the small town that is nearby and we will spend the next several weekends exploring all of them and seeing what has a nice feel. We are fully aware that this might all be an exercise in futility, but I think it’s important to really see what the value proposition is on settling down. We know what we are giving up (good and bad) now we have to get a solid feel for what we will actually be getting. Since houses are selling fast here, I expect when something happens it will be quick and I promise to keep you in the loop best I can as we go along. Thanks for reading!

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune

Ten years ago, when we started this fulltime journey, I really thought we would eventually land in a new place and it would become our new home. The closest we have ever gotten as a couple was Los Angeles, but as you know if you have been following along that didn’t work out for a variety of reasons. When we left LA it was with the purpose (at least for me) of seriously looking for a home base and although Tucson fit the requirements for a variety of reasons we both decided that wasn’t going to be “our place”.

So, we decided to start traveling again and with the help of Starlink we would see all of those remote places we had missed because we always needed to be where there was cell service. This was an exciting plan for a variety of reasons and Lee put together a route that included Big Bend, Carlsbad, Devil’s Tower, Mount Rushmore and the entire Black Hills region, UP of Michigan, Everglades, and Key West. These are places that might have cell coverage but we have always been a little leery of because they were so remote and the coverage was spotty enough to make it to risky.

It was a ton of work for him, especially because I can only travel on the weekends and we can only do things on the weekends, which required a route that had short drives and either one or two weeks or more to give us weekend days to see what was in the area. Even though we can boondock, it is easier for me to work if we have electric, so he looked mainly at city/county/state parks with some services. Those places book up fast though which meant either locking in reservations in advance (reducing flexibility) or winging it (causing extra stress upon arrival). To be clear if we were retired or I wasn’t working this would be a ton easier but that has never been our situation.

Then we hit Big Bend. This was the first true test of our new travel plan and it did not go well. Turns out Starlink did not work well enough to forgo cell coverage as a backup which had Lee rethinking the whole plan. After reworking the route to accommodate the need for stable cell coverage, Lee decided it just wasn’t worth it. Not only would it be very expensive to stay in places with stable cell coverage, may of the best locations would be unavailable to us. Couple that with the fact we would only have 1-2 weekend days to explore and that left a ton of time Lee would be on his own in a place he didn’t really want to be.

So Lee came to me and said he wanted to go back to our hometown of Columbus. Lee’s parents, friends, and work opportunities are all there and he thought it made the most sense to get us through the next 7 years of me working. He found a city park that we could stay in outside of town and we would get there and then see what made sense from there.

I’ll be honest as much as I agreed with his decision, making it was still a bit of a shock. The last several years I have largely felt rudderless as we have been trying different permutations of this lifestyle. The one constant in my life has been my work, but even that has been challenging as I have been working hard to get a handle on my new job. After taking some time to digest, my main feeling was one of relief that we would be in a stable situation for a while, but I had serious reservations about Columbus.

Columbus is a great town, but we left 23 years ago and largely have not looked back. After seeing this gorgeous country, it just cannot compare when it comes to nature spaces and definitely does not have the views that I crave. On the plus side my father and my brother both live there along with solid medical care, relatives, and people I have known for a long time. I haven’t maintained the kind of relationships Lee has over the years so I don’t personally feel I can pick up where I left off with most people I know.

My other big concern is that I wasn’t my best self when I lived there. It took me moving away to really self-actualize and grow beyond the roles I was born into. I know some of you will totally get that and even though I am much older and stronger than I was in my 30’s it still gives me pause. I really feel like I have grown into my best self and this lifestyle and the things I have learned from it have been a big part of that.

We also have all of the practical concerns of how do we transition back? Do we become snow birders? Do we buy a piece of property or live in an apartment? Do we stay in the RV? Columbus is not RV friendly and there are very few places to stay. It also gets far too cold in the winter for us to live in an RV year round. I have consistently said that for me the only reason I would live in an RV fulltime is to see the beautiful places and that has not changed. But I also don’t want to make a relatively short-term decision that I will regret in the future. I have 7-10 good working years left in me and would like to use that time to pile up as much retirement money as possible. That being said I am not willing to live in a crappy situation to make that happen. Basically we will have a ton of decisions to make and I am not confident we will be on the same page when it comes to making them.

So what do we do? Well, I really think it is important that we take this one step at a time and not rush into anything. We both need to pay close attention to our feelings and figure out a way to make decisions that will work for the both of us. Like any transition in life this is a big deal, and I am not going to minimize the change in our day to day lives this will cause. I will also keep writing this blog until a transition is complete. I have always thought how we stop will be just as important as how we started and I will do my best to document that as honestly as possible.

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

• You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
• You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itune