Checking the Rear View: Lessons Learned in Our First Year of Full Time RV Living

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Checking the Rear View: Lessons Learned in Our First Year of Full Time RV Living

Well it is official! We have been full time RVers for one year. It seems like just yesterday I was still working and going to an office every day. Now we are living the life that we planned and enjoy traveling the country. Tim and I talked about what date we should use as our full time anniversary date. My last official work day was September 20, 2019, and technically I was working from the RV for the last two weeks. Since we stayed in Pittsburgh for some of those two weeks and were still moving some of our stuff from there to the camper, we decided to use my last work day as our official full time anniversary date. We stayed in that campground until October 8, 2019, then we started traveling, so Pennsylvania was the first state that I put on our map.

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Visiting Indiana and Experiencing Thousand Trails

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Visiting Indiana and Experiencing Thousand Trails

Tim and I decided to join Thousand Trails in January, 2020 mainly for a discount on a seasonal site for January through March, 2021. The annual camping pass membership cost us $499 plus tax and with it we got a $500 discount on our 2021 seasonal reservation. If you aren’t familiar with Thousand Trails, it is a membership organization for campgrounds where you can camp for specific periods of time with your membership with no additional cost. There are levels of memberships with different purchase prices and rules. It is almost like buying into a time share.

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First Time Experiencing Harvest Host

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First Time Experiencing Harvest Host

Last August, Tim and I were making decisions on what organizations to join to help us save on camping fees. One that we chose was Harvest Hosts. This membership program provides a list of wineries, breweries, farms, and museums across the country that allow members to park overnight for free on their property. All they ask is that you support the host’s business with a purchase during your stay. I didn’t think supporting wineries and breweries would be difficult for us.

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Home Sweet Home

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Home Sweet Home

For the past two months, Tim and I have been back home in Pittsburgh and now it is time to pack up the RV to get on the road again. It is hard to believe that this is our last week in the “Burgh”. Where did the time go? These past 2 months have really flown by. We were very busy while we were here, mainly filling our time getting in our annual doctor appointments, dentist, eye doctor, etc. and visiting our family and friends. With this new normal, we weren’t able to go out and enjoy our hometown as much as we would have liked, so we didn’t visit restaurants, bars, theaters, or museums. We had to find other ways to enjoy our favorite city.

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Nostalgia

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Nostalgia

We arrived at Mountaintop Campground near Pittsburgh, PA on June 1st and quickly settled into life back at home. Our goal is to spend two months here visiting family and friends as well as getting in our annual doctor and dentist appointments. With Allegheny County just reopening to the green phase after we got here, we are only visiting a couple people at a time. We are trying to have those visits outside to the extent that we can. If you are familiar with Southwestern Pennsylvania, you know that we have frequent rain and storms, especially in June so outside visits are challenging. Since we still aren’t going out too much, I found myself with time to reminisce our years of camping. Hope you enjoy this post that covers camping over the past 45 years.

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Deja Vu

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Deja Vu

As we started traveling again, I thought I should write a post about our last few weeks in Zephyrhills, FL. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever be able to leave Florida, first and foremost due to Coronavirus keeping us sheltered for the last few months. The second concern was RV repairs and waiting for parts to come in. Does that sound familiar?

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Just Hanging Out

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Just Hanging Out

Here we are still hanging out in Zephyrhills; so different from what we thought we would be doing in our first year of full time RV life. We started this journey to travel and see the country. Since our plan was to go slowly, we anticipated staying in each place for a period of time. 5 months in one place is more than we expected but overall it is still good and we are enjoying living in our small home on wheels. Since it is getting warmer and the sun can be brutal midday, we moved sites to get a little shade.

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Twiddling My Thumbs!

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Twiddling My Thumbs!

Twiddling my thumbs! Yeah, you are right, too hard to do when you are short on thumbs! I told Deb I would write a blog. When your life is in a holding pattern, finding topics is not so easy. We have been spending a considerable amount of time together. Trying to “social distance” ourselves from others, to protect both ourselves and them.

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2020 Planning

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2020 Planning

We have now been in Zephyrhills for a month and it has started to feel like home and less like we are tourists. To be honest, we haven’t been touring much at all the last 3 weeks. First I was down with a head cold, then when I was getting better, Tim came down with it. For him, it has now lingered for over 2 weeks and his cough was not getting better. We finally decided to contact his doctor and he is now on antibiotics. I am hoping that does the trick and he will be feeling better very soon.

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Our winter home - reflections on the decision to stay in one place for a few months

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Our winter home - reflections on the decision to stay in one place for a few months

As I sit here in our RV home watching the sunrise in sunny Florida, I found myself thinking about staying in one place for 3 months.  Why did we decide to do this instead of continually moving to see new places?  You know how much I like exploring and seeing new areas so would think that stopping for 3 months would not be in our plans.  Believe it or not, I am looking forward to having roots and being one location for awhile. 

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First Christmas on the Road

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First Christmas on the Road

We left Alabama on December 14, 2019 and headed to Florida, our winter destination for our first year in the RV. For the holidays, we decided to stay near my Aunt and Uncle who live in Inverness. It is nice to have family to visit for the holidays since we are far from home. We selected a campground closer to the coast in Homosassa, FL so we could be near the Springs for easy manatee viewing when we weren’t visiting family. Since it was over a 6 hour drive from Gulf Shores to Homosassa, we decided to stay a few nights in Tallahassee to break up the trip. We have discovered that we do not like driving more than 3-4 hours at a time on travel days so this was a perfect distance for us.

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Vacation Mode

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Vacation Mode

Are we in vacation mode too much?  Tim says that I am and need to change what we are doing while traveling or we will spend our money too fast. I don’t really think that I am on vacation. For me, this is our new lifestyle and we now have the opportunity to see new things daily.  We started this journey to be able to explore and see our wonderful country. Hence our name, Exploring Tomorrow’s. 

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Great Place for a Fall Visit

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Great Place for a Fall Visit

We are so glad that we decided to spend 2 weeks in Pigeon Forge, TN. The extra time here has allowed us plenty of time to explore The Great Smoky Mountains National Park as well as the surrounding area. The best part is that we don’t have to rush to see everything in a few days as well as be able to stay indoors on the cooler rainy days. The temperatures have been very variable with frost on one morning and sunshine and warmth on another.

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Exploring our first national park

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Exploring our first national park

Our next stop brought us to Pigeon Forge, TN to visit The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We are staying 2 weeks in this area with plans to drive through the park well as do some hiking. I am very glad that we decided to drive up the mountain to Clingman’s Dome on our first full day. It was a beautiful warm sunny day for driving through the mountain roads to see the views and the fall colors.

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To Plan or Not to Plan

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To Plan or Not to Plan

Campgrounds in Pennsylvania typically close mid to late October and most are not busy after the middle of the month. So we thought traveling from mid October through November would be easy to find places to stay. Wrong! I had to call multiple campgrounds to find one with availability at our first stop in Kentucky. My assumption was that it was because it was early October and later in the month it would be easier to find places to stay. Wrong again!

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Visiting the Kentucky Bourbon Trail

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Visiting the Kentucky Bourbon Trail

After our delay in PA for repairs, we were finally on the road for our adventure. We headed directly for Kentucky so we could have some time with our daughter, Kim, while she was on vacation. We got to Frankfurt, Kentucky on our second day around lunchtime, which gave us time to get set up and still meet Kim to start touring the area. Our goal was to spend a week touring the Bourbon Trail and Frankfort, Kentucky’s state capital.

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Patience, patience, patience

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Patience, patience, patience

I heard that flexibility and patience are key to this lifestyle. Over the past few weeks, Tim and I definitely had a lesson in these skills. About a month ago, we had issues with our slide rooms; they would come in but not go back out. We also had an issue with the black tank; opening and closing it was difficult. Then the pull on the black tank broke totally. Tim was trying to lubricate it and the pull handle came completely off. Repairs were needed before we could leave.

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Enjoying Western Pennsylvania

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Enjoying Western Pennsylvania

Over the past two months, we were busy working at the campground getting the RV ready to be our home and organizing our stuff for storage at our daughter’s house. In between that and me working during the week, we found some time to have fun and enjoy the Pennsylvania countryside. I thought I would share some of our favorites places with you today.

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