Enjoying Central Florida and Family time

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Enjoying Central Florida and Family time

I know that I haven’t written a blog post in awhile, mostly because we didn’t have much new to share.. After I returned to Florida, Tim and I settled into a daily routine and didn’t tour around much. It gets that way when you stay in one place for a longer period of time. When we are moving every few days or weeks, we get excited about being in new places and spend more time touring and being in that vacation mindset. When we are at an extended stay, we tend to lose that “on vacation” feeling and spend more time at the campground.

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Another Day in Paradise

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Another Day in Paradise

Some people may think that living on the road, must be great. Seeing new places, experiencing new adventures is the life of dreams, right?

Well, I had a new adventure the other day that I will share with my four faithful followers. Deb and I have sort of defined roles regarding the upkeep and chores associated with our travels.

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Wah Wah

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Wah Wah

“Wah wah”. Is that how you spell the noise a baby makes when crying?…because that is my story, and it’s a doubleheader!  On December 23rd, of this now past year, our daughter Katie blessed us with our first grandchild. A healthy granddaughter weighing in at 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and standing at a proud height of 21 inches, if she was standing (won’t be long).

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Our Annual Christmas Letter

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Our Annual Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas to our family and friends! For the past 20 years or more, we have sent an annual Christmas letter with our Christmas cards to family and friends. The letter briefly covered the past year’s events for each member of the family. Since we are traveling, it is much harder to handle mail, especially Christmas cards. We decided to include this year’s letter in our blog instead of sending cards. It will hopefully still reach most of our family and friends. For the few that we know do not use social media, I will still send a card with this letter.

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End of Summer 2021

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End of Summer 2021

Tim and I were pretty busy our last month in Pittsburgh as summer ended and fall began. We continued to spend as much time as we could with family and friends. It was so wonderful to have that time together. We really enjoyed every visit and family gathering. I do feel bad that we didn’t get to see everyone so if we missed you this year, we will catch you the next time.

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Enjoying our Hometown Visit

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Enjoying our Hometown Visit

We just finished our second month of this summer’s visit to Pittsburgh, our hometown. It is great to be home and spend time with our family and friends. We are keeping very busy this summer and have been able to catch up with many more people than we did last year. I thought I would share a few of the activities we have been up too.

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Back in the “Burgh”

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Back in the “Burgh”

This guy surprised me this morning when I headed out with the dog. He was just hanging out on our front door and was still there after our morning walk. Believe it or not, this has been our most exciting happening since being back in the Pittsburgh area. Perhaps a bit boring, but we are enjoying being back home.

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Visiting Indiana Amish Country for RV Repairs

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Visiting Indiana Amish Country for RV Repairs

We arrived in Shipshewana, IN on Tuesday afternoon. We planned to stop here for a week prior to taking our RV to Amish Family RV Service for repairs and maintenance work. I am on a Cedar Creek Facebook group and heard so many great things about Orvan and the work he and his team do. Many people buy brand new Cedar Creek Fifth Wheels and take them immediately to Orvan for service. He has developed “extra’s” that he does to improve and stabilize the slide outs and the suspension. Every comment and review I saw were extremely positive so we planned to come this way to get some of the work done.

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Exciting News

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Exciting News

Exciting News - we adopted a dog! Our niece, Jenny, is involved with the Leader Dog program helping to raise and train puppies for the program. If the dog doesn’t make it to become a leader dog for the blind, she gets an opportunity to adopt. If she doesn’t want to keep the dog, a family member or friend can apply to adopt. She knew that we were interested so asked us if we wanted to adopt her latest dog, Trent, if he didn’t pass the program. Having a dog would be a big change for us and could impact our travels, so we thought seriously about it. Our last dog, Chance, came from the same program and he was such a wonderful dog. It was so hard when we lost him that we weren’t sure if we wanted to get another dog. Even though it was a difficult decision, we focused on the joy and happiness a dog can bring and decided to adopt Trent if he didn’t succeed.

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The Weather is Changing and We are Moving

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The Weather is Changing and We are Moving

Winter is over so it is time to start migrating north for cooler temperatures as spring and summer heat up. It was definitely getting too warm and humid for us the last couple of weeks and we were ready to head north for spring. We ended up staying a few extra weeks at Three Flags to get our second COVID vaccine. We were excited to get our second shots this past Monday and we both did pretty well after the shots. I had a few mild symptoms for just a day but Tim just had a sore arm. Definitely worth it. In two weeks, we should have immunity and will feel much more comfortable being out and about. I am looking forward to touring more in our upcoming travels.

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Flexibility and Changing Plans

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Flexibility and Changing Plans

Some people approach the RV lifestyle without making plans and just going with the flow, letting the road take them wherever it leads. There are risks with not planning in advance, especially finding places to stay. For us, that would be too stressful and nerve wracking. I like having a plan and knowing we have RV sites scheduled in areas that we want to visit and Tim wants to know he has a definite place to stop after 3-4 hours of driving. So instead of last minute planning, I tend to plan about six months in advance so most of our nights are booked. I leave a few nights open for travel days for a little flexibility on those days.

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Much About Nothing

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Much About Nothing

For the past month, I have been struggling to find a blog topic. I felt like I didn’t have much to write about. For the most part, we are just hanging out here in Florida, enjoying the weather and not doing much of anything. It is a rainy day today, so I thought it was a good time to go through my pictures to find a topic. I realized that I have quite a few pictures and stories that I haven’t yet shared. Since we spend most of our time at the campground, I will start there.

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Bicycle woes

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Bicycle woes

One thing that you learn fairly quickly when living and traveling in an RV is that things will definitely go wrong at times. If you have been following the blog, you know that we bought some used bicycles last winter when we were in Florida. Mine was fairly cheap, an older folding bike that actually fits easily in the trunk of my car. For Tim, we bought a recumbent trike and although it was used, it wasn’t cheap. We also paid to have it altered so that both the gear shift and the brake control were on the left side for Tim’s use. Tim spent time making a bike rack to carry it on the back of the fifth wheel using a metal tray that we already had. Initially it seemed like it worked well. Unfortunately, our good luck did not last.

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Winter in Florida

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Winter in Florida

On the news the other day, they mentioned that so far this has been the coldest winter in over 10 years in Florida. I guess that is why many here are complaining. To me, the weather in December and January has been perfect. It feels like Fall which is my favorite season. The evenings are cool and we have had a few cold nights where the temperature got down to 32 degrees. Even with those cold nights, for the most part, the days have been sunny and warmed up to the high 60’s or low 70’s. Even with a few cooler, rainy days, we can’t complain. We don’t have to shovel snow or deal with driving in snow or ice, so I am happy!

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Ho, Ho, Ho - Blog, Blog, Blog…

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Ho, Ho, Ho - Blog, Blog, Blog…

It is amazing how fast the Christmas Season is upon us again! It is very true, “The older you get, the faster time flies”. Seems odd to say after the past year when our lives seem to stand still in this age of covid. Living in a smaller world, well our world for sure. We have been keeping our distance, wearing masks and doing what we should during these challenging times. We set out to explore our great country and instead got to know each other a little better.

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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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