The week of April 20th marks the end of our first full year fulltime RVing.  We had spent more time in our motorhome than our home for most of the previous 7 years but we did not cut loose of the home on salt water in Florida until April 2015.  During this first 12 months we traveled from Pine Island in Southwest Florida to visit family in Jacksonville Florida, then on across the continent to Seattle Washington to visit more family, then on to British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska.  After returning to Seattle again we traveled south thru Oregon to California where we parked the RV for a couple weeks to fly to Hawaii for a visit and a cruise.  Back in California we headed south for the winter before joining a RV caravan to Baja Mexico.  From Baja our travels took us back to southern California and Arizona, finishing the year in our favorite western town of Durango Colorado.  Year one – 15,558 miles in the motorhome and an additional 14,316 miles in our towed Honda CRV.

When we decided to hold off on buying another house we set some pretty lofty travel (for us) goals.  We did it!  Oh there were some stumbles along the way.  Literally a broken ankle Dianne suffered in Alaska.  A couple viruses, what can you do?  Occasional RV repair issues, every home has maintenance,  just different than a sticks and bricks home.  After a year we think we are further away from another house home than we were a year ago.  We like this lifestyle.  Our one bedroom apartment on wheels provides seemingly endless new experiences.  If we don’t like something, we move on.  If we like it, we stay longer or plan to return.  We meet new people along the way who share some or most of our lifestyle.  We try to live in the best weather places all year.  Our hiking/exercise is often in places like Washington’s Cascades, Sedona’s Red Rocks, Denali National Park, Point Lobos in California, Joshua Tree NP or the beaches of Baja Mexico.

Keeping up with our mail is a challenge.  Meeting up with people on the road seems to be more dificult than we might expect.  Even though we are among wanderers, we all travel with some purpose.  We are people who make plans and do things.  While we headed to Durango for doctors and dentists, some friends visited parks in southern Utah.  When we finished in Durango and headed to southern Utah our friends were off to a wedding in BC. Then as we approached St. George Utah we just missed our friends who had been there for a long time.  They flew to Italy for 6 weeks.  And so it goes.  We still keep in touch and share stories.

We hope to continue targeting lofty travel goals for the foreseeable future.  Friends with health issues remind us that we won’t be able to do this forever.  Someday we will settle down in more or less one place again.  Meanwhile we are trying out many possibilities.

Golden Spike Historic Site

Oregon Trail

Myra Canyon Trestle, British Columbia

Mile Zero-Alaska Highway

Wild mushroom picker

Happy fishermen

Shooting the train

Whale spotting

Aloha! Mahalo! Hawaii

Banzai Pipeline

Monzogranite picnic area

Malecon, La Paz, Baja Mexico

Petting a baby whale

Beachfront camping

The Girl from the Sea of Cortez

“Standin’ on the corner in Winslow Arizona”