In early 2019 Jerry decided that he was done with working. We hadn’t come up with a real plan for retirement but, we knew that we didn’t want to live in Colorado any longer.
We have always loved to travel but, work meant trips were short and often interrupted by the demands of Jerry’s job.
I had heard of the full time RV lifestyle and it sounded interesting. We were long time tent campers and moving from one campground to another sounded fun. After some research we decided that it made more sense for us to get a drivable RV. We already had a Jeep Wrangler to tow, so we would only have to buy one vehicle.
Things moved very quickly once Jerry retired in April. By the beginning of May we were in Dallas looking at motorhomes and our house was up for sale. After looking at a dozen or so Class A’s we settled on a 2010 Winnebago Journey. Fun fact: While Texas requires a special license to drive a motorhome of this size, the dealer has no problem selling you one. We drove back to Parker, Colorado and loaded up the Journey with what we thought we’d need and headed out on our first extended trip. What a learning experience!
After a stressful situation were our first offer on the house fell through, we finally sold the house in mid-August. Once we had a durable offer, we contracted with an estate sale company to sell nearly everything we owned. I highly recommend this rather than trying to sell all your household goods by yourself.
For the next two and a half years we traveled the United States visiting new places and old favorites with our dog, Jack. We learned a lot about our country and how to live in a moveable home.
Unfortunately, in January of 2022 Jack unexpectedly died. We don’t know what happened and we were heartbroken. Our grief caused us to re-evaluate our plans. We no longer needed a large motorhome to travel with a pet nor did we have to confine our travels to places we could drive to. There was talk of traveling internationally full time but, I wasn’t ready to give up my dream of spending the summer in Alaska.
We settled on spending part of the year overseas and the rest in North America. The ability to go places more remote was high on our list of wants so, we choose to really shake things up and downsized to a Class B (a motorhome based on a van). We will post another time about why we selected an Entegra Launch.
In the span of three weeks we traded in the Journey for the Launch, drove back to Texas and sold the Jeep. We then put the Launch in storage and flew to South America. Probably not the best way to go about things but, we already had tickets from Houston to Quito.
I’ll get into our plans for the next several months in my next post.
Best wishes for everything you’ve hoped for in the coming year! So much fun to have been part of your journey! Can’t wait to see what’s next!!
Thanks Cindy. I miss the hike gang. I hope you are doing well.