Year One

Our Great RV Escape is a year old! It's hard to believe, but one year ago today was our personal Independence Day. How can it be a year, already? And, in many delightful ways, it seems like we've been enjoying this lifestyle for years.

Let's take a quick look at the numbers. We've traveled 12,284 miles in two motorhomes, and put another 10,000 miles on the Jeep. We've visited 26 states and stopped in 61 parks/campgrounds.

We've been moving!

Though it looks like we've been on the move every five or six days, we have managed to sit some. The longest we've sat in one spot was five weeks in Mission, Texas. (It felt like much longer!) We spent a month in Kansas City twice. (One month was so much more pleasant than the other!) And, we enjoyed month-long stays in Port Aransas, Texas and Island Park, Idaho. We spent another month moving around our former home state of California. The other half of the year we spent a night or two here and a week or two there.

As we've traveled coast to coast and back (plus some) over the past year, we've come to appreciate that we live in one extraordinarily beautiful country. We feel so blessed to have the opportunity to explore it all.

We've also been blessed with new friends. Lots of them! The people we've met during our travels have been the best part of our travels! It's been such a treat to connect with folks we've only known online, and become fast friends with people who just happen to park next door. Many of our fellow fulltimers have said they have many more friends than they had before they hit the road. We couldn't agree more!

It's been a joy to reconnect with old friends and family, too. Many people have asked how we decide where we're going to go. This year, much of our route has been determined by the locations of people who are dear to us. It's a great way to travel!

While we're counting our blessings, we must include our two furry traveling companions. They're celebrating their first year of fulltiming, too! While cats have a reputation for being among the least adaptable of God's creatures, these very well traveled felines have adapted to life on the road quite well. They continue to amaze and inspire us with their ability to live in the moment and go with the flow.

As we celebrate our first road trip around the sun, we're also grateful to the countless people, beyond our family and friends, who have helped us along the way during our rookie year. Everyone, from the cheerful campground hosts that have welcomed us to an unfamiliar park after a long travel day to the good people at McGeorge Rolling Hills RV who helped us secure and move into our new home, remind us that we're not out here alone. There are a bunch of good people out there happy to help, and vice versa. Perhaps our most valuable lesson in Year One has been to put trust in strangers. We've had to. And, so far, it's worked.

Finally, we're grateful to you, our faithful readers. We put all this stuff out there into the ether, and you are the ones who actually stop to take a look. You let us know when stuff is funny, or not, or helpful, or not. And, we love that! While, we're at it, a big hats off to our fellow RVing bloggers. Whether you know it or not, you've become a regular part of our fulltiming day. And, it's one of the best parts!

When we initially hatched this fulltiming idea, we thought it might be fun to travel the country for a year. Of course, as the idea evolved, the time period stretched to two or three years, or beyond. Of course, when we left a year ago we didn't really know how much we'd like living this crazy dream of ours. One year later, two things are clear. First, though we know there is an end date to this gig, we sure can't see it from here. Second, if this was only a one-year gig, tomorrow would be a very, very sad day, indeed.

Thankfully, this doesn't all end tomorrow. Instead, we'll start Year Two with a bit of exploration around Mount Rushmore. We look forward to what the next year will bring.

Tonight, we celebrate. We're sitting outside our moose right now, enjoying a celebratory cocktail while we put Year One in the history books. As I've been typing away, Paul just exclaimed, "We've come a long way from tent camping."

We sure have. Cheers!