Critical Criteria

One of the things we thought about during our "down days" as bloggers (But, have you noticed how things have suddenly "picked up"?) was what we want in the town in which we choose to land and set up our home base. Until very recently, we would simply immerse ourselves in each town and get the feel of the place. Kerrville felt good. Santa Fe didn't. (Though it's an awesome place to visit!) Gunnison felt very good, in the Summer, of course. With each town we've visited over the past three years, we've departed with an intuitive sense of whether or not that destination was a place we'd like to settle down in someday. The whole process has been loads of fun, but far from scientific.

Until now.

Since about the time we crossed back over the Mississippi River last month, we've been working on our list of "must haves" for the town we will choose as our home base. The first on the list was that our place will be west of the Mississippi River! Of course, there are a multitude of wonderful places we love to visit east of that big river. But, one thing we've learned in our travels is that we are, at our core, Westerners.

With that little piece of self-discovery, we narrowed our search from "anywhere" in the country to "somewhere." Over the last few weeks, we've added to the list of criteria. Heck, I even put it on a spreadsheet. Yesterday, I looked online for a bit of help.

Find Your Spot.com features a quiz designed to help you find cities and towns that are most likely to appeal to you, based on your answers to an eight-part quiz that inquires about everything from the weather to culture, education, medical care, transportation, recreation, size, safety, location, home prices, taxes, faith and personal fit. Before you click on this link to the quiz, let me warn you, after you take the quiz, and before you get your list of 24 recommended locations, the site asks for a bunch of personal information, which I opted not to submit. Even without getting the answers, I like the quiz for the things it make you think about. Once we know what we want, we don't really need a list. We'll have great fun finding the place that's right for us on our own.

I'll share some of our critical criteria here, but I want to make it clear that these are the factors that appeal to us, and only us. Any list like this will be unique to each individual going through this process. There's no right or wrong to it all. And, like our travel plans, our list is definitely written in chalk, subject to change at any time.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here's a look at some of our criteria, such as they are today.

We'd like to "land" in a town that:

• is west of the Mississippi River, but not in California
• is part of a medium-to-small SMSA (300,000 people or less)
• features natural geographic beauty
• has lots of opportunities for outdoor activities (hiking, biking, geocaching)
• is livable year-round 
• is within a short drive to a major airport
• is within a day's drive of Kansas City (It can be a long day's drive.)
• is a college town
• is within a short drive of friends and/or family
• has quality services (medical, vet, shopping)
• offers safe and affordable living

We have a few other items on the list that are a bit more personal. But, this gives you an idea of the kind of things we're thinking about and looking for. We think it's a pretty nifty list!

In our travels, we've noticed a handful of states where we really feel at home. Kansas is obvious. There are parts of our adopted state of Texas that speak to us, but we haven't been there in Summer! Colorado is another. We've always liked it, but last Summer we absolutely fell in love with Gunnison. It's not livable (by our standards) in Winter, but there are several other places in the state that we are eager to explore and consider.

We're heading to one of those places in a week or so. Fort Collins is a town we've only driven through. But, we're looking forward to spending a month there this summer and checking it out. Whether or not it makes the cut doesn't really matter. Either way, we know it will be a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, we'll keep working on our list.

We're Flip Floppers

Whew! I can't tell you how much better I feel. It's so good to have come out of the closet on thinking about the end of our fulltiming adventures.

I want to remind you dear readers, we're just thinking about it at this point. We still have many miles ahead of us in this journey. Heck, we have tentative travel plans well into next year. And, along the way we will continue to think about and look for that place where we want to land and establish our home base. From that place, wherever it may be, we will continue to travel -- sometimes for months on end -- and continue to enjoy this amazing lifestyle. As so many of our commenting readers alluded to, that will be the time when we will enjoy the best of both worlds. We can't wait. But, we will.

As we search for our perfect landing spot, we know we will have our challenges. Chief among them is this simple fact: We're flip floppers.

(Thank God we're not running for office!)

But, it's true. We are. We will fall in love with a place in a heartbeat. We'll convince ourselves "this" is the place for us. Then, in a nanosecond, we'll talk ourselves out of it. We move down the road and find another spot with which we fall in love. It's a vicious, but really fun, cycle.

This flip flopping is most obvious while we're here in our native Kansas City. It would be a piece of cake for us to settle here. The fact that the area is filled with friends and family and we know our way around practically with our eyes closed makes the idea of settling here a real no brainer.

Then, in the same breath, we can talk ourselves out of it. It's too easy. It's not really our favorite place. It's too big. Too familiar. Too hot. Too humid. Too cold in the Winter. We want to be somewhere different.

See how we flip flop?

See how this process of finding our home base might take us awhile?

Today we had the great pleasure of spending some time in a town that's at, or near, the top of our potential home base list. Lawrence, Kansas sits just 45 miles - and a few light years - away from Kansas City. This quaint little college town on the banks of the Kansas river is home to our alma mater, The University of Kansas. It serves up a heap of history with a nice side of modern conveniences. It's town and country. It's business and academia. It's the best of everything.

Yep. We love it.

One of our hundred nieces and nephews (O.K., it's really not that many!) has expressed a passionate interest in attending the KU School of Journalism. Even though this particular niece still has a couple of years of high school left, as a couple of proud alums, we jumped at the chance to show her around.

We spent the day in our favorite college town. As we hiked around campus, we poked in stately buildings that were familiar and new. At one point in the day, we enjoyed a 360-degree panorama from our 10-story perch on top of the hill. As we took in the sweeping views of the university, the town, the surrounding neighborhoods and not-too-distant farms, we sighed in unison.

"We could live here!"

Oh, yes! We could.

As we left the Lawrence city limits, our niece was dreaming of her future as a Jayhawk. And, we were talking ourselves out of our love fest for the town. You see, we have other places to see and explore. It's too soon for us to declare our old college town our new hometown.

And so we flip flop.

When it comes to finding our new home base, we know we'll know it when we see it. It might be a brand new town, or familiar stomping grounds. Who knows?

For now, these flip floppers will just keep looking.

We're Evolving

I'm the first to admit my enthusiasm for blogging has waned over the last few months. It's been tough to find things to write about. I really didn't have much to say. At first, I didn't understand exactly why. But, today it occurred to me.

We're evolving.

I'm not trying to steal any headlines here. Really, it's not that. But, what it is is a change in how we are as fulltime RVers. And, truth be told, I was afraid to write about it. Until today.

Today I remembered why we started this blog. We wanted to chronicle the story of our fulltime RVing journey, from before the beginning to the very end. And, from the beginning we have been painfully honest about what we're thinking and feeling. We have always told it like it is, the good and the not so good, for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted to chronicle our story. Second, we hoped our doing so might inform and/or inspire folks who were thinking about following us along this path.

In the beginning, it was so easy. We'd hatched this dream and started a blog about it all. The preparations were as exciting as they were stressful. Then, finally, we hit the road. Every day was a new and exciting adventure. It was all so compelling we just had to write about it, whether anyone wanted to read it or not. As the months and miles passed by, we became more comfortable as our mobile lifestyle became not-quite-so new. We started to slow down, relax and stay awhile in some places. Life was good, but blogging material became harder to find.

As we approach our third anniversary as fulltimers (in a month or so), something has changed. And, like I said, we haven't had the courage to blog about it. Until today. So, here goes.

We're thinking about the end.

No, we're not talking about the Mayan calendar. We're thinking about the end of our fulltime RVing journey. And, in the same spirit we've written every word of this humble little blog, we want to be honest about the process as we transition from fulltime RVers to anytime RVers.

I've been perusing the blogs of many former fulltime RVers lately, and I've noticed a theme: Folks are happily hopping across the country until one day they stop, never to blog again.

We don't want to do that.

Today we decided that we want to be up front and personal about this part of our fulltiming journey, too. So, we shall.

When we started this blog, we laid it all out. Here's an excerpt from our very first post, from July 2008:

How long will we be "gone"? At least a year. Maybe two. Perhaps as long as three. Who knows?

At the end of the road we'll settle down in a new spot. Right now, we're thinking it may be our old college town. But, again, who knows?

From the beginning, we knew this whole fulltiming adventure for us was a "temporary gig." Nearly three years in, that's still true. That whole "perhaps as long as three" thing makes us smile. That sounded like such a very long time to be on the road back then. We can't believe how quickly the time has flown. Today when folks ask us how long we plan to be doing this, we have a simple answer that reflects our new perspective.

It feels like we're about halfway done.

(Of course, that's subject to change at any time!)

But, these days, it does feel like we're about halfway done. We have a list of places yet to see, and places to go back and visit again. We're enjoying it all, of course. But, in the back of our minds, something is smoldering. We are starting to yearn for a home base: A place to call home; A real address that isn't a file folder in a warehouse. Someday, we want a proper kitchen, a real bathroom, a lovely patio and a yard. (Anyone who's following my Pinterest boards has probably already noticed this!)

We've given it a lot of thought. And, we'll share some of that, if you're interested. The bottom line is our travel plans are now including spending time in some of the places we might like to call home one day. And, that might take us a year, or two or three to find.

Who knows?

We'll definitely keep you posted.

Don't Tell Rocky

Shhhhh!

We're shopping for a new squirrel.

In addition to archiving a couple of old blogs, another of our "Kansas City To-Dos" has been to check out local Jeep dealers for a new Wrangler. Of course, we love of our squirrel. But, truth is, we wish he had four doors, especially when we're going out with another couple. If I have to fold my body into a pretzel to fit in that back seat one more time, I'm not sure what kind of heinous act I might commit!

The last couple of days we've visited three local Jeep dealers. Paul has been corresponding with one for a few months. He was off yesterday, so we scheduled an appointment with him today. But, yesterday we decided to drive about 15 minutes north of here to visit another dealer just to see what they had in stock. There we met a very friendly fellow who was fun to talk with, but really didn't seem to be terribly interested in selling us a car.

"What's new since 2005?" Paul asked.

"An engine and that's about it," replied the mellow salesman.

Even if you're not a car salesman, if you did a side-by-side comparison of our 2005 Wrangler with a 2012 version, you'd see a lot more differences besides the engine. Guaranteed. But, I digress.

We did spot a brand spankin' new "Gecko" colored Wrangler that became the subject of my daily snap. That day-glo green had us thinking about our friends Sue and Doug and their new day-glo orange Jeep, which is appropriately named "Crush". For a brief moment we imagined meeting up with our Jeepin' friends and taking our glow in the dark Jeeps off roading. It would be quite a sight!

We left the neon Jeep at the dealership and prepared for our appointment with Paul's pen pal this morning. We were eager to see what inventory this salesman had to show us. Shortly after pulling into the dealership, we met the salesman in the showroom. We exchanged handshakes and pleasantries, then Paul suggested we head outside to see what Jeeps he had for sale.

"Uh no!" The salesman responded. "I don't want to go outside."

"But, that's where the cars are!" We thought silently in unison. The looks on our faces had to be priceless.

He went on to explain that he was suffering from seasonal allergies and was heading out to see his doctor as soon as he was "done with" us.

As a life-long seasonal allergy sufferer who spent 42 years of my life in Kansas City, I had one thing to say.

Suck it up! (Let me remind you, dear readers, that we had a scheduled appointment with this is dude. If he wasn't feeling well, he could have called to reschedule. We most certainly would have understood!)

Instead, we wrapped up this waste of time meeting and made a beeline for another dealership. With our fingers crossed that we might actually find a salesman who actually wanted to sell a Jeep, we pulled in and were promptly greeted by a friendly and polite sales professional.

Paul explained the reason for our visit. We want four doors. As members of the Freightliners Owners Club, pricing is quick and easy. (We get a deal!) We know pretty much which bells and whistles we want on our new squirrel.

"What's stopping you?" The sales pro asked.

Logistics, was the answer.

You see, Rocky has a pricey auxiliary braking system on board, which we'll want to have removed and reinstalled in our new Jeep. And, of course, our new squirrel will need to have a baseplate installed. And, eventually we'll have to make sure the moose and new squirrel match up just right. Between all of that uninstalling and installing, it makes our heads spin.

"We can take care of that for you, " our new favorite sales pro replied. "And, we'll give you a Jeep to use while we do the work."

Yes. We are close to sold!

Now it's really just a matter of finding the new Jeep that has everything we want. And, if we can't find one, we'll order a 2013 model to be ready in time for our return to Kansas City this fall.

Meanwhile, our trusty squirrel is clueless. He has no idea what might be in store for him.

We need him to travel many more miles with us between now and then. So, for now we're keeping a secret.

Please don't tell Rocky!

Unattended Blogs

I have a bunch of 'em.

First, there's this one. I haven't meant to leave it so high and dry. We did manage to leave Forest City, but we were weren't satisfied with the results of that stop. I never felt like writing about it. We get to make a return trip to Winnie Town the end of this month.  So, maybe I'll catch the blog up on that adventure then. Right now, we're hanging in Kansas City. We're keeping ourselves busy enough and out of trouble, but there just hasn't been much to blog about.

Second, there's Bullwinkle's Travels. I haven't touched that blog since we left Bonifay, Florida a couple of months ago. One of my many "Kansas City To-Dos" is bringing that journal up-to-date. I have lots of great stuff to share. All I need is some time to write it all up.

This week my spare time has been spent on two vintage non-RVing blogs I gave up long ago. It's been so long that Blogger refers to them as "legacy accounts". And, Blogger is about to abandon them. I have until May 25th to bring them back to life, or Blogger says they'll shelve them.

I haven't touched either of these blogs since 2007. While they were great fun for awhile, my interest on the subject matter has waned over time. One of the blogs was all about my early quilting and knitting adventures. Mostly, it chronicled the construction of my most complicated creation: a queen-size double wedding ring quilt. As readers here may recall, I finished the top of this quilt nearly three years ago days before we hit the road. Needless to say, I have little interest in continuing a blog about a quilt that's still not finished after some eight years. I'll finish the quilt some day, but the blog is done.

The other blog was a lot more fun. It was a pundit-style blog on which I published quite regularly for a couple of years. I developed a nice little following, too. But, life got busy and this fun little blog fell by the wayside. I don't have the passion for the topic I once had. So, that neglected project is toast, too.

Although my work on these blogs is done, I really want to save the content. So, with visions of logging on to my ancient Blogger account and taking a minute or two to download my old posts, I went to work to save my work.

Oh, if it could have been that easy!

I couldn't remember the password. So, I requested a reset. Apparently, it was sent to two email accounts that I closed long ago. Blogger offers no direct help to its users, which reminded me of the old saying, "You get what you pay for." With no way to access these soon-to-be-tossed blogs, I resorted to a most tedious process.

Cut and paste.

The quilting blog is all saved. I'm a year into the pundit blog. With Blogger's May 25th deadline looming large, my keyboard-weary fingers are crossed in hopes that I get it all done. I may never again look at this stuff. But, right now, it's worth this time hogging process to save it just in case I do.

Cutting and pasting is mind numbing work. But, it's given me time to think about my life as a blogger. Looking at my blogging history, it seems it's easy for me to be jazzed about my topic for two or three years. Then, my interest fades until I find a new and exciting thing to blog about (like fulltime RVing!). That has me thinking.

Who knows? It might be time to change things up around here. Maybe a different format, or a fresh spin on things. Or, maybe I'll start a totally new blog to attend to.

Whatever the case, I'm grateful for a couple of things: (1) Both of these blogs are backed up regularly; and (2) I have the password to my Blogger account.

That'll save me a lot of time someday.

Free Check Up

We're big fans of preventative maintenance. We try our best to stay on top of every this, that and the other thing that could sideline ourselves, our cats, Rocky and Bullwinkle. We've learned that this approach might cost a bit more in the short term. But, in the long run, we definitely come out ahead.

While plotting our route on the Great 2012 Moose Spring Maintenance Tour, we realized we would pass near the home of HWH, the manufacturers of Bullwinkle's slide mechanisms and leveling jacks. Although these vital systems haven't given us a bit of trouble, we decided to make a stop and scheduled an appointment to get things checked out.

We pulled into Moscow, Iowa, yesterday afternoon and checked in with the good people of HWH. They invited us to fill our fresh water tank and plug into to one of their half dozen or so electrical hookups. No charge, of course. We happily obliged.

At the bright and way-too-early hour of 7:00 a.m., we pulled the moose into a service bay. We were assured that the HWH crew would give our systems a thorough check. No charge, of course.

Say what?????

The warranty on these parts has long since expired. Yet, the manufacturer happily offers to give everything a thorough once over without it costing us a cent?

Is this Heaven?

No, it's Iowa. And, in Moscow, HWH is happy to offer you a free check up! And, that's after a free night of camping!

While HWH was checking our moose, we made a trek 10 miles or so north to enjoy a wonderful breakfast in the quaint town of Tipton. When we returned, our moose was ready to roll.

The "bad" news, they found a bad spring or two in our velocity valve.

Ooooh! Doesn't that sound awful?

The "good" news was it a simple fix. A few new springs and a half-hour of labor added up to a whopping 48 bucks.

(When was the last time anyone left a service appointment for just $48?)

The "better" news was we greatly reduced the likelihood of being parked somewhere, ready to leave for somewhere better, hitting our "jacks up" button and having nothing happen.

Actually, that's "much better" news.

Who knew that some of the best (and cheapest) preventative maintenance we could find would be in Moscow, Iowa?

We're so very glad we stopped.

Adjusting The Sails

The pessimist complains about the wind;

We hate the wind. We always have.

Maybe we've been over-exposed. Growing up on the Kansas plains and spending a good chunk of our adult lives in the windward hills of the Bay Area, we've had more than our fair share of wicked winds. Of course, exploring the country in a rolling billboard for nearly three years has put us up close and personal with this force of Mother Nature.

Thankfully, we've never suffered any serious ill effects from the wind. (And, we hope we never do.) But, after years of heading to the basement at the sound of a tornado siren, resetting tossed patio furniture, retrieving our trash cans from halfway down the block and wrestling a spent slide topper back into place, our tempest tolerance is marginal at best.

The optimist expects it to change;

In our life as nomads, we've developed a healthy respect for this thing we hate. Early on, we vowed never to travel during a Wind Advisory. After all, we don't have to be anywhere at a specific time, really. So, why fight it?

In the last three years we've pushed back a handful of travel days to wait for the wind to change. And, sooner or later it has done just that.

Here on the Spring 2012 Moose Maintenance Tour, we do have a couple of upcoming appointments. Next on the calendar is a date with HWH, the makers of Bullwinkle's leveling jacks and slide out systems. Nothing's wrong with these vital functions, but we thought it would be a good idea to have them checked out while we're passing through. So, we need to be in southeast Iowa Wednesday night for our Thursday morning check up. After that, we're due in the farth northern reaches of the state on Sunday night for our Monday morning appointment at Winnebago.

Traveling from the South to the Upper Midwest in early Spring can be a dicey proposition. So, we allowed plenty of time to make the trek. After enjoying two weeks of scenic views in North Carolina and Tennessee, we found ourselves in a dusty, gravely park in western Kentucky that gave us a front row seat to the Paducah Auto Auction. After two days of that we were definitely ready to roll!

But, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating. A much-anticipated storm system was sweeping across the nation's mid-section. The weather maps we'd been monitoring for days painted a red swath of severe weather across much of our route to Iowa. The first 100 or so miles were clear, so we opted to make our Saturday travel day a short one. After a quick fuel stop and a 75-mile run north, we were sitting in one of our favorite overnight campgrounds in Whittington, IL. This spacious, friendly and wooded park provided us a much more scenic setting to wait out the weather.

We monitored the powerful storm system as devastating and deadly tornadoes tore through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. We exchanged text messages into the wee hours with family in the path of the storm as they took cover in their basements. Thankfully, everyone made it through the dark and stormy night just fine.

With just a few hours of sleep, I was up before dawn yesterday. Before my first cup of coffee I was in full "weather geek" mode, critically examining everything from the convective outlook to the forecast models on weatherunderground.com. Severe storms were anticipated on our route into northeast Missouri. By evening, the storms were expected to take aim on our cozy campground in Whittington. To top things off, the entire region was blanketed in our most-hated alert: A Wind Advisory. Big bad winds were expected in these parts for this and the next two days.

The weather was, indeed, changing. But, not for the better. Suddenly, Iowa felt much farther than 400 miles away.

The realist adjusts the sails.

While it didn't look like we had many, I kept looking for an option for something to do besides waiting around for another sleepless night spent monitoring the weather.

The Wind Advisory warned of sustained southerly winds of 30 mph with gusts to 45. Our intended route was largely east to west, which would mean fighting a stiff crosswind into potentially severe storms. Not good.

But, what if we went with the wind and traveled north instead? A check of the forecast map made Champaign, IL a candidate for our destination for the day. The college town sits 165 miles up I-57 almost straight north of Whittington. The day's forecast in Champaign looked windy but otherwise clear. There was a chance of severe weather, but likely not until late in the evening after the system was expected to lose most of its punch. Whether we stayed or went, we had a good chance for some rough weather. But wouldn't we rather be 165 miles closer to our destination?

Paul was up with the sun and concurred with my plan. By 9:00, we set sail in the S.S. Bullwinkle on a new path. About an hour into our journey the winds began to blow as predicted, providing a welcome tailwind in which Paul navigated the moose with ease. We blew into Champaign about noon, and the wind was really winding up. The big bonus for the day was our fuel economy. As much as we hate the wind, we really appreciate the extra mile or two per gallon that came with Mother Nature literally pushing us up the road.

As we checked into the campground, we located the storm shelter we hoped we wouldn't have to use. Thankfully, we didn't have to. By the time the storms arrived here last night, they were well below severe limits. But, they were accompanied by that relentless southerly wind, which had us rocking and rolling through the night.

This morning, the storms have moved on to east, but the wind remains. Again, there is a Wind Advisory for much of Illinois. Today, the gale force is coming from the west. If we were still sitting where we started the day yesterday, we'd be staying put or wrestling with the wind all day. Instead, we're chilling out in a town we weren't planning to visit but look forward to. Thanks to adjusting the sails, we are now back on track to reach our next destination on time.

Here's hoping our Springtime journey through Iowa is far less dramatic!

Many thanks to the late William Arthur Ward for his words, which provided a structure for this post that began simply as one long rant. Many more thanks for my Delete key!