Wow has it been 18 months already?

Funny how time sneaks up on you… When we were living in our sticks and bricks home back in Texas we were often reminded how fast time flies by seeing someone's children when it had been 10 or 12 months since the last time we saw them. They would be much taller, more mature, etc. But when you travel in a motorhome and move from place to place there is no time ruler other than a calendar. And there it was… September 3rd… 18 months to the day when we hit the road as full timers…

One of our pacts as full timers is to sit down after each six month period as full timers to reflect and evaluate where we are as individuals and as partners. To seal this deal we usually have this discussion while having a nice at home dinner along with a very nice bottle of wine….

After dinner and a couple of glasses of wine the questions begin…

• So what did you think about the last six months?
• What were the best and worst things we experienced as full timers?
• So do we still want to do this full timing thing?
• What do we want to do over the next 6 months?
• Have we succeeded in finding a place where we might want to eventually settle down?
• What could make our experience in full timing better?

To sum it up, we agreed we both still want to full-time in the motorhome as we have yet to feel the need to settle down nor have we found our “ideal” location. However, Sharon shared that she feels that some of the “shine has worn off” for her in the lifestyle lately. Her experience in the desert and the West Coast did not really live up to her elevated expectations. I suggested perhaps her accidental fall, the surgery and rehab sure didn’t help!  For my part, I can find solace in the beauty and wonder of nature wherever we go.  Sharon, on the other hand, is more temperature sensitive, really likes green rather than brown expanses and has not been happy her activities were curtailed by her fracture.

She also voiced that it makes her happier to be in parks with some amenities such as nice places to walk, bike or to at least have enough space at the site for her yoga and weight lifting exercises.In other words if we are able to stay in a really nice park, it can make her experience just as happy as mine even in the brown desert. I had to agree that tightly packed parking lot type parks with no amenities are less fun to stay at for more than a couple of nights. We discussed that both of us like a mixture of stays by choosing the solitude of natural parks interspersed with stays at more social RV resorts. We also discovered we really miss our “date nights” which have been fewer and farther between because of the budget crunch caused by the expense of the West Coast and our unexpected medical bills… but this too shall pass.

In dedicating the time to ask and answer the questions we gained insight and feel better equipped to enhance our experience by compromising or tweaking things a little to make sure we are both on the same page.  I think we emerged with somewhat of a plan for the next six months but of course it is all contingent upon the urgency of  repair for the water leak and whether it can be done here or in Red Bay. We will know more after our diagnostic appointment at LaMesa RV in San Diego in couple weeks.

We did find a home for a month in San Diego at Mission Bay RV Resort whose off-season monthly rates begin 9/15/2012 the day we plan to arrive. Here it is all about location and its proximity to San Diego, a city we yearn to explore…