Just shy of two months and after driving nearly 1200 miles in our RV we finally left the state of Texas. Since Texas is our former home state we always love to do the slow crawl through it. Besides all the great food and friendly people one of the big draws to returning to our home state is reconnecting with good friends.
When we lived in Bryan and College Station Sharon and I had lot of good friends… or were some of them just friends? Just what is a good friend? While we were working we each had our unique work friends, we each had our unique social friends but we also had our “together” friends. Living in College Station more than 30 years the makeup of those friends changed somewhat over time yet there was always our core group of good friends that remained..
As our children grew up we began to notice some of our stronger friendships became stressed especially when our daughter became involved in sports as our lives changed since we traveled a lot to and fro encouraging her development in her sport of softball. Sadly we lost some friends during that time but we also gained some new ones… our softball friends. Towards the end of our stay in College Station other strong friendships became stressed when some of our friends took umbrage at our leaving our “home” to begin our RV lifestyle… Sometimes even the strongest of friendships seemingly cannot survive big changes. So were these two groups of people good friends?
After returning to our old hometown each of the last four years it is funny to realize that we now have a different set of good friends than we had when we lived there. Each time through town we see most of our friends but always miss seeing a few due to one reason or another. Some we have seen every time we hit town and others only occasionally. These good friends are those that we not only love and respect but also know will always have our back. They reach out to us not only in moments of need but also to share moments of simple joy and happiness. Being with them feels like we pick up right where we left off despite the time span between these meetings. So has your list of good friends changed and what is a good friend to you?
We are now in our fifth year of living our dream and traveling all over the USA in our motorhome. As a result of these travels we have made many strong connections among our new group of friends – our RV’ing network of friends. We decided while it is sad that we lost some good friends back home we are happy that new ones appeared. The nature of our good friends has expanded more in the past four years than in any other time in our lives (and we were both military brats). We now have more good friends whom we have met since RVing than we ever did back home.…
Did you “lose” some “good friends” back home after hitting the road? Has your core group of friends changed after hitting the road? Reflecting on our friendships over time and the joy they have brought to our lives makes us even more convinced we made the right decision in embarking upon this RV lifestyle. Life is good…
Well said, John, and I totally agree! It is interesting how some people just can't accept this life style we lead. But when we return home to PA there are a few true friends that always want to meet not matter what. We, also, have more friends now then we ever had. We really enjoy our RV friends and look forward to reconnecting with them as we all travel the country. See you and Sharon down the road somewhere:)
ReplyDeleteSo beautifully written, well thought out and delivered. Jim and I have many more friends since we went RVing than we had before.
ReplyDeleteThats sounds exactly the way our friendships have evolved over the last 9 years we have been on the road.
ReplyDeleteWould not trade this lifestyle for anything though.
You have written exactly how it's been for us. We have made so many wonderful new friends - more than we ever had back in the sticks and bricks. Love this lifestyle.
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