NO, WE DID NOT FALL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!!! WE ARE ALIVE AND WELL AND ON THE MOVE!

We want to let you know that although we are traveling again; we are adhering to strict social distancing guidelines. We are avoiding crowds and indoor settings! We also want to take a moment to thank all of our family and friends for making our time back east so very special! We miss you already and look forward to seeing you down the road!

Since our last blog post, which was a little over three and a half months ago, we have traveled three thousand, one hundred and twenty-three miles. We traveled through ten different states, spent months visiting with family and friends, including our beautiful granddaughter, celebrated our year anniversary of full time RV travel, completed a year’s worth of medical appointments and arrived at the beach at last!

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Gus has performed amazingly well for us. I know many people, including us, thought we were a bit nuts for literally putting our life in a twenty-two-year-old RV, but Gus has more than risen to the challenge! He did break down on one occasion, I should say, failed to brake. We were leaving our campground in Virginia when we discovered we did not have brakes! Gus had sprung a leak and was in need of a new master cylinder. The repair involved a three-day stay in the shop. We were fortunate enough to be able to stay at my brother’s house! This provided us not only with comfortable accommodations, that included daily corn-hole matches and euchre games, but bonus time with our Virginia family, including that beautiful granddaughter of ours!. For the record, those three nights were the only nights we did not spend in Gus since we left last June!

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We have grown quite fond of Gus and have shown him love along the way. Along with a new master cylinder, he has received an awning upgrade, LED lighting upgrade, theater seating, new backsplash in the bathroom, a new TV, new tires, new alternator, new batteries and satellite TV. The only other maintenance he has required was an oil change. While in Lake Conroe we were lucky enough to have it done by a mobile service.

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We have definitely learned a lot in this first year and have purchased a few items that have really enhanced our daily life! Three of these items involve cooking. They are an electric teakettle, an Instantpot and our absolute favorite and definite game – changer, a twenty- two inch Blackstone! Bart and I both love breakfast and would prepare a big breakfast inside quite often. It was pretty much a daily occurrence during our shelter at home period. It was not only time consuming, but messy! It left me with two to three rounds of dishes each morning! The Blackstone enables us to make an amazing breakfast with virtually no mess or clean up required! I can say the same for dinner. Meals from steak to stir- fry with easy clean up are common place now! We love to use our instant – pot to prepare side dishes. Fresh corn on the cob is our current vegetable of choice!

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Anyone who knows me is not surprised that I am very excited about items that provide easy access to good food, but we have also made some changes that don’t involve food that have greatly improved our quality of life! Top of the list would be getting rid of the tow dolly and going to a flat tow set up, even though it meant parting ways with our beloved Pete the Prius. Flat towing is so much easier and we have been extremely happy with Titus the Terrain! We also love exploring our surroundings on our E-Bikes, which we purchased in the first month of our journey; it is impossible to imagine our life without them! Upgrading our manual awning system to an electric system has also made life simpler. The fact that we could do this upgrade while keeping the original awning fabric made me very happy! We were also able to add a zip on shade to our awning and purchase a clam to enhance our outdoor living space.

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Most Asked Questions Answered

The three questions we get asked most often are; What do we do about doctors, prescriptions and other medical needs? How do we get our mail? Do we have a home base? I will begin with, do we have a home base or home park? The simple answer to this is no. We travel full time and though we may stay in an area for a month or so; we do not have a home base! We consider Gus our home base. Wherever Gus is parked becomes our home. Our home never changes, but our yard and views sure do!

While planning to travel full – time in Gus, we knew we had to have a legal residence somewhere. We needed to have driver licenses, register vehicles, maintain vehicle insurance and be registered to vote. We also wanted to have a consistent mailing address. We decided to use America’s Mailbox in South Dakota. We actually set up our mailbox there at the beginning of June in anticipation of our June 25th departure. This gave us an address to use for all of our house closing paperwork, as well as a place to begin forwarding all of our mail. When we left on our full-time journey, we made our way to South Dakota, where we stayed in the campground that is run by America’s Mailbox. Using our receipt for staying there, we went to the Department of Public Safety and got our South Dakota driver licenses, as well as registered to vote. For the record, when we mail in our absentee ballot, we must include a photocopy of our license! From there, we made our way to the treasurer’s office to switch our vehicle’s registration, and just like that, we were South Dakota residents!

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At the time we did this we were proud owners of a Prius, but a few months later we traded the Prius in for our Terrain and got to experience registering a new vehicle in a state that we were not physically in. The process could not have gone more smoothly! Upon purchasing Titus the Terrain, they gave us a ten day temporary registration. We used Fed Ex to overnight the title to South Dakota. A few days later, we received a phone call from a lady at the treasurer’s department, who took payment over the phone, instructed us to put our plates on the vehicle, and said she would put our new registration in the mail. We actually received it before the ten days were up! Since then we have had to renew our registration and we are happy to report that the process was simple and problem free. Everything was done online, and we promptly received the new registration in the mail. In case you are wondering, we have to South Dakota every five years to renew our licenses. I have included a link that provides information on how to become a South Dakota resident, as well as the benefits.

https://www.dakotapost.net/south-dakota-residency

You may be thinking, what good is it to have our mail delivered to South Dakota if we are not there. Our mail is processed through their sorting facility and when we want our mail, we simply go online and put in an address to have it shipped to. On average, we have our mail forwarded once a month. The yearly cost to maintain our mail service is around five hundred dollars. As you can tell by all the items we have purchased, we also need to get packages sent to us. We either have them shipped to the park we are at, or if we are near family, we have items shipped to their house, as our son Paul and my brother can attest to!

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Finally, how do we take care of our medical needs and doctors? This is a concern for anyone, but both Bart and I have ongoing health conditions that require care and maintenance. We both have devices implanted. I have a pacemaker/defibrillator, and Bart has a spinal cord stimulator in his neck and lower back. We have kept our doctors in New York and have our yearly appointments in the summer. At that time we have all of our blood work, X-Rays and other testing done. We also get our prescriptions set for a year. We have them sent to our mail order plan or, if needed, a pharmacy. For us, Walgreens is the best when full-time traveling. We have never had a problem locating one and prescriptions transfer from store to store with ease, which was not our experience with Walmart! We have copies of medical records for both of us and Deek. Yes, we also take Deek to the Vets for his yearly appointment during our time in New York. When emergencies happen, which they inevitably do, we head to the nearest hospital, urgent care or Vets and are sure to bring our records with us. When we are going to be staying in an area for a while, we find doctors in the area to take care of pain management for Bart as well as device issues or maintenance for both of us. I do have a care link device, which allows me to send a pacemaker report to my doctor no matter where I am.

We have enjoyed sharing our first year’s adventures with you! Thanks for coming along for the ride!

UNTIL NEXT TIME…