We Come and We Go

We certainly do. At this time of the year snowbirds, winter Texans, whatever you call the residents of the snowy northern states who come south for the winter, are turning their wheels north where the temperatures over the coming 6 months or so will be more comfortable than they are in southern Arizona, southern Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. They will enjoy the temperate zone for half a year or so before heading back south sometime between October and January.

We are doing the same. Next Tuesday, after enjoying Easter at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Tempe and a visit with friends on Monday, we will be headed out as well. We are in the midst of cleaning the house, moving everything we will need for the summer into our Airstream. We have arranged to have someone check on our house here over the summer, turned in the paperwork to have our mail forwarded for the duration, had final get-togethers with friends we won't see till next fall and washed the truck and cleaned it inside. I am finishing some turning projects; the federal and state tax returns have been filed.

When we go for our daily walks in our resort we can see many of the other winter residents here have already left. This is a very predictable migration, as marked as the time when students return to school in the fall and are released for summer vacation.

Before returning to Colorado for July, August and part of September, we will be driving north to I-40 then east to address part of our bucket list by staying in the final 5 continental US states we haven't yet spent the night in--New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island--before visiting our son Doug and our granddaughters Rachal and Samantha in New Hampshire. We are looking forward to traveling.

We began RVing in 1988 and in 2005 we did our first volunteer assignments at Nails Creek State Park in Texas and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The following year we volunteered for a couple of months at Fort Parker State Park in Texas. That is where we met full-time RVers Frank and Chris. She introduced me to blogging. On May 21, 2006, I created 5thwheelwanderings.blogspot.com and published my first blog post. Since then I have published 1274 blogs and this will be 1275. We felt we got to know some of those bloggers as they shared their life on the road. And on January 29, 2009, we moved out of our Colorado house and became full-time RVers.

In the 8 plus years we have seen many people also begin full-timing and have made real friends--not just virtual friends--with some of them. In October 2014 we purchased our house in Superstition Views, ending our full-time lifestyle but not our travels. Some people who are full-timers live that lifestyle
for only 1 to 3 years. Sometimes they are traveling to find a good location to spend their retirement. Others are on the road for 10, 15 or 20 years. In the years I have been blogging and we have been reading RV blogs, we have watched at least six of those full-timers (including Frank and Chris) do just as we have done, buying a house for part of the year or setting up the RV permanently in an Escapees RV park. Obviously, traveling full-time in an RV is something people come and go from. We understand.

I also understand how hard it is to keep up a blog that is primarily about travel when travel is reduced to only part of the year. This is my first blog post since April 5. They will be coming more often beginning next week when we hit the road again. I am not looking for more RV blogs to read. I am spending more energy getting to know people here in our resort but not making new friends on the internet.

The most constant thing in our lives is not the people around us, the work we, the place we live or our lifestyle. It is change. And it keeps us on our tow and learning new things all the time.