Just about a year ago, we dropped everything and headed off
on our RV adventure. It’s been a busy,
crazy, interesting, stressful and still pretty fun 12 months. We wouldn’t trade the experiences for the
world.
It was the right move at the right time, we needed to break
free of the rut of living in Stepford-ville and doing what the world expects
grown-ups to do.
Just this year, we’ve been to 8 European countries, 8 US states, driven 6k
miles in the RV (traumatizing the cats the whole way), met lots of people, made
friends, found jobs (some challenging and cool, others not so much), and had a ton of experiences.
We’ve stayed at beautiful state parks (Our favorite was
Trinidad Lake in Colorado.) and iffy RV parks (like Jantzen Beach in Oregon.)
We spent a lot of time customizing the Imp to meet our (and
the cats’) needs so that we could live our way and not in a retro 1970’s lizard
lounge. 😊
We’ve had some personal challenges, individually and as a
couple, which have just made us more determined to live our lives and not the
lives that are necessarily expected of us.
So, with all that’s transpired in the last 12 months, we’re
changing it up again.
Cuz Erkharts gotta Erkhart.
We realized that while we liked living tiny, we didn’t like living in RV parks.
When you by a motorhome, there’s the romanticized and theoretical
ability to pack up and drive away whenever you want. But, the reality is that
you’re stuck with a limited number of places you can live legally, especially
if you’re trying to stay somewhere for more than a couple weeks. And unfortunately, those places are more
often than not RV parks that are crowded, expensive and not in very good
neighborhood (or they’re in a decent neighborhood, but too far from anything useful
– like jobs.)
The other odd thing about RV parks, as opposed to the state
parks we’ve stayed at, is the use and abuse of the shared facilities. Sharing showers, restrooms and washer/dryers
with 50 to 100 other families seems to bring out bad behavior in many folks
since it’s “not their house” they don’t have to care or take care of it. Even with great park managers trying to keep
up with the cleaning, we saw some really gnarly bathrooms and laundry
facilities.
With that and a few other considerations in mind, we packed
it in and rented a cute boutique studio apartment in Vancouver Washington a few
weeks back. The wife feels like Madeline
from the children’s books because the building is set up like a hotel and feels
like one too!
And finally, last week
we sold the Imp to a little old man and his wife who were thinking about
moving to Colorado 😊
