Category Archives: Fulltiming

Change of plans

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Time to catch up on what has been happening. The last blog entry, before the 4-year recap, talked about where we were going next. Well, at least that was what we thought would happen next. Not quite, but changes in plans are something that we have become used to.

The plan was to wait around a bit, head to our friends in SoCal to help them install Solar on their Airstream, and then head to Visalia for a medical procedure that was 5 months in the waiting. However, the medical procedure got moved up by 2 weeks! That changes things!

We decided to change things around a bit. Go from the Vegas area to my sister’s for just under a week, to Visalia for the procedure, down to SoCal for a week, back to Visalia before heading to see our daughter and family in San Francisco. Good plan.

We had a good visit at my sister’s but the road from Vegas is always fun. The long way is down I-15 to Barstow and up 395. Another way is going through Death Valley and up the Panamints. Either way is long or difficult. I asked what route they take? They told me they take US95 out of Vegas, turn west on NV226 which turns into CA168 to Big Pine. Sounds plausible. But… I don’t think I want to take it again. It is a lot of climbing on steep, tight corners and a one-lane portion thrown in but we did make it!

While we were in Bishop, we all took a day’s drive to Mono Lake to the South Tufas. One place I had never been to before:

After our visit to Bishop, we headed toward Visalia. We know how long that trip is and we broke it up by staying in Tehachapi with a quick stop at Red Rock State Park:

The previous time we spent the night in Tehachapi, we were going to stay at the Flying J but ended up opting for the KMart parking lot (yes it was a while ago). This time we stayed at the Mountain Valley RV Park. This park is right by the airplane glider airport and we were able to watch the gliders for a bit in the AM:

We made it to Visalia in the middle of May and had all the necessary procedures done. I did a quick repair on the trailer, replacing an old stove vent:

I also saw this sign while in Visalia. Not quite sure what to make about it. Where’s the love?

We now headed down to our friends in SoCal to help with their trailer. It was a week’s worth of work but we were able to get two solar panels installed, with room for a third, replace batteries with Lithium, add a power protection system, and various other upgrades. Here is a shot of the panels:

Right before we got there, our friends did something that ultimately changed our plans again. They purchased another Airstream, a Bambi:

Their older Airstream is unusable due to the upgrades so they have the new one to take trips in. They wanted to take it out, naturally. Being retired, changes of plans are not too much of a deal so we took another in stride. We knew we were heading to see our daughter so we set up a meeting with them on the cool coast afterward.

Back to Visalia for a bit then off to San Francisco. We got to see our daughter, her boyfriend, and our grandson for the first time since the pandemic took off. It was a long time and very welcome to see them. We took a day trip to the Chinese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park one day:

Next stop Oceano. We were going down there to meet the Chen’s and their new Airstream’s maiden voyage. We stayed there a bit over a week and it was so nice and cool! They could only stay the weekend. We went back to the heat after that for a few more appointments in Visalia and then we headed off. My thoughts were to head to Montana, North Dakota, somewhere that might be cooler. However, while in Oceano we discussed an alternate plan with the Chen’s.

Being recently retired, they wanted to get out in their new trailer some more. They were planning a trip cross-country to visit a lot of friends along the way. They asked us if we wanted to join them. We thought we might as well, at least for a little bit. We wanted to be back for our grandson’s 5th birthday at the end of August.

We planned on meeting the Chen’s in AZ on a specific date, this gave us about 2 1/2 weeks to get there. We decided to head up to Redding to see Roxie’s sister. We stopped in Stockton on the Delta for a few nights en route. Here is the view from the trailer:

Next stop was Redding, during a lot of heat and smoke. Oh joy!

4 years down

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May 2, 2021, marked the completion of four years of full-timing in our trailer. This is us heading away, on May 2, 2017, from our home of 23 years prior:

We didn’t really have any goals for these 4 years other than seeing what is out there! We stopped to see family when we were near, we came back numerous times for birthdays, holidays, etc. We didn’t know where our travels would take us, which was the most fun. Our 4-year ‘anniversary’ was spent with my sister and her family in Bishop, but there were no celebrations. Here is view of Bishop from the hills:

I have been keeping statistics of our trailer since we purchased it in Jan 2013. I track every trip via Google Maps, keep track of mileage and nights spent in locations (the app MapMyRide is most helpful with this). I also track every fuelup of our current truck and previous truck. This allows me to belch out some numbers to bore you with.

YearTrailer MilesNights in TrailerTruck Miles
20171009824017311
20181096932720437
20191128436325327
2020545536614271
202112941224959
Total39100141882305

2017 and 2021 were partial years but we really piled on the miles that first year. 2017, we went to Texas to establish our domicile, continued on to a wedding in North Carolina, and completed the circle by coming back a northern route. We hit 21 states on that loop. Our average nightly stay per location was pretty low, something we would remedy. That year our grandson had his first birthday, which we were able to get to. Sadly, Roxie’s cousin died but we were able to assist his daughter in straightening out his affairs. This would have been hard to do if not retired. This was also the time where our black tank leaked and it took 43 days without our trailer to get it fixed

In 2018 we got our trailer back from repairs then headed to my mother’s. She was getting out of rehab after a hip replacement and we were going to help her at home. We met our friends George and Marcia (www.yinfeng.info) and travelled to Banff and Jasper NP in Canada. We then headed to CA to leave for a trip to Hawaii, getting ready for the 2nd birthday of our grandson. Fate intervened and we went back to my mother’s just before she passed away. We, along with my sister and her family, put her affairs in order. We still did over 10K in miles that year.

Back to Texas in 2019. Roxie had a medical procedure to do in Austin and I was looking to get a new truck. The 2017 truck did fine but we really missed having 4 full doors so we got on there. We were in the Austin area for almost 4 months doing all this, and more. While we were in Texas we wondered what we should do after leaving there. Roxie had joined a group on Facebook that discussed RVing to Alaska. They were having a get together near Anchorage for the 4th of July. We signed up, giving us a target date to get there and we were off! Alaska was great but we headed back to CA and helped Roxie’s sister with some personal issues.

COVID was the theme for 2020. We were traveling around CA until mid-March and WHAM! Shutdowns began. We hunkered down at our son’s place until mid-June and had to get out. We headed to the Oregon and Washington coasts to keep cool during the summer. Around mid-September we headed to Idaho and the weather ended up chasing us down to Nevada. All-in-all we were not that impacted by COVID other than some campground bathrooms were closed. Also two of the things we like to do, dine-out and watch movies, were much more difficult. We made it back to CA for the holidays.

The birth of our third grandchild, second granddaughter, started off 2021. We next headed to Arizona and Nevada, checking out possible locations to move. Arizona was not very locked down at this time, Nevada only slightly more.

Just under 40K actual trailer miles, more than double that in truck miles, 33 states, 4 provinces, 1418 nights in the trailer (just 43 nights shy of a perfect record)!

We will probably be slowing down our travels as we are looking for a home now but we won’t completely stop!