It is not so much the destination as the journey itself that matters.
This blog documents our retirement journey.
Bill and I had always loved camping and traveling and shortly after we retired in 1997, we bought a fifth-wheel trailer and a truck to haul it with and took off to see more of our country.
We loved the traveling life and a year later, with our children being long grown and on their own , we sold our family home in Oregon. We were “full-timers” — living 100% of the time in our fifth-wheel RV for over ten years.
Our home was where we parked it and we loved everything about our traveling life-style. We found beautiful scenery and interesting people everywhere, visited historical places we’d only read about, and saw all kinds of new flora and fauna.
Unforgettable experiences and forever memories.
We named our Blog FullTime Life both because we were full-time RVers and because it speaks to our ‘real-life’ goal of living each day to its fullest.
In May 2007, our Golden Anniversary year, we took a three-month break from the RV Life and traveled abroad for the first time, spending three months living in a flat in Southeast London. It was a magical way to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary.
We continued living and traveling in our fifth-wheel when we returned to the States, traveling and living in our RV, including many visits with family in beautiful Colorado, Washington State, or Texas. And of course back to Oregon where we almost always spent our summers enjoying family and beautiful scenery. I blogged about it all and even back-blogged about most of the great places we’d visited pre-blogging.
We loved the traveling RV life style but change is inevitable. On our first visit to Florida in 2009, we fell in love with the RV Park and the area where we were staying. We especially loved that it was on a Canal!! t was too far to think about towing the RV back and forth every year, and anyway it was about time to find a more permanent winter home. At the end of that first season, we bought our “Canal Cottage” and since then we have spent part of our year in the sunshine state.
Oregon is once again our official residence and nowadays we spend about half the year in Oregon and the rest of our time traveling or in Florida. Bill does the travel planning and I blog about it after we’re home again. And we enjoy and blog about our everyday life on both coasts,
Since that first trip to London, we’ve been fortunate to be able to be visit some of the countries of Europe and Central and South America on several adventures — each of which I thought of as “the trip of a lifetime.” It’s easy for me to think of the trips as magical, because Bill does all the planning.
So although we are no longer on the road full time, we still adhere to our full-time philosophy. As the blog says, life is all about the journey. We’re grateful to continue it!
Sallie@FullTime-Life.com