Retirement on the road: A multi-part series where retirement meets RV’ing
What are your dreams for retirement? Depending on your circumstances, health and finances, there are many options.
For years, I thought of what big adventure I would take when I retire. Isn’t that what retirement is all about? Doing the things you never had time to do when you were in the working world?
But where to begin? For many, that question is the first obstacle we face.
Two years ago, my husband and I decided to retire after 40 years working, me as a nurse-turned-nurse-practitioner, and my husband as vice president of marketing for a hospital.
My dream was to buy an RV and travel, which was a far stretch from my husband’s retirement vision. It took years of cajoling for him to warm up to the idea of traveling in an RV. To me, it was like viewing the world on the seat of a bike instead of driving a car. Things look different on the bike. You notice the hills because you have to pedal harder. The wildflowers on the side of the road are more vivid when you aren’t passing them at 65 mph. The air is fresher and you feel it against your skin. I felt traveling in an RV and staying in state and national parks would give us insight to a world we have only read about.
Whether traveling by air, sea, plane or RV, the basics are the same. Do your homework before you go and plan as many details as possible. Selecting the right RV for us was the first of many decisions. Neither of us had much RV experience, but we jumped in with both feet. We attended one of the largest RV shows in America, in Tampa, to get a feel for our options. The experience was overwhelming. We attended the show three years in a row, each time narrowing down what type of RV fit the adventures we wanted to have. The choices were endless, but we finally pulled the trigger and bought our 30-foot travel-trailer and one big truck to tow our vacation home on wheels.
With retirement in our sights, I started planning our cross-country adventure, departing Jacksonville, winding through the Southwest, up to Washington and Vancouver, then sprinting back via South Dakota, turning south to Alabama, toward home.
My husband turned the planning phase over to me, so I began listening to podcasts, reading blogs and searching Facebook groups about traveling cross-country.
The big questions that helped in the planning phase were: Where are the main places we wanted to visit? Where is our furthest destination? What off-the-beaten-path adventures did we want to see? Where do we need to stay: campgrounds, boondocks, state or national parks? What is our budget? Where can we cut costs? We could cook mostly in the RV with its full kitchen. But, being that we are both foodies, dining out was a budget priority.
How far between RV stops? Apparently, towing is stressful and requires full attention.
How long should we stay in each location? That depended on what we were there to see, but I also needed to factor in rest days from driving and time to do housekeeping chores.
In all, we set up camp in 34 different locations over four months. I am happy to say we had only one glitch when a farm on which we were planning to stay that day called to say heavy rains washed out the road.
As we continue this column in the following months, I’ll share more on how we overcame that glitch, and the answer to the two questions we are always asked by our friends: “What was your favorite stop on the trip?” and “Are you still married?”
Until next time, what I will leave you with is that the United States is beautiful, fascinating and geographically diverse, with people who are extremely friendly to strangers. And it offers really, really good food.
By Faith Jones
Resident Community News
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