Category RVing

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 3

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

In spring 2022, we summited two of the Northeast’s most famous mountains, one by foot and one on wheels. Sue sits atop Acadia National Park’s Cadillac Mountain, the USA’s tallest peak along the East Coast. We are proud that we hiked to Cadillac’s apex.

Wheels lifted us to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the tallest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet. There was a cold breeze when we posed with the sign, but nothing near the record 231 miles per hour recorded there in 1934.

The mountains offered challenges, but to qualify as my number three retirement adventure, there has to be more to the trip. Right?

Yep. Two reasons. First, aboard Lead Foot, our Ford F-150 named after its color, we pulled Minnie 2 on a 13,000-mile journey to more states than I can list here, but a few of the most memorable: Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Our hiking shoes found miles and miles of trails and our bikes carried us on rail trails in several states.

Now for reason number two. Minnie 2, a 25-foot Winnebago travel trailer on its second cross-country voyage, did not return home with us. Why not? It’s not that she quit, nor did she get in an accident. We left her in Virginia—on purpose. We rushed home in Lead Foot in five days because our realtor had put our Ashland, Oregon home up for sale.

Why?

Sue and I had fallen for Williamsburg, Virginia during a week there and, on the spot, we decided to move there. And it almost worked. After months of enduring sky-rocketing interest rates that scared away potential buyers, we finally had our Ashland townhome sold, but on the last day of due diligence, the buyer backed out. Maybe our move was not meant to be.

But Lead Foot missed Minnie 2, so in January 2023, he took us to Virginia to bring her home. We took the slow way back, cruising through the southern states in two months, piling up even more memorable day hikes and drives.

Oxford says adventure is “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous experience or activity.” It says nothing about happy endings. We didn’t get to move to Virginia, but adventure stories number two and number one are coming soon!

Any guesses?

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 6

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

In 2016, we plunged into the world of RVing. By spring of 2017, without having mastered the art of hookups nor the skill of guiding our Rockwood Mini travel trailer into camping sites, Sue and I climbed into our Toyota Tacoma and headed to Arizona with only one other definite stop: Charleston, West Virginia, where we visited our son Chris and his girlfriend Gail.

The tow police questioned our choice of trucks. Some asked, “How does that tow for ya?” when they actually meant, “You’re towing that with that?” But Taco never let us down and actually became quite attached to Minnie, aka Mini.

Recognize these places? Sedona, Bowie, Chiricahua, Saguaro, Asheville, Warm Springs, Badlands, and Charleston, South Carolina? There were many more highlights. We used our hiking shoes often and Minnie’s favorite spot was South Dakota’s Black Hills (Can’t you tell in the photo above?).

In the Hill Country of Texas, we rode out a tornado warning in Taco, where we buckled up for safety. He thanked us for not leaving him alone by running to the restroom to ride out the storm in a shelter with a foundation. We learned the art of reverse hookups in Texas, when the sewer, water, and electric hookups were on the opposite side, meaning we had to somehow string pipes and wires under Minnie. They barely reached.

After twenty-five states, 9,833 miles, and 61 days, I wrote:

“Was it easy? Absolutely not, but the best trips have challenges. Call us crazy, but we think overcoming hardships is part of the joy of travel. Towing a trailer into a hard wind is no fun, but the smell of coffee from your own kitchen each morning is a dividend.”