Category RVing

Freedom…

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

On our way to Arizona, we stayed at the Chiriaco Summit Rest Stop off Interstate 10. Expansive views of California’s Colorado Desert and mountains. A gravel pad. No hookups. And it was free!

This is the moment it hit me. Sue and I had sold our Oregon home and moved into our travel trailer for a winter in Tucson before our search for a new place to live. Where? We don’t know. When? Good question.

I have never felt such freedom. We can go anywhere. No more worries about our townhome. We donated most of what we owned, save for a few important things that we left behind in a small storage unit. All our remaining possessions fit in our trailer and in our pickup truck.

Henry David Thoreau, who lived alone in a tiny cabin in Massachusetts for two years, wrote in Walden that the mundane details of life can keep us from seeing the big picture of our lives. He stripped his life to just the essentials.

In The Shortness of Life, Roman stoic philosopher Seneca wrote that possessions are “the greatest source of human misery.” Let them go–without delay–and really live, he urged.

As I write, Sue and I enjoy the warm southern Arizona desert. There are moments when my mind wanders to the path before us, but I am not worried. Our tiny home has all we need–and more, if I am honest.

For now, I am enjoying the view, sleeping better than I have in years, and most of the time staying focused on the big picture that I feel so fortunate to experience.

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?