Wheres Ray/Wendy yr 2

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Rollercoaster Ride

 Well the wait came to a end at 5:00 last night. The offer wasn't accepted but, it wasn't rejected. We're not waiting any longer. We'll have showings when they come up and another open house. Now we both can sleep better.
 I keep thinking we should be packing and getting rid of more stuff. I took a look in the 2 bedrooms upstairs,but there is very little in the rooms. I think I have gone through all the rooms at least 3 times in the past year. We have decided that we need to have a rummage to get rid of the stuff the kids don't take.
 I caught up on my blogs. Ray says I'm a lurker. I admit I am, I read A LOT of fultimer blogs. If you have one, I have read it or follow it daily. I love reading and seeing pictures of the different places to visit. I like the details of the different hikes and areas to camp. Ray on the other hand, reads all the RV forums. He checks out all the new gadgets and all the technical stuff.
 We had a inch or 2 of snow the last two nights, looking forward to the 40's the next 3 days. Hopefully the rest of winter will stay mild.

Friday, January 27, 2012

House and planning

Okay update on house sale progress, we have been going back and forth with offers and counteroffers all week. We have given them our final offer. They are to reply by tomorrow(Sat. 1/28). One item Wendy don't like is the closing date is 3/23/12. They have a rate locked til then so it may push them to decide quicker.
  As we plan to fulltime camp there are a few items we have been waiting to purchase. One is a generator, we think we will do some boondocking and would need one to charge batteries, run a furnace n such. It has been a somewhat tough decision as if you get one big enough to run air cond. it would be heavy and expensive to buy and run. We opted for a Honda 2000, should be able to do all with that but A.C., guess we just head somewhere cooler when that happens. The next item will be a tire monitor system. A blowout on a fifth wheel can do quite the damage to camper,so many use these. The only other item to get is a trucker type GPS. That will keep us off roads with low clearance bridges/tunnels. There are laws in some places not allowing propane tanks in tunnels. Our kids had got us  nice GPS when they first started to get popular. We had thought a few times to update the maps but never pulled the trigger and now the trucker type seems to be the way to go. Oh, I do like shopping on line-its just so easy to fine the cheapest price. I don't know what we'll do when we only have a box office address :(.
 Wendy also got an online version of Workamper. They post jobs all over the country. You can also set up a resume to use . We had subscribed to it a few years ago and they had many different type jobs.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

COMMENTS

I changed settings to allow comments w/o signing up-
1.) write your comment
2.) click box and choose anonymous
3.) you will have to type a short word verification then hit publish.
They do all this for protection from virus so I guess its worth it'
 Thanks for following and posting comments. We hope to have Wendy putting up some photos more also.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Party on

Well party with our friends from high school (class of "75)  was nice. Only one couple that usually comes was unable to make it. We behaved pretty good for our group, must be gettin old.-nawwww :). We told them that they could follow our adventures in our blog and one couple did not know what a blog was. We all had a little laugh at that. No we won't mention there names as they may find out. But as I think about it we don't text -  many would laugh at that.
 Wendy spent a lot of time yesterday reading of how we will get Internet on the road. Many private campgrounds are getting wifi, but we will not be in those parks most times. We much prefer state  parks. A Verizon air card seems to be the way to go. We should get coverage most of the time. Still would a router and  a special antenna.
 As we progress with the house sale one couple has viewed it 3 times and the realtor thinks they may be getting a offer ready. That is scaring the bejeebers out of us. Houses are averaging 4 months on the market and maybe 60 days to get financing- that is 6 mos. We are Not ready! We want 6 mos.




Saturday, January 21, 2012

Trade offs

 Okay, middle of January and we're finally getting some real Wi. winter, 0 and snow. Well, as we had much warmer and very little snow to this point at least it should make it seem like a short winter.
 We continue to get ready for our, do I say change in life? Next adventure sounds better. We have 2 house showings this weekend. One is a second  showing. Wendy is starting to worry and think it may sell quicker than we thought. She is thinking we should get to packing up more stuff and sorting what we will take with us.
 I did do some work yesterday with an insurance co. that handles a fulltimers package. It was quite a bit more but is a plan that covers fulltime living in,traveling, and more insurance on personal items. Wendy looked at what we are carrying now for homeowners and camper and it was $45. less. I guess they say many things in fulltiming are a trade off, less for this but more for that. Truck ins. was just a bit more. We are still looking at health ins. for Wendy. I get to keep mine from work at employee cost and I can keep her on but very expensive. As we will be getting S. Dakota residency cost are different. We have looked at a mail forward service in Sioux Falls. Kinda funny as that is where Wendy and I got married. Minnehaha County- luv that name.
 We have party tonight with friends from high school. We have had annual X-mas and a summer party with them since our school days. This may be the last one in this old house. We may try and persuade them to change the summer outing to fall, when we plan to come back for annual visits here. Doing something like this is about sacrificing things we have done for years, which is very hard to do. But we have to do those to follow our dreams, again the trade off thing.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Plans

More on what we are planning to do.. We are liking to say our plans will be written in jello as they can easily change,  but in reality we will have to somewhat plan how we are going to do this. When/if we sell the stix/brix we will travel to South Dakota to become residents there. The reason for that is no state tax, easy to get drivers licence, and mail forward service. We do not really have a bucket list that we are trying to accomplish but there are a few things we know we want to see.
 We hope to do some workcamping along the way. This would help us to keep our cost down  and also think we would need something to ease us from our past work life. There are many different ideas and ways to work camp. Amazon.com hire many workcampers for 2-3 months in pre x-mas season. They have a campground nearby and pay for your site plus wages. Disney hires some, that might be cool. Wendy says I could be Goofy. Some do gate watch in Texas or sell Xmas trees for a time. Our thought is to either volunteer for our campsite/elec at a state park or maybe find a small campground with a few cabins to clean. You normally work for a time of one to three months.
 We would of course do the south thing in the winter. The first winter we plan to do Ala./Louis. area so we can take in a Mardi gras. We would like to do a desert camp next year, that is at Quartzite Ariz.Thousands of campers head there in Jan/Feb to boondock. Then head northwest to a workamp position somewhere.
 We will plan on returning back to Wi for Sept/Oct to catch up with family and Dr's.and such.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Our rig

This is our rig- a 2007 Excel 30RSO pulled by a 2004 GMC 3500 SRW Deisel. We bought both in 07, so we have had some time for adventures and getting it ready for our fulltime plans.



Wednesday, January 11, 2012

1st post

Well, time we started this blogging thing. We are doing this as a team and will both add stuff when we feel we got something worth adding. Hopefully this will keep family and friends updated as to where we are and what we're doing.
  About us- We have been married 37 yrs. in March. We have two daughters and a son, all great and married. We have six grandsons who we love camping and spending time with.
 The house went on the market on 1/8/12. Everyone wants to know what we will do if it sells before we are actually ready to hit the road. I think that would be a good thing that would make it fun to work out. Do we move in with someone, find a rental or what? Well all along we say our plans will be made in jello, so we will figure those out along the way.
 The plan as of now is to work through Sept/Oct. then slowly travel south towards our daughter Mandi's-N.C. for Xmas.