Goodbye RV, it was fun while it lasted.
It was almost exactly four years ago today that we took possession of our first-ever RV. It would be another couple of months before we spent our very first night in a campground. We then proceeded to live in the thing almost every single day since.
During these last 1,394 days, our motor home has taken us to the rugged shores of Maine; backed up to the shocking blue waters off Key West; discovered things we never knew existed; climbed the Rocky Mountains; survived the Badlands; drove the Pacific Coast Highway; and made some 241 other stops along the way. Last week, our motor home made its final stop with us as its owners.
This was always the plan, if only loosely. We never intended to live in a motor home forever. We didn’t move into one solely for the love of the RVing lifestyle. In fact, when we decided to do this we had zero first-hand knowledge of what that lifestyle even entailed. No, for us the motor home was always a means to an end – a fantastic mobile apartment we could put virtually anywhere we wanted.
Wherever we stopped we’d get the same question from long-time friends and first-time acquaintances alike: “How long do you intend to live in an RV?” Up until recently, we’d always answer exactly the same way: “We’ll do it until we’re done.”
Toasting our last night in the RV with our last glass of a hard-to-find Kentucky Bourbon we discovered on the road.
The truth is we never really knew what that meant. I guess it’s like the old saw about pornography – you know it when you see it. In this case, it was more of a feeling. We would know it when we felt it. And suddenly we did.
Finishing our excursions to Hawaii and Alaska mostly settled things for us. Once we returned from those destinations, we had pretty much completed our exploration of the U.S. Sure there is more to do in our home country. It’s true you can never really get everywhere, even just once. But after four years of near-continuous domestic travel, we’re ready for more distant shores.
As versatile as they are, RV wheels can no longer take us where we want to go. It’s time to move on. So we are.
O.K. we won’t miss everything about living in an RV.
Unburdened by our 35-foot bus of a home, we’re now making our way back to New York where one-way tickets to Madrid, Spain, await us. We’ll spend the spring traversing the Spanish and French Mediterranean, the summer in England and Ireland, and the winter somewhere in the southern hemisphere (this year’s unusually cold winter – 11 degrees in Texas ???? – settled that for us; hell, we no longer even own winter coats).
While we’re a little sad to leave the familiarity of our RVing ways behind us, we’re even more excited about what lies ahead. And as much as everything is changing for us, some things remain the same. When asked how long we intend to live out of backpacks we’ll still respond with the tried and true – we’re going to do it until we’re done.
