So many details

It's amazing how many things have to be taken care of when preparing to become even a temporary full-time RVer. Selling your home, downsizing all your stuff, deciding what to keep and what to throw away, what to do about the furniture, the list goes on and on. Once you move out of your permanent residence, technically, you don't actually live anywhere, so you have to think about things like: how do I get mail, what about doctors and prescriptions, where is the RV registered and the car or truck? What about insurance for the vehicles?

Fortunately, there are quite a few people that have done full-timing before and a number of businesses exist to help make the process easier. For mail, we're using the GoodSam mail forwarding service. We decided to use that one because it is located in Crestview FL and accepts any kind of mail or packages.

One of the bigger challenges is that banks and investment firms require a "normal" home address. You can't use the address of a mail forwarding service. This is due to the Patriot Act. Apparently, the only solution is to use the address of a relative or friend. Even this gets complicated because new credit cards are only sent to a "home" address, which means your friend has to forward them to you. Be sure to set up ebilling whenever possible so that there is no other mail from these organizations. As a matter of fact, set up ebill for anything you can.

I'm only going to touch on health insurance because I still haven't figured it out. Since you aren't staying in one place, you won't really be able to have a primary care provider and you have to be sure that the insurance provider operates in every state that you may visit. If you have an understanding doctor you may be able to get prescription refills while on the road. However, if tests are needed from time to time, the doctor will need to place an order in a location that you plan to be in. Also,  make sure that you use a national pharmacy so that you can get refills wherever you are located.

We're finally getting close to getting on the road. We pick up our new trailer in six days, so there are only a few more details to take care of. 

Annie's first thoughts

Hello Everyone!! This is Annie! (Susan)..a nickname by some of my family members. This is my first attempt at writing a blog, never even kept a diary as a young girl. So here goes. I wanted to start with some of the experiences we had with purchasing our first RV. We thought we did a lot of research and thought we knew exactly what we were looking for. Sometimes you don't realize it until you are actually in it a few times. What we ended up buying was a Minnie Winnie...

beautiful little trailer inside, bright, skylights, open concept. What we did find out is that it is not  constructed as well as we thought, not insulated as well as we hoped. So back to the drawing board! We realized seeing as though we are going to be traveling cross country and encountered a few different climates we decided we needed something with better insulation and also more storage! My God! downsizing is overrated..that was more difficult then I thought, but we did it! So, what we ended up doing was purchasing a different trailer... an Artic Fox 28F....about 4 FT longer and a lot more storage!! Now I know we will be a lot more comfortable in our new RV, if we are going to be living in this thing for at least 6 mos or more, might as well do it in comfort.....like my sons call our camping....Glampering! Well, this is it for now...stay tuned to our upcoming adventures!! Over and out!! :-)

An Introduction

Welcome, we're Susan and Myles. We've just, finally, reached the retirement point in our lives. We are about to embark on quite an adventure, for us anyway. We're leaving the Seattle area and heading south, most likely, to Florida. Doesn't sound like much does it? You see, we're not just moving all of our "stuff", like normal people. Nope, sold all the furniture and anything else that won't fit in a box. It's a travel trailer for us. Again, not very exciting. Lots and lots of people have trailers or RV's. What's different, at least a little bit, in our case, is that we're brand new to RVing.

So, this blog is going to be a record of our travels, our challenges, the places we like and don't like, the mistakes we make and, hopefully, the fun we have. Hopefully, you'll follow our travels and leave your comments. We'd love to hear from you.