We've passed some one-year anniversaries! We ordered our motorhome in September 2019 and took delivery in November 2019. We moved in and hit the road in February 2020.
Our big traveling plans were, of course, upended by the pandemic. We traveled for only two weeks in February 2020 and then hunkered down at Alison's mom's house on the Texas Gulf Coast. We returned to the road for four months from July to October 2020, traveling in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Our second stay at Alison's mom's house on the Texas Gulf Coast, from October 2020 to January 2021, allowed us to vote, enjoy Halloween decorations, celebrate Thanksgiving in a big kitchen, and gather with our two daughters for Christmas and New Year's. Our motorhome was once again a large closet in the driveway, except for the Christmas holidays, when it became the "apartment" for our older daughter and her cat, visiting from Boston for a month.
In January 2021, we restarted our travel life. From Texas, we aimed for Tucson AZ, where Doug's parents live. We had planned to spend a week in Las Cruces NM on the way; but the forecasted week of 21 degree lows led us to hightail it further west more quickly. We came to this decision after arriving in Fort Stockton TX and having our DC power go out. We still had the AC power from the campground hookup, so our microwave and computers worked; but without DC power, we had no lights or fans, including the furnace fan - with temperatures dropping, that was a no-go!
We were fortunate on two fronts: While in Texas, we had forgotten to check the propane levels during chilly weather, and the furnace quit while our daughter was in residence. We bought a small ceramic space heater to tide her over, and then stashed it in an outer storage bay when we left. You better believe that was helpful in Fort Stockton when we couldn't use the furnace! The second piece of good fortune was the wonderful owner of Big Bend RV Service, who came out to our site, diagnosed a faulty coach battery disconnect relay, and bypassed it. (Living full-time in our RV, we never use the coach battery disconnect switch anyway.)
(Another helpful item while without DC power was the Luci inflatable solar light that we hung from a ceiling vent.)
While we waited for the mobile RV service, the winds were picking up and the temperature was dropping. We took a good look at the weather forecast - something we must get in the habit of doing earlier in our planning! - and decided that the sustained low temperatures would be a little harder on our rig than we were prepared for. (In the future, if we want to go somewhere colder, perhaps to play in the snow in Colorado, we will plan to buy skirting for the RV.)
So Doug decided he would rather turn our week of travel into an express run. Including our stop in Fort Stockton and a few hours' sleep in a Flying J Travel Center parking lot in El Paso, we covered 883 miles in 30 hours. We were also fortunate that our RV park in Tucson was able to accept us a week early - spots in snowbird regions can be tough to come by!
While in the Tucson area, we've enjoyed several good visits (and home-cooked meals!) with Doug's parents, and Doug bicycled eighty miles of "The Loop", Tucson's 120+ miles of well-paved pathways, bike lanes, and art installations! Alison has mostly been working - January is an over-full month for bookkeeping tasks.
The change in scenery and climate has been stark. While friends and family in the northeastern U.S. shiver through rounds of snowstorms, we've been walking Hersey under sunny blue skies. Of course, Hershey has had to get used to gravel instead of grass - and to be careful about lifting a leg against a cactus.
We've really appreciated being able to enjoy two major benefits of this full-time life: visiting family (we got to celebrate Doug's father's 85th birthday with him), and hiking with Hershey through new terrain.
From here, we will be traveling to Phoenix to visit Doug's sister and her family, then west to southern California, with hopes for an improving situation in 2021 for us all.
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