Getting Started Part 2

Happy Tuesday!  I only have one more day after today to work at the University of Virginia after being there for 26 years and am I glad!  Things have changed a lot there.  And it is no longer a great place to work which was another of the motivations for taking a chance, quitting the job and taking off.   But here is part 2 of the rest of the story.

By now, it's 2007. I began to have both the kayak AND RV dream. And that’s what it was, a dream. My secret dream from pretty much everyone but David and a couple close friends. Eventually I spent lots of winter time on used RV websites comparing prices and types. I got a lot of really great advice from my friend Jody who had owned an RV and knew the answer to every question I was asking about what to buy and where to find it. Thanks Jody! But it was all still a dream.

I went to all the shows in the state of Virginia and looked at those new rigs with prices I could never afford. I learned which shows were worth the bother. The next year, David came with me or I took friends who thought I was crazy but went along for the fun of it. Luckily my state has about 3 good shows a year so I got to look at a lot of new RVs.

And then late 2008, the economy tanked and my job began to have major changes.  The dream got less possible and more insistent.  It's 2009 and I am still dreaming in spite of it all with no idea how in the world I could ever do such a thing. But I kept on dreaming. (this strategy of dreaming with no idea "how" had worked a couple of times before for me which was probably why I just kept on in spite of the “reality”)

The initial dream was something small 21-25’, never considered a 5er-too big I thought and we don’t own a truck therefore too expensive. Our town is a sort of high brow college town and we almost never see any RVs except on the Interstate going to the Skyline Drive or Blue Ridge Parkway. Or parked way out in the country for somebody’s mother to live in. There isn’t an RV dealer closer than about 90 miles from here.

Thus I was spending more time on line looking and actually driving hours to see some of these used rigs. Over time I’d decided on a Class A and that Winnebago was a company I could trust especially when a lot of others started going under with the economy. Maybe 30’ since I’d come to see that probably for full time, I wouldn’t like the smaller ones even though they could go to more of the out in the boonies places I had in mind.

In my 2009 holiday stocking, I got a little gold Class A RV ornament and I put it on the small table under my vision board at the foot of my bed along with my National Wildlife passport book, some sea shells and other symbols of my dreams. Well you can see.

(Although it looks big in the picture.  It is next to a book that is 4X6".)

At that point I had no idea there were any other people who actually lived, by choice in an RV year round and certainly not “Permanently”. Everybody I’d talked to or seen at shows used them for “trips”.

Enough for now.  I'll finish up this story tomorrow.  Check back then for the end of the tale.  Or the tail end of the tale. :-)