Two Hams on the Road

September 18, 2014

We are in Goshen, Indiana, attending an RV Dreams Rally.  We first heard of RV Dreams from Roger and Diane, Robison cousins.  They have a blog, Travel with Whippets and link to the RV Dreams blog.  Howard and Linda run RV Dreams, which along with a blog, also holds several rallies a year.  These are mostly geared toward those who are thinking about being full time RVers (which we are not).

The seminars talk about pros and cons of full-timing, but also cover the basics – hooking up, tank maintenance, etc., so we are still learning a lot.  But we really chose to come to this rally because the RV Driving School is here.  We are signed up for driving lessons Sunday and Monday.  I’m going to learn how to back up the rig (I already drive it forward) and Steve hopes to learn some tricks to make it easier to back up.  Our instructor is a former ice road trucker.

We find ourselves among the old timers at this rally, since we’ve had our rig almost a year.  About a third of the attendees don’t have a rig yet and are still thinking about full timing.

For RVer’s, full timing means living in your RV all the time and not have a home somewhere.  We don’t intend to give up the house and expect to spend a fair amount of time in West Lafayette, so we don’t qualify as full-timers.  Someone called us part time full-timers, since we plan to be in the rig for extended periods. 

We’re here in Goshen this week and then back home for a week.  Then we take a six week swing to the east coast to visit both our parents and other family and friends.

We’ll then be back in West Lafayette for the rest of football season and Thanksgiving.

After Thanksgiving, we start what we think will be our longest RV trip.  We head out for Orlando first, to spend a week with Darci and her family at Disney World.  Then it will be a slow journey to Dallas for Christmas, making several stops along the way to visit and sight see.  We’ll be stopping at the Villages in Florida to visit with Steve’s Uncle Eep and our friends, Joy and Sam.

Christmas will be in Dallas with Natasha, Mike and Maria.  We expect to be there about a month – both Steve and Maria have birthdays in January.

After that, we’ll drive along the southwest border to California and follow spring up the west coast.  In June we will join up with an RV caravan to Alaska.  We will be back in West Lafayette for the first football game of 2015!

It will be an exciting year and I’ll try to keep you posted.

Deb