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Like many folks that are marching towards retirement in their 60’s, Sue & I (Mark) had no master plan. We had both diligently saved for retirement through 401K contributions, and accelerated home mortgage payments. Sue was a High School of the Arts teacher and Mark was a Mechanical Engineer. We had an awesome house, great friends and our finances in order to make “sitting around” for the remainder of our life comfortable.
That,….. is exactly when it dawned on us! We needed to do something different with the time we had left on planet earth! Sitting around needs to come WAY later,…… We started to throw around all sorts of exciting and crazy ideas to mix up our cushy life together.
Our home was in Milwaukee Wisconsin, on a corner lot with 175 feet of sidewalk. The thought of snow blowing that and our stairs and driveway while in my 70’s and 80’s was a showstopper. Once we started to discuss “where” we would move to, we discovered we both had 13 different cities and states in mind, but no overall favorite.
We talked about living in multi-month AirBnB locations,…….with maybe a small “base” home somewhere. We mused about living on a cruise ship or moving into a high-rise rental unit in various interesting cities for six months to a year at a time. We could envision living lite so moving a few times in the future would be easy.
One of my old high school friends Ray and his wife Peaches from 1970 called and arranged to stop by in their 27 foot Rexhall Class A Motorhome. They were on a coast to coast cross country adventure from their home in Danville CA.
We shared a magical afternoon and evening together with love and laughter of memories of the “past.” We talked about the “present” they were experiencing together in their RV as we literally sat in their rig that they parked out on the boulevard in front of our house. It was disorienting to be in a kitchen/living area out in front of my stick & brick house!
Ray was gracious enough to let me drive his motorhome a few miles, and that was all it took.
Sue and I immediately started to look at RVs. We looked at trucks and 5th wheels for a few months, but ended up deciding the motorhome style of travel was more of what we envisioned our travel style to be.
The first 6 months before moving into the motorhome were head-spinning and emotional. In those 6 months, both Mark’s parents died, then one of Sue’s brothers died and then Sue’s Dad died. This was an affirmation that life is short and you just never know what’s in store for you….. so, as Sue’s Dad said a year before he died, “Don’t procrastinate!!” And we didn’t!
Yikes!! My head is spinning just thinking of it all.
And this is only the BIG stuff!! There’s so much more not mentioned!
How did we do it??!!?
We had been together since 2008 and hadn’t ever even owned a tent or sleeping bag together! We had a lot of adjustments to get used to in our new life now, and a lot to learn! We were excited beyond description!
For the first year, as we documented our travels ONLY on Facebook, but we could see that this RV Living Lifestyle was way too much fun to continue keeping it a secret for only our Facebook friends.
We discovered we both actually LIKED making videos of our adventures, and so our YouTube Channel “Our Journey In Myles” was born on December 7th 2018. Our channel is mostly for fun, showing you what we chose to do in each of the states we visit, with a few RV Tips & Tricks thrown in.
This is ONE OF OUR FIRST FACEBOOK VIDEOS when we came to realize that we’re having so much fun with recording. Thank GOD we now have NEW Cameras, NEW microphones, NEW computers, NEW hard drives, NEW Cloud Storage, NEW editing software and NEW knowledge on how to make MUCH BETTER videos! Thanks to you all that have stuck with us during this process.
The RV lifestyle will turn everything you used to know and do on its head. It will make your old life seem new again, and test your relationship with your mate, all while providing you with a satisfaction and appreciation of truly breathing in life as it was meant to be consumed.
Mark is 70, and Sue is 65 (as of 2022). We have a lot of things to do and see. We would love to have you come along with us,…..let’s get going and do them together!