A new adventurer, Retirement and the RV

For years I have traveled. In my youth with my parents I remember many a road trip to Florida in the winter, Kentucky, Tennessee, upper Michigan, and all the places in between. Those early car experiences served to fuel my desire to go in search of other places, cultures and experiences. As I left the nest travel became a necessity for work. At first there was the occasional flight. As flights became more cost effective the number of them increased. Be it a two seater single engine or an airline jet, flying was the fast way to get to where I needed to be. In my career I have worked in or visited every state except for two, unless you consider landing and refueling a visit. Then I have been in all 50 states.

As my family grew the DW (dear wife) and I camped. At first it was a tent, then a pop up camper. As our children got older we moved to a nineteen foot trailer. We then borrowed my parents Travco Motorhome. We loved it but could not afford it. We owned  a nice fifth wheel (fiver) that we loved but sold when we purchased the "cabin on the lake". As we approach retirement I want to show the DW and see for myself all the fantastic people and places that I have seen only briefly. The choices were fly (very tired of airports, lines and airplanes), drive and hotel (very tired of sleeping in used beds and box like rooms) or revert to our camping days and really see North America and meet the people that are building the true history of the continent.

As I do not sleep as comfortable on the ground as I did a few years ago we decided to rent a motor home to see if that would suit us better than the trailer or fiver. One trip, 9 days in length told us we needed to own a motorhome. We did not need to pay a couple of hundred thousand for a new fancy one. We needed to find one that we could get our money out of if we changed our minds and that provided the comforts of our own home as we move across the many roads of North America. Less than 4 months after our "rental" we stumbled across a used coach that fit our check list.

2003 Winnebago Adventurer 35U

 The plan is to use "Winnie" as my wife has labeled her as a weekend get away for the first two years until we retire and then do the part time travel to see the country. We do not see full time RVing as fitting our life style as we love our cabin on the north woods lake and are well rooted in our home of 30 years. "Winnie" will become our airplane, hotel, car and even a base for occasional work assignments. Yes it is older than we had planned on purchasing but the couple that owned it kept in like new and drove it only 21,000 miles. As it met our must have check list, had a perfect floor plan and had been well maintained we figured it was worth a try.