Happy Second Anniversary to us!

Two years ago today we moved into Rolling Thunder, it doesn’t seem that long ago, but a quick check of Thunders log book shows that on October 3rd 2017 our house deal closed and we officially were of “no fixed address”. We had been sleeping in Thunder since September 26th 2019 because we had sold our bed…it’s been a pretty amazing journey, the country we have seen and the people we have met along the way…ya it has been pretty amazing!

Well two years have passed since we went full time, but the players are all still the same, Mr. Divot (or Putz as Susan calls him) is our 23 year old tuxedo cat, we have had Divot since he was just 6 weeks old, he is still in reasonably good health but has become a bit of a grump the last couple of years, wanting to eat at all hours of the day. Mr. Sam I Am is our 7 year old black cat who picked us one day while we sitting on the deck of our sticks and bricks house, as hard as Laurie tried she was unable to find his owners, so know he has been with us for about five years, his curiosity gets him into much trouble, he likes to escape when no one is watching, on one of his last adventures he brought us a bird into the coach. The bird was fine and was released back to the wild, but there were a few exciting moments. But when he is not escaping he like to curl up on the bed for a nap, and then needs to be cuddled when he gets up, he has been in most of the cabinets as he feels it is his duty to explore the whole coach.

As Miss Laurie would explain, they are her fur babies and a huge part of our family, they have visited 5 provinces and 28 states in the last two years and should chalk up a few more this winter. Miss Laurie and I round out the list of players I am the pilot of Thunder and Laurie as the co-pilot and navigating guru, makes it all come together, and believe me I have the easiest job, planning and making the reservations is the hard part of traveling. We have a pretty slow pace of travel averaging between one to two hundred miles a day (150 to 300 kilometres), we avoid rush hours and if we take on a big city it is usually around the noon hour, but it is a pace that works for us. You see we are retired so deadlines are something we try to avoid, and even booking are few and far between, but that is how we roll…

“On the road by 10am and off the road by 2pm and usually stop at noon for lunch and maybe a short nap”

We have tracked every movement of Rolling Thunder since the purchase in May of 2017 notice the mileage 123665.6 when we officially went full time and it was 135724.4 a year ago and today it is 139135.9 only 15,470.3 miles or 24,752.4 kilometres, which doesn’t seem like very far for two years.

But they have been amazing miles, I can remember crossing the border on October 30th 2017, staying in the Walmart lot to assemble the car dolly that I had delivered to Niagara Falls, (thanks again Bob for being the logistics guy that day) sleeping the night there to head west on interstate 90 into a snowstorm (Erie PA). It was a tough introduction, to how fickle the weather can be, we actually only made it to Ohio and shut it down. The next day November 1st was sunny but cold with snow flurries all the way to Kentucky as we made the decision to drive straight south that day (Florida here we come!), which made the drive to Arizona just a little longer.

The truth is that every change of plans, leads to a new adventure, I remember a peanut festival in Alabama that was not a planned event, was it a do over? Well maybe not but it was still an adventure that we enjoyed together, as with most of our adventures, they are not all homeruns but even the bad ones make for good stories…just saying.

Then there was our first ferry ride on the way to Galveston Island in Texas, the tow truck ride in the middle of Texas, our adventure to the Rio Grand river, the white sand dunes in New Mexico (that looked like snow), the road back to the camp ground near Tucson, where the hitch of the dolly dragged multiple times, this is all within the first 30 days, and it just goes on and on.

A few main questions we get regularly asked are:

Any regrets? Yes. Not doing this ten years earlier.

How do you live in such a small space? Some of it takes getting used to but the views and the outside make up for it and if you don’t like the view or your neighbours, we just move.

How do the both of you get along? Amazing well, oh we have days, but imagine going and doing everything with your best friend and the love of your life.

Do you miss your house? Hell no. Sure it was great at the time but the tie and costs, make this seem like a dream come true. Selling or giving away most of our possessions was the most freeing thing we have ever done.

Don’t you miss family and friends? Hell yes. But now we make more effort to visit, and we have developed our RV family, you learn to appreciate your time together more when it’s longer between visits, and you learn to stay in touch through electronics and social media.