Back to “Home Base”
It’s been a busy time since I last updated this blog, so I’ll try to catch it up briefly: We were on our way back to our previous “home” in Central Texas for the holiday in the last post, wrappipng up our first 90 days or so on the road as full time RVers without jobs. In itself, that was a new experience since I had worked for just shy of 50 years after college, and DW (‘dear wife”) had spent almost 45 years before retiring. So, there was no sense of needing to rush through a vacation period, while never totally forgetting the work waiting back home, as we traveled some 4200 miles in roughly 90 days.
The great part was being able to spend more time where we wanted with friends and family. The more unsettling part was that the income stream has stopped and we are now more subject to the impact of decisions both short and long term. Not unexpected, but it does take a few weeks to get used to the change from a lifetime of experience. I’ll address some of the expected, and unexpected, results of starting this new chapter in our lives in a later post.
Our travels continued back from North Carolina, The next stops were in Tennessee. Near Nashville we found Andrew Jackson’s plantation and spent a very nice day touring there. One minor fact that i had never considered was that the first 6 presidents were either a Virginia planter or an Adams from Massachusetts until Jackson was elected as the seventh President. Hence, Jackson was the first populist President. I expected the site would be somewhat biased towards Jackson, since it is his memorial as well as burial place, but they really didn’t offer much information on just how corrupt his administration was in land dealings, and how much money he personally made based on very shady dealings, particularly the treatment of Native Americans (or Indians). So much for an honest depiction of the real life and history of the man. But it is a very nicely done museum and site.
We found a great campground in West Memphis AR right on the banks of the Mississippi. Got some good photos along the river and of some tugs and barges going up and down. t really is a magnificent sight to watch both the river and the river traffic. Of course, we had to spend a day at Graceland. This was a very interesting look into the life of Elvis Presley. We grew up with him as the new rock superstar (I still can remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show for his first appearance, only showed him from the waist up on live TV). Of course, the area around the mansioin has become ultra-commercialized with Elvis stuff, but is also a somewhat seedy part of town otherwise. And we did get a chance to sample some Memphis style barbeque at a highly rated local place while we were there.
From there, we were pretty much on a more direct path back to Texas, in particular to Meridian State Park in Meridian TX to meet up with our oldest daughter and her family. This was our first visit face to face with them since we hit the road in August, so we were excited to see them. The park is a nice one with full hookups (not the norm in state parks), and we happened to be there for the night of the “super moon” so spent a lot of time taking pictures of the moonrise and of the moon iteslf. I took about a zillion pictures varying the exposure and time settings to try to capture the best possible photographs.
We got to spend some quality time with them and get reacquainted with the grandkids. It was a fun time and we really appreciated them coming to Meridian to meet us on our way back to central Texas. I referred to this in the title as our “home base” because we have an interesting dynamic as full timers livining in an RV: just where is home? When people ask about our home address and the town where it is located, I get quzical looks when I say “I’ve never been there”. It’s true. We use a mail forwarding service from an organization call Escapees which was started to support people who have “escaped” from the regular life to live a mobile (some say nomadic) life style. So we have an address there but have never actually visited the place. Our mail and official correspondence (such as tax papers) all use that address, but we have to get mail forwarded to somewhere else. It’s a bit cumbersome sometimes, but does work OK overall, allowing for additional transit time.
And now we are back in our location from mid-November until mid-January at a KOA campground near where we lived and worked for 21 years, until we hit the road in August 2016. That lets us attend our home church, be with family who lives near here, back near my old workplace, and generally be in an area that was “home” for about as long as I lived in my home state of West Virginia, or only a little less than my wife lived in her home state of Iowa. It’s good to be back in a comfortable place, and we will be busy I am sure for the next two months.
Somewhere in Central Texas
December 2016
