Holidays, Family, and Friends

It’s interesting to me how we have ended up laying out our first round of the nomadic life style:  before we left our “home base” (or at least our home area for the last 21 years), we mapped out a few places with times that we wanted to be there, but only one was a really solid “schedule”.  That one was an FMCA (Family Motoro Coach Association) rally in West Virginia.  It was fixed because it was calendared by someone else.  Actually, a lot of someone elses – all those who were attending this rally.

Besides having a specific place and time for the event, the rest of our schedule was fluid.  The style of our travel became to set up the next campground location as the time came close to wanting to move on, but not much more detail beyond that.  It worked our well, for the most part.  We stayed in a couple of “interesting” sites, but we were also able to decide to extend our stay longer if we felt we needed more time, or move on more quickly if we wanted to do that.  We’ll see how well this system works in the future, but for now it seems pretty good.

Our end point of the first long trip (roughly 90 days and a total of 4200 miles on the RV) was dictated by wanting to be back in central Texas before Thanksgiving.  We were anxious to reconnect with our off spring who call this area home, as well as friends and previous work colleagues.  And we had reinforced that with various doctor and dentist visits that were due and generally scheduled prior to the departure.

What we really wanted, though, was to spend this special time of the year that kind of starts (for me anyway) with Thanksgiving and then goes on through that very special time called Christmas, and wraps up the year with January 1 of the new year.  Because our family, like so many others and like my wife and I with families a thousand miles apart when we were first married, is geographically split, it is a special time but not all of us can be together for all of that period.  We treasure all of the time we’ve been able to spend with children, grandchildren, friends, sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews no matter the occasion, and miss them when we can’t be there every time.

One major benefit our trip leading into November was that we were able to spend a lot more time with family and friends that are spread out.  That didn’t seem practical when there were work and other demands on us, but now those demands are far less, so we can enjoy spending time. That is one very rewarding benedift of being retired and of the lifestyle we have adopted.  We’re going to be lving in a motor home anyway, so we might as well park it someplace where we can 1) be near people who are dear to us, 2) be near some neat place we’d like to explore, 3) see some new and possibly exciting locations and attractions, and 4) all of the above.

This year has been special because we were away for a while, and got to do all of the things I’ve talked about, and then were able to come back and reconnect.  It’s probably because it is January 2 of a new year, but I am really grateful for all of the friends and family, and for all of the experiences of being with them, and just enjoying life with a wonderful circle.

Somewhere in Central Texas

January 2, 2017