Reboot!!!

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Today we are sitting in an “Old Florida” RV park south of Jacksonville along the St. John's River. Tomorrow we will visit the offices of St. Brendan's Isle, a mail forwarding service, and set into motion the changes we are planning for our lives. When we made the decision in the Spring of 2012 to take a two year sabbatical, Why We Ran Away From Home and How We Did It! , we sold the house, shed most of our possessions, and left on November 12, 2012. Our mission was to see as much of North America as we could within a two year framework. We decided to let life take care of itself and figure out what came next when we got to that point.

We stayed at Lynch's Landing campground on the St. Johns River

For two years we were ruled by spontaneity. By November 12, 2014, we hatched a new plan. We are not ready to give up this nomadic life! After looking over the finances we know that if we slow down and cut back on our expenses, we can live cheaper than if we move back to Maryland. Moving back would require working to afford an apartment. Back to the grind we left. Having escaped a high cost of living area, we are not anxious to tie ourselves down again.


The past two years our daughter and son-in-law graciously let us store the last of our belongings in their home, and took in our mail, as well as giving us an address. If we were going to make this arrangement permanent, we needed to make some changes. So, for the first two weeks of November we journeyed back to Maryland and put our plans into motion. First step was to move our odds and ends to a storage unit. Then we had good visits with family and friends, before leaving for Florida ahead of the Arctic Vortex.

Even a full day in the I-95 car wash did not remove the baked-on Arizona grasshoppers from our grill.

Sunshine on the Georgia Coast

Our plan is to acquire Florida residency. Florida, Texas, and South Dakota are RV friendly and have mail forwarding services that can give us a street address. Then we will be able to register the RV and get driver's licenses. There are no state income taxes in Florida, and our RV insurance and health insurance should be cheaper than Maryland. Registration can be renewed on-line, and the driver's license is good for eight years before being renewed once on-line. There is no emissions testing for us (diesel engine), so once we do this, we are free to travel the country!


We will be spending more time in the East due to changes in our family, so we'll also be acquiring a very small car to tow. Slowing down and spending more time in each place will mean that a car will make it easier to explore, and resupply. It will also allow us to store the rig and zip back to Maryland for visits. So here we sit today, ready to reboot our lives. Tomorrow we start a new chapter. We have been rearranging and sorting out our belongings in the rig to make it more livable since we will now truly call it home. I have plans to do a makeover, (stay tuned, I've already created a man-cave for Greg!) and we are starting to view it less as strictly a travel vehicle, and more as part of the “small house” movement.

Restringing a broken Day-Night Shade at Crooked River State Park in Georgia

A large pine cone from this Long Leaf Pine hit our roof at 4:22 AM. It was deafening!

Palmettos! We are in the South!

We are excited to keep journeying. Life's too short and unpredictable to defer our dreams. Living loosely in the moment creates time to follow the impulses that lead us down unknown roads into unseen adventures!

Looking at Lynch's Landing from the campground pier.

The St. John's River