Thom and Dar's Sabbatical Journal

written Wednesday, December 31, 2008 New Years Eve Rockport, TX Tonight marks more than the turning of the calendar to a new year -- it's also the completion of 18 months of fulltiming in an RV for Dar and me. Wow, a full year and a half! It certainly doesn't feel that way. When we started in July of '07 each of us had different thoughts about how long we could do this. Dar thought the minimum was five years and it'd probably be much longer. I was thinking, oh, maybe two years and, if things went well, maybe a year or two more. But after a year and a half it really feels like we're just beginning. We've made the big adjustments... being away from family for long periods; living in 300 square feet and without the clutter of so much landfill-destined stuff; having 50 different campsites during a year. I'm now more in synch with Dar on this question. We'll see how long the money holds out. During 2008 our thoughts changed from "we're on vacation mo

written Monday, December 22, 2008 Rockport, TX I'm in one of those unproductive periods that pop up every once in a while. Writing in the blog is easy when we're out exploring historic places, national parks, dramatic terrain, and the like. But often, when we park in one spot for an extended period of time, my mind takes a break and my writing muscles start to atrophy. A friend of mine claims there is no such thing as writer's block -- only laziness. That may be. But whatever the reason there's been a paucity of posts to the Sabbatical blog this month. I thought it might be interesting to recount a few statistics about our lifestyle in 2008. These all relate to where we park the bus-house -- campgrounds, RV Parks, and boondocking -- and some statistics about the bus-house itself. And these are all for the year 2008: Number of Camps/Moves:  59 Average Stay: 6.2 days Longest Stay: 44 days (In Wisconsin for Wedding) Total Cost of Camping: $4,911.10 Average Cost Per Day: $1

witten Monday, December 15, 2008 Rockport, TX Carol Mae Hoch is my Mom. This past Friday, December 12th, she officially retired after more than 30 years of service to the Meals On Wheels Program in Beaver Dam, WI. During those years, with high standards and a passion for the program, she was responsible for recruiting volunteers, scheduling, finding replacements when necessary, and generally making sure that all the hot meals prepared by the local hospital kitchen would be delivered around the city to those unable to fend for themselves. The program doesn't just deliver nutrition, it delivers human contact, it delivers hope. She and Dad also delivered meals for the program every week, something they'll continue to do in the future. And, if you hadn't already guessed, she did all of this as a volunteer, getting "paid" only with the satisfaction of having helped those in need. She was honored during a luncheon this past Friday. Congratulations Mom on a job well done

written Monday, December 15, 2008 Rockport, TX First thing this morning I'd like to remind readers that the front page of our website ( www.tdhoch.com ) is updated every day. As opposed to this blog, which is updated with a new post only when there's something interesting to write about or when I feel like it, the front page is a quick daily summary of our location, the weather we're experiencing, a brief "What's New?" section about what we're up to, and a photo or two which I try to make interesting. So if you have a link that takes you directly here, to the RV Sabbatical Journal, you may want to change that link so it'll take you to the front page first. Once there, the blog is only a simple click away. Last week, on Friday, the front page had a tribute to my Mom for her more than 30 years of service to the Meals On Wheels Program in Beaver Dam WI. But I realized later that because the front page of our website isn't saved anywhere -- when it'

written Saturday, December 06, 2008 Rockport, TX. It's way past time for an update. I think my last post to the blog was almost a week ago... way behind again. In my last post we were getting ready to leave Texarkana and move south. Because our reservations in Rockport for the holidays had us arriving on the 12th, we had a good week and a half to kill along the way to the Gulf Coast -- about the right amount of time for a stop in Austin to see the State Capitol and the LBJ Library and Museum at the University of Texas. So on Monday, December 1, we escaped from Shady Pines RV Park near Texarkana and headed south on US-59. The agreed upon route for the day had us picking up I-20 west near Marshall, to US-271 to Tyler, around the west loop to TX-31, which we could take all the way to a Corps of Engineers campground on Navarro Mills Lake, about 30 miles northeast of Waco. The plan was to enjoy the Corps park for a couple days, if it was decent, before heading down to the Austin area fo