July 23 - Update on this year's visit to the Midwest

We arrived in the Beaver Dam Wisconsin area on Friday, July 11. High levels of activity usually accompany fresh arrivals and this year has not been an exception. Family, friends, setting up our little "apartment" at the farm, a class reunion (mine... doesn't seem like 45 years!), and many fix-it jobs and mini-projects have kept me away from the keyboard and the many delayed daily posts to the blog from our recent trek through some of the best parts of the USA. They will be done, but it's going to take a little more time.

In truth, I'm re-thinking the blog, it's purpose, and it's future. During our recent 4 week trip with the truck and camper I found the blog to be a burden. Why? Primarily the lack of time and the alternative uses of the time I did have. Traveling with the bushouse we would usually match a day of exploring with a day of "not-exploring" or rest, which gave us time to process photos and write. But we found traveling with the truck and camper is more intensive. We get going earlier in the day, stay out later, and find we're moving almost every day... a pace we found agreeable but a pace that left little time at the end of the day. And I'd rather spend that time hashing over the day and planning the next day with my partner instead of trying to hammer out a post.

I've been writing The RV Sabbatical Journal for going on 8 years now. The reasons I write are three-fold:  to document our travels, to make it possible for family and friends to see what we're up to, and to occasionally get creative... to stretch my writing muscle... and write something fun. Because I get restless and weary after a time of doing things the same way, I'm going to make a couple changes.  I want the RVSJ to become more "travelogue"... the where, when, and what of our travels... a quick and easy record primarily for us. It will only be updated when we're traveling. My intention is that it be "just the facts" and, thus, easy and quick to write but probably not all that interesting to anyone else.. I hope this will satisfy the first reason.

I will also be a little more active with Facebook and Twitter to take care of the second reason: keeping family and friends updated. I've been a late adopter of social media... was fairly critical of it at first... but have come to see some value in it. These updates are quick and require little effort... and I can reach a much larger audience.

And to address the third reason I write, I'm hoping to focus more on my creative side. To be done mostly while we're "sitting" -- whether at our home base in Sutherlin, during our visit to the Midwest in the summer, or if we sit someplace south in the Winter -- I want to stretch myself... fiction, non-fiction, essays, humor, human interest... it's all on the table. When something is ready I'll post it to a separate blog that will contain all this sort of thing.

In the next few weeks we have a couple camping excursions planned... a short one to Door County here in Wisconsin, and another longer one to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's been a while since we've been in Yooper-land and we can't wait to get back.