Signs of Life

 It’s been a hard winter. With the abnormally heavy rains of November and December, and the abnormally cold January and February, I'm ready for a change. Hope remains for March. We love to complain about the weather. But it’s one of those things we can’t do anything about.

Our time here at Timber Valley in Sutherlin Oregon is growing short. Especially considering how fast the years fly by. Dar and I have been thinking, talking, and investigating our next step, the next chapter. We've watched as others in our community have died and left major problems for their heirs. Despite the feelings we have toward our "stuff", the reality is that the kids don't want it. And neither does anyone else. And we really don't have that much "stuff". So call Goodwill, back up the truck, and take it away.

Being 3 hours south of our closest offspring, there's another issue to consider. If (or probably When) one of us falls ill and the other isn't able to provide full care, the 3-hour barrier is a significant obstacle. And our kids have their own lives and jobs... and neither of us wants to be a burden to them.

It's been a dream of mine to live in a walk-able community. Park the car and forget about it. The ideal is to have all the basic services and necessities within an easy walk of our home. During the last couple years it's become clear to us that the town where our daughter lives could be just that. Within a 6 or 8 block circle there's a full-size Safeway grocery store, an awesome hardware store, the community library, an active downtown area with coffee shops, restaurants, bars, night-life, an artsy-vibe and access to walking trails. It's an easy drive to Portland's international airport PDX (scratch the travel-itch), excellent medical resources, and an even wider array of many other big town features.

Since we've already adapted to living small, a move to even a small apartment will double our living space and it could feel downright luxurious.

In the next 6 or 8 (or 10?) months, we'll be getting more serious about this. A lot has to fall into place, and we're looking for the stars to align just right, but that's the rough bones of a plan.

A Minimalist

I've recently been involved with helping to clear out the living spaces of someone who died. These are a few of my observations: 

 Humans just like stuff. Usually, the more stuff the better.

Very little of this stuff has much objective value.

Often we keep stuff because it has some sentimental value… or we just don’t want to confront the reality that we won’t ever use something given to us as a gift. And disposing of it would be disrespecting the person who gave it to us.

We have so many places to put stuff that we don’t really know how much stuff we actually have. And so many of those places keep the stuff from being visible, hide the stuff from our view.  Cabinets, drawers, boxes under a bed, more boxes on shelves out in the garage, up in the attic, out in the shed… it’s all tucked away out of site. We always seem to find enough space for new stuff. Sometimes we even rent more space from a storage company. 

If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. Where have I heard that before?

There’s probably an evolutionary reason why so many of us are so attracted to having more of anything. If there is, I don’t know what that would be. , but it seems logical that one exists. You would think, historically speaking, nomadic peoples would want less as more would become a barrier to moving around. So the whole subject is confusing and it really doesn’t make much sense.

We buy and accumulate stuff, we put it where we won’t see it, we forget about it, we pay for the space to keep it. We sometimes try to find something and get frustrated when we can’t find it. After a while, the piles of stuff become like background noise… unnoticeable and part of “just the way it is”.  Not really realizing that someone is eventually going to have to deal with it all, we decide that the future will take care of itself. And, if questioned about it, we spritely say “The kids can take care of it”.

Beyond Branson; Pondering Future Travel

This past Tuesday, we moved from Branson to a very nice Corps of Engineer’s Park on Wappapello Lake.  We’re in the Redman Creek CG. This facility is like so many other Corps parks with long asphalt pads, electric, water, and this one even has full sewer hookups as well.  Regular price $24/night.  We get half off, so $12 for a premium FHU site.  I don’t think this is going to last too much longer. What a deal!

With the latest plan, we're here until the 17th… next Friday.

The following was done for my Journal, but I’ll re-post it here for future reference:

Regarding travel in a more expensive future world… I did some math yesterday.  Here’s the setup:  Consider two versions of a one day, 500 mile trip.  One is by small RV pulled by an adequate but still relatively efficient tow vehicle.  Real life data from the Escape forum says that a Ford F-150 with an eco-boost 3.5 motor, pulling a small camper like our E19, will get between 12 and 14 overall mpg.  So let’s use 13mpg. With this setup, a campsite is still needed to complete the full day. The second version is an efficient car - a CRV or similar - that get’s a real world 35mpg overall.  Here, we’ll have to get a motel in order to complete the day. Both vehicles use regular gas at an assumed future price of $5.00/gallon

And the results:  

Fuel consumption:  Truck: 38.5 gallons;   Car: 14.3 gallons

Fuel cost:   Truck: $192.31    Car: $71.43

Lodging:   RVPark:  $35.00     Motel:  $140.00 (a mid-level+ joint, a Hampton Inn or similar)

Total cost:  Truck+RVPark:  $227.31      Car+Motel:  $211.43

Upshot:  The Car+Motel model is $15.88 less costly than RVing.

Sure, there are other considerations.  Some just hate sleeping in motels. But on the other side of the equation, there are always the side-hassles of using the RV model… hitching/unhitching, set-up time and effort, comfort, bathroom size, dumping tanks, reversing the process the next morning.

All in all, however, this example calls into question the use of big RVs for touring.  For example, would I pull the Escape all the way across the country in order to tour New England and the Maritimes?  Really?  Small RV Parks, higher expenses, smaller roads, more people, and maybe even more people.

 

It might be time to fully consider more alternative methods of travel:  B and Bs, AirBnBs, hotels and traveling by small efficient car, or even mix it up by air travel for some trips… or cruises… 

Biding our Time in Branson

Recently, I've heard a couple of people say it was easier to follow our travels and our whereabouts when I kept a current blog.  I've also been looking for something more to fill that creative space, or purpose, that I've missed. Therefore, I think I'll take a shot at reviving the old "Sabbatical Journal" again.

It's going to be a slow start. I'm not planning on extensive posts explaining every detail of every moment we're out on the road.  I'm envisioning something along the lines of a weekly (maybe) post of where we're at and what we're doing... but in general terms.  Brief. Probably better to start slow than to make it complicated from the start.  

So here's our status for this week:  As (some) of you know, we're on our way to the Escapees Travel Clubs' big annual meeting/convention/rally.  It's called Escapade and it will be held in Lebannon, TN. We'd like to be there by June 17th.  

Even at our pace (slow and easy), we're only a 3 day drive from there right now.  And we're in Branson MO.  We've been here for a couple of weeks and will be here until the end of May. Then we'll have 17 days to make 3 drives.  I think we can handle that.