Home Base

It was with a lot of tears that we turned in our COE gear to the rangers last week, both from us and the rangers.  We have grown very close over the last three years and it was very hard to leave.  We intend to visit and hopefully volunteer again over the years.  It was a wonderful experience, we'll always have happy memories of the fun we had there.  The Journey is still at the Volunteer Village campground, we were allowed to leave it there until we can pick it up in a week or so.

On to the new home base, it's amazing what you can get for just signing your name on a piece of paper.  ;c)

 
Our long ago decision to sell all our furniture when we hit the road instead of storing it was very wise.  We saved a ton of money that would have been spent on storage fees and enabled us to buy all new furniture for the house.  Of course, I failed to realize that much of the new furniture comes unassembled and I've been working putting it together.  My cordless screwdriver has become my new best friend.

A fast tour of some of the inside rooms.  We decided to purchase the model that has all the major living areas on one floor.  My 94 year old dad may come to live with us at some point and we're not getting any younger, so it will eliminate stair climbing if necessary.  We do have a large room on the second floor with a full bath that we're going to use as a video game and sleep overs area for the grandkids, as well as a work area for Marti to do her crafting.

A few pictures:

Living room.

Kitchen (with a dishwasher!!!).  The kitchen table area.

Master Bedroom, nice to have lots of room around the bed.

Guest bedroom with newly assembled bed, new mattress is coming on Saturday.

Still more boxes of furniture awaiting my attention.

One thing (actually two) that I'm looking forward to putting together with the grandsons.

We've got lots of traveling scheduled for the upcoming year, Disney World in Florida with the Jersey granddaughters, Key West, Disneyland with the California granddaughters, just to name a few.  It looks like the Journey will get some PDD driving days in the near future.  :cD

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

Almost There

It's been a busy couple of weeks getting ready to close on our new home base.  We've spent quite a lot of time traveling between our workamping job at Thurmond Lake COE and the new house.  A myriad of things have taken place to line up all the odds and ends to make the bare lot,

into the new 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 2188 sqft home where we'll spend time when we're not traveling.

I've got a whole collection of pictures documenting the entire build, so I can reference them if I need to someday trace an electrical circuit or a water line.  Following the construction, I've been able to keep an eye on the work and point out a couple of errors to the contractor before they became a problem.

We've lined up all our furnishings, getting them scheduled for delivery shortly after we close on the house next Friday.  It's been fun shopping and getting a theme for the different rooms.

When we sold our last house and hit the road fulltime five years ago, we sold all our furniture, keeping just a half dozen boxes of special keepsakes in our daughter's attic.  Our furniture was old and had been moved (and dinged, scratched and dented) a number of times while we were in the Coast Guard.  It was still good, but we decided against storing it, not knowing how long we'd have to keep and pay at a storage facility somewhere.  It turned out to be good planning, looking at the costs, not to mention moving it, we've been able to buy all new furnishings for way less than keeping the old stuff.

I'm glad that we'll be getting these things delivered, even though I'm healing well from my surgery and got a good report from the doctor on my progress, I still can't do much in the way of lifting or moving things around.  I'm still pretty sore and thankful for Tylenol at times.   I'm being careful, I'm told that it will be another 5 or 6 months before I can do what I could before the operation.

The one big sticking point was where were we going to be able to keep the Journey.  The neighborhood has an HOA (Boo!) and parking it at our house is not allowed.  We searched the local area and didn't find any storage lots satisfactory until this week, we found a good, secure RV storage facility just five miles down the road for a very reasonable price.  That was the last piece we needed to fall into place.

We'll be winding up our volunteer stint at the COE shortly.  It's been fun, but it's time to move on. We've got a bunch of travel plans in the works, we've already got some Disney World reservations at their Fort Wilderness in February to take our Jersey granddaughters there for the first time.  After that, a couple of weeks in Key West before we turn the Journey west to California to visit our granddaughters there for a couple of months.  A Disneyland visit with them is in the plans, too.  This summer, a trip north to Jersey for a month or two to visit with the Jersey grands will take place, along with my annual motorcycle trip with my two brothers (Do I hear talk about Nova Scotia this year?).

So the wheels will still be turning, even with a home base.  We've been RVing for many years, with many more years still ahead of us.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

Blog List Restored Thanks To Rick Doyle!

Once again it's Rick Doyle to the rescue.  If you want the solution to restoring your blog reading list, check his comment in my previous post.  I followed his instructions and got almost all my blogs back.  I'll have to add the few missing ones piece by piece when I get a chance.

Thanks again Rick, for your outstanding technical support.  My virtual hat is off to you!