Extract Junk, Inject Living

Simplifiers.net

​It's been a long time coming. We first started seriously considering selling our retirement home to travel full time in our class A motorhome sometime in early 2017. As we drove across the country that spring and summer, the proposition weighed heavily on our minds. We love Tennessee, and our life here is pretty sweet. But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that time with family and friends was the most important thing to us, and that meant that we were destined to be away from our home and the lake for the better part of every year.

When we returned home that fall, we began preparations to put the house on the market, and listed it in late January thinking that we might even be able to have it sold before we headed for Iowa that May. Everyone who toured the house seemed to love it—particularly the dock which is easily one of the nicest in the cove. We sold our second car in March (sadly, it had an automatic transmission and couldn't be flat-towed), and the boat in April, but when we packed up the coach to head north later that month, the house hadn't sold. The 100-step walk up the stairs from the water was just too much for anyone with bad knees or hips, and so we waited. 


And waited.


And we returned in the fall and moved back into the house—which wasn't exactly punishment though we were now sans boat and second car—and hunkered down for the winter. We tackled some home improvement and landscaping projects and made plans to remodel the interior of our motorhome to make it a little more comfortable and personal. It was a rainy winter, very few Tellico Village visitors and equally few showings. As spring approached, we'd be lying if we said we weren't a bit apprehensive, but ours was the least expensive, dockable, lakefront property in the village and lo and behold a wonderful couple from New York state found our listing on the internet, made a special trip to Tennessee to view the home in person, and a few days later we had our buyer.


As this is written, it is mid March. Our coach is at a local RV dealer having some last minute repairs done. The plan is for us to move out of the house in mid April, we're scheduled to have our RV's furniture replaced in Elkhart, IN the last week of that month, and we'll head out on a 7,000-mile trip around the country from there while keeping a local rental to retain a Tennessee address where we will return sometime in September. We simply can't begin to tell you how excited we are to start this new phase of our life, and we are committed to doing a much better job of documenting our experiences in this blog. Stay tuned for a look at the changes we're making to the motorhome, as well as our decision to purchase a Thousand Trails membership upgrade that is cutting our living expenses enough to completely pay for itself its first year.


We're going on a grand adventure and we hope you'll come along with us.


—Alan

Off on our Full Time Adventure