This post is overdue as I have not wanted to put it in writing, doing so makes it more concrete. But, it is time to publicly share that our current full time RV journey is nearing an end and our wings are being clipped. We have loved (almost) everything about living full time in our RV as reflected in our review of our first full year. That said, we have decided that we need to take a break from full time RV’ing in order to spend more time with our aging parents. Our 3 remaining parents (my father passed away in August 2014) currently live in Virginia and Pennsylvania. No amount of persuasion on our part would convince them to move into an RV or to Colorado (or elsewhere in the Mountain Time Zone), so we have made the very tough decision to move back to the East Coast. After moving to Colorado from the East Coast in 2013, neither of us is excited about giving up easy access to the Rocky Mountains, the drier climate, or spending time in less populated areas.
We will get to attend more of Mike’s Mom’s (second from left) band concerts
So why did we decide to move back east? We decided that we would like to be more available to offer assistance with day-to-day challenges as our parents age. One of the biggest problems with full time RV’ing is the need to plan ahead to get into specific campgrounds, especially in areas like Northern Virginia and Southeastern Pennsylvania. If one of our parents has a health emergency, most likely we would not be able to find any place to park the RV in the region. The campgrounds we use when visiting them also have a 2 week capped time limit for camping, meaning you can’t stay there for more than a 2 week stay, especially during prime RV season (spring, summer, and fall).
Our solution? We are currently building a house with a multi-generational suite on the first floor so that my mother can spend a large part of the year living with us and our home will be located about a 20 minute drive from Mike’s parents’ place. After much consideration, we selected Haymarket, Virginia for our home. Additional benefits of moving east include having other family and friends in the region and good amenities (gigabit internet, grocery shopping, restaurants, etc). Additionally, there is access to hiking at nearby Manassas National Battlefield Park, Bull Run Regional Park, Sky Meadows State Park, and other regional open spaces. We will be located about 40 miles from Shenandoah National Park and just a little further from the George Washington National Forest. We will also be about 40 miles from Washington DC.
We selected our lot in May
We will be about 40 miles from Washington DC including the Washington Memorial
Manassas National Battlefield Park offers 40 miles of hiking trails
Since making our decision in May, we re-vamped our remaining 2018 travel plans to spend more time in Colorado and the Mountain Time Zone in between several trips east to finalize selections for the house. We sadly said good-bye to our Colorado mountain cabin in August. We’ve spent time hiking in some of our favorite parts of Utah, Colorado, and Montana including Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone National Parks. After a trip east to visit family over Thanksgiving and delivering a U-Haul truck of belongings to storage, we will be visiting Big Bend, Carlsbad, and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks and Las Cruces in New Mexico & Texas. We then spend about 3 weeks in Arizona split between Tucson and Apache Junction. Our house is scheduled to be completed sometime in March, and we need to be there for the last couple of weeks for walk-thrus.
As of September we have a foundation. Heavy rains on the East Coast have slowed construction
In August we sadly sold our beloved Colorado cabin
We’ve spent the summer & fall touring and hiking in the Mountain Time Zone, such as this hike around Two Oceans Lake in Grand Teton National Park
Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail view in Glacier National Park (September)
We still love to travel and will continue to have an RV so that we can travel for 1-2 months at a time. If there is an emergency while we travel part time, we will have the house to quickly return to and an existing storage spot for the RV. My mother can stay with my brother while we travel. We are downsizing our RV as Mike is writing about in an upcoming post.
