The Beginning

A few years ago my husband and I started talking about the possibility of early retirement.  With him being a Fire Chief in the state of NH he can retire with 20 years as a firefighter.  At first our thought was we would move to Tennessee, we bought some land to build a future house.  Our thought was we would find other jobs to keep us busy and a little extra cash.  Of course we really weren’t sure what that would be, if it would be full time or part time.  We had lots of ideas, for him maybe work at the airport that was near the property and for me maybe dog walking or work for a pet day care. 

Well, long story short, we decided to go in a different direction. We sold the property and decided to try living in our Fifth Wheel RV full-time.  We have had a great finance guy, Dustin at Edward Jones in Raymond NH for a while. We have been working with him to make sure all of our ideas have merit. We knew in order for this to work that we do need to work but yet again we haven’t finalized all the details, yet anyway.  

The things we did know were we are going to need to downsize considerably.  About a year from the potential date we started getting rid of stuff.  Well actually we have been doing that for a long time but now was time to get serious.  First step was to re-home items that had sentimental family history.  I contacted family members for such items as quilts, some small furniture that had been in the family a while. My nieces in SC wanted most of it, so we planned a trip down there for  Christmas and brought the stuff with us. This was a big step and it forced us to get bins for some of our clothes, bins that would of course fit in the camper for storage.  

Now you have to realize we were doing all of this under the radar, the only ones that knew what we were doing was family.  We couldn’t let friends know because being a small town we couldn’t let too many people know of our plans until we were  ready to pull the trigger so to speak.  This was not always easy!  

Our plan for the first year was to get the house sold, close my business, set up residence in Florida, then travel. Possibly pick up odd jobs here and there, workkamp, blog and youtube our adventures.  We really want to make it to Alaska our first year just in case our money doesn’t last. Again our plan is to stay full time until we no longer can afford to or physically can not. Stay tuned for more to come. 

As we continued to wait over the next few months we continued to think about potential jobs and as I walked  through the house I would look at what would we would keep and what we would get rid of. 

Settling In

Our first few weeks in Florida consisted of getting our license and getting our vehicles registered and insured to be full Florida residence.  We arrived in Florida on Friday on Saturday we emptied the Penske Truck into storage then returned the truck. We walked into the Bushnell Tax Collectors office on Tuesday and walked out with two new licenses.  It was the easiest thing I have ever done. The woman who helped us was very efficient, she took all our information and paperwork we brought and  in less than an hour we were Florida Residence.  We couldn’t do our vehicles that day because their computers were down for doing registrations but we did get the ball rolling.  In Florida they do vin checks to verify the vehicle is yours and the right one. They don’t expect you to bring them all to you, the Sheriffs come out to you and do the checks.  That was done on Tuesday afternoon, on Wednesday we went back to the Tax Collectors offices and registered the motorcycle and little trailer.  The camper and truck couldn’t be done because Florida has to get the title from the lien holder. This portion took 2 weeks for the truck and about 5 weeks for the camper, the camper lien holder was not as easy to work with. 

When we arrived at the end of  September to Bushnell Florida at the Escapee’s Sumpter Oaks Campground it was still very hot, 90+ degrees everyday with 100% humidity.  This lasted through most of October. During this time Bill decided to wash and wax all the vehicles. He would do a little everyday and  would be drenched doing it.  There was a lot of back and forth to the storage unit, deciding what would stay what would go. Moving stuff around almost on a daily basis for the first month.

We also managed to do a fair amount of riding, exploring the area by motorcycle, bicycle, and also Kayaking. The area we were in was central Florida which basically means it was about an hour ride to really get to anything we wanted to do.  Towards the end of October we met some really nice people around the campground that also had bikes, they are from the area so they were able to show us places we may not have normally found on our own.  We kayaked a lot of the bay areas of the gulf, saw manatee, turtles, lots of fish and birds. We tried out one of the many Florida biking trail systems, these are awesome by the way. We have tried a few local breweries, there are not as many as in the North East, but they are just as good.

We still have the doctor and medically stuff to figure out around here. We have new insurance so not really sure what and what it doesn’t cover. At some point we probably will look into other insurance options. 

The end of November we left the first campground as they did not have openings for us to stay through the rest of the winter.  We went to Oak Springs Campground in Port Richey. I will get into that a bit more later. As time goes on and we begin to move around and learn more about this life on the road thing I am hoping things flow better. I will talk more specifically about the campground, the areas and what they do and don’t offer, and what we do and don’t like about them.  I hope to make it informative and interesting enough that you will want to keep following.

PEI 2017

The summer of 2014 we rode our motorcycle from NH to cape Breton Nova Scotia stayed there for a few days then via the ferry we proceeded to Cornell PEI  we only spent 2 days there only seeing half the island.  From that point on we wanted to return and spend some more time there as it is a beautiful Provence. 

This Time we brought our camper a Forest River Vengeance, and our gold wing staying at the Charlottetown/Cornwall KOA! We got to see a good portion of the island via motorcycle and spent some evenings walking around Charlottetown checking out the pubs and breweries. 

If you have ever been to PEI you know it is divided into three sections.  On our first day we explored the center. My best memory of PEI were the farm fields and in particular the canola fields.  They are the most beautiful shade of yellow but to make it more appealing is the mixture  of greens and even browns from other crops.   As you drive down the road depending the way the field is planted they look as though they are moving especially the potato fields that are planted in mounds so you see the red dirt as you go by.  So now you see yellows, light green, dark green, red, and brown over the rolling hills and I almost forgot on one side of the road these fields meet the ocean!  For lunch we stopped at a place called Sou’ West Bar and Grill, nice outside seating, good food, good beverages and we were even blessed with a bald eagle flying overhead.   In the water of the marina off the parking lot we saw some Man of War Jelly fish, I didn’t realize they were so colorful!  Pictures don’t really do them justice!  We ended our first day by taking a taxi to Charlottetown to check out a brewery and visit a great Irish pub we found 3 years ago! 

Day 2 we headed to the east side of the island, part of our plan for this day was to find a person whose plane Bill used t work on! They now own an air strip where he keeps his push pull (skymaster) airplane. We found their house but it appeared no one was home as we were a bit early!  We walked around and found we were in the right place when we found the plane!  A few minutes later Jean appeared out of the field and behind her was her husband Jimbo they were out mowing the airstrip with some pretty large tractors.  Yes I did say mowing, this is a grass airfield. After reminiscing a bit he took us for a ride, the plane is a four seater including the pilot so one of us had to stay behind.  The decision was easy because Laura said there was no way she was going up in that plane! Jimbo gave us a nice tour of his area telling us all about the different sights! After our flight we went to a local burger place with Jimbo and Jean and enjoyed a good meal and more reminiscing.  We proceeded to the rest of the east island but apparently I was not paying enough attention to the direction because we took a wrong turn and ended up cutting back west through the center of the island back towards camp.  This side of the island is apparently my nemesis because last time we were here we kept getting lost, then it rained and we ended up missing a good chunk of the east island. 

On day 3 we walked around Charlottetown, visited a few breweries and brew pubs and listened to good Irish Music.  The weather was not the greatest for riding! On day 4 we toured the west side of the island, this time our friends lead us. Except for a few wrong turns we managed to travel most of the scenic route. We even fit in one brewery. The west side has more farm land, two windmill farms and some gorgeous old  churches. 

Day 5 we had hoped t do some kayaking but the weather, mostly wind did not cooperate so we did the next best thing, went for another ride.  This time back to the east island to see some more of the scenic route we missed. There was more farm land, more ocean and more beautiful sites. All in all we road just under 800 miles on the bike and 1300 round trip in the truck.

I learned some neat facts about PEI; first the bridge was built in 1997 and is the longest bridge that traverses waters that can freeze. It is about he size of Delaware with a population just under 250,000 people.  They have no fresh water lakes, ponds or rivers. The people are super nice, and the island is super clean.  It is the cleanest place I have ever seen and one of the most beautiful. If you follow their maps for the scenic drives you will see just about everything and if you don’t have a lot of time I would start with the center, the west section next then the east. 

Our Next Chapter

Let me introduce ourselves my husband Bill just retired from 20 years of being a full-time Firefighter 14 years of that was as Chief in the small town of Kingston NH. I am Sandy I just retired after 38 years of being a pet groomer 36 of which were at my own business Sandy’s Grooming Spa also in Kingston NH.

We have lived in Kingston in the same our we just sold in September 2019 for 35 years. We were very active in our town both being on the fire department since 1986 and 1987 respectively. We were both EMT’s for 32 years, and took many other courses and received many other certifications, as well as CPR instructors. I also served on the Planning Board for 3 years, the ZBA for 3 years and the Municipal Budget Committee for 20 years.

Now it is time for something different, we sold the house and moved into our 5th Wheel Toyhauler and headed south and then across America. I am doing this blog to share our adventures, trial and tribulations.

  • We are hoping that not only Family and friends would like to read this to give inspirations to other people thinking of doing the same thing.
  • I will also blog about ways to customize your RV and simplify your life while RVing.

I hope to keep the blogs fairly short with lots of photos to help keep people interested. We travel with 2 cats so they may make for some fun blogs as well as we hope to get a dog along the way.

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