We've come to the end of another year on the road. We made our way from New Mexico to Texas last month, making brief stops in Amarillo and Wichita Falls before landing in Arlington. We are enjoying our usual extended stay here before our return to home base in Austin in a couple of weeks.
This past year was a very busy one, not staying in any one spot for longer than 2 weeks. We stayed in 41 different RV parks, and Roamin's odometer logged a bit over 7,000 miles. In addition, our 'toad' Cadillac, purchased last January, now has almost 11,000 miles due to all the side trips we took. We had actually started jokingly saying that, "Well it's time to leave." as soon as we could efficiently navigate our way over the local byways at our numerous stops. Staying put for a while is nice!
We've been asked what was our favorite stop this past year, and it was Yellowstone, without a doubt. There were many close runners-up--Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches. We are very happy to have taken this opportunity to visit so many national parks. They truly are treasures.
A few 'musings' for this year:
-We continue to be distressed by the state of our nation's infrastructure, but construction is going on EVERYWHERE to improve it, and we're sure this will go on for a long time.
-Amazon Prime became a very good friend for us with its guaranteed 2-day delivery, especially valuable because of our short stays and frequent moves.
-The same cannot be said for mail-order pharmacies. #%*@#!!!!! There were way too many delivery misses/delays/frustrated phone calls. We will likely look into other options next year.
-Priority Mail often does not work anymore either. Getting our mail from our Austin address to our on-the-road address has always been a bit tricky, but was SO much worse this past year. Even though the post office proudly advertises 3-day delivery for Priority Mail, none took less than 5-6 days. Two envelopes were sent to us while we were in Cortez, CO. One took 8 days to get to us. The other arrived in 14 days--4 days after we had left Cortez! #%@#!!!!! This is another area where we will research other options.
-Wine club membership does, indeed, work while we're traveling. We no longer need to deprive ourselves of some of our favorites. :)
-We enjoyed family and friends joining us on parts of our journey this year, and look forward to more such opportunities.
We're giving this lifestyle one more year. We want to cover the Atlantic coast before hanging up our full-time status. That gives us only 1 more year to figure out what comes next...but we won't think about that today...we're sure that 'tomorrow' will be soon enough. In the meantime, we'll see what the East Coast is like, and we'll continue to report in the blog. Happy and safe holiday wishes to you all!!
