Getting ready to become full timers

We have been planning for many years to live in our RV full time, thus becoming "full timers".  So, in March, we started getting the house ready for sale. Knowing that the housing market was really in the tank, we figured the house wouldn't sell until August.  As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise! Surprise"! We sold the house in only six days!

Since we still had to get the RV ready to live in, and get rid of all of our stuff, we delayed the closing  until May 25th.  We actually moved into the RV on May 10th, and all of the furniture was out of the house by May 19th.  Whew! We still can't believe we got everything done with a week to spare.

We had to make a lot of tough decisions getting rid of the things we couldn't take in the RV.  We divided the furniture between our kids , we had a garage sale for the left overs and made several trips to Good Will.  But the hardest thing was figuring out what to do with all of the pictures we have accumulated in the last thirty plus years.  With 5 kids and 9 grandchildren, we had mountains of pictures. We spent hours and hours going through them and sorting them out.  Some pictures went to our kids, some to siblings, some we scanned to take with us on our journeys.

May 10th, we arrive at Pine Country RV Park in Belvidere, Illinois, about 25 miles from our house.  When we arrived, we discovered some unwelcome guests in the RV!  We kept hearing birds chirping and found a bird's net tucked way up behind the king pin of the 5th wheel.  Even with my long arms. I could not reach the nest while the 5th wheel was hooked up to the truck.  And even if I could reach them, what would I do with a bunch of baby birds. I guess momma bird was not able to keep up with us as be barreled down interstate 90 to get to the RV park.  Anyway, we set up camp, ate dinner and tried to figure out how to reach the baby birds.  The next thing we knew, the chirping stopped and we figured the babies died of cold and starvation.

Now what do we do about the dead birds.  We couldn't leave dead birds in the 5th wheel king pin box. Finally, with the help of our new neighbor, Shawn, we were able to extract the birds and dispose of them properly.  Not a very good way to start our full timing dream!

Here's a shot of site #26.  It's a little small and a little uneven,  but has lots of shade and full hook ups.  Although the electric box was only 30 amp, we figured we wouldn't need to run both air conditioners as we were planning to depart in a month for a trip to South Dakota.

We spent a lot of time moving things around in the RV so the items we used everyday were easy to reach.  The RV basement is full and all the shelves and closet spaces are full.  So, if anything else goes into the RV, something else has to come out of the RV.  We also had the RV weighed to be sure we were under the GVWR.

Our next blog will cover our trip to South Dakota, which is now our home state.  Stay tuned!