GR "Scott" Cundiff

Hillman's Seafood is 5 or 10 minutes from you.  Grab some of their fresh shrimp and bring it home to cook (I'm partial to fixing it on my Blackstone griddle).  Can't get fresher seafood!  

As someone said, "Getting old ain't for sissies."  Hang in there, friends!

After several years we have "retired" from fulltiming.  We have very much appreciated the Escapees Mail Service and highly recommend it to all.  However, now that we've returned to a stix and brix we've been moving all our accounts to our home address.  I called Escapees and mentioned to them that I won't be renewing the service when it expires in a few months.  To my surprise I was told that they will continue to forward mail for six months after the end of my paid service.  That's a pleasant surprise and an unexpected level of service.  

Another reason we're glad we found Escapees when we were preparing to go fulltime.  

Some of you may appreciate this.  We've been out of the RV almost a year and a half now.  While ago, I was sitting in my recliner while my wife was taking a nap in the bedroom.  I noticed that my recliner had scooted back too close to the wall so I just grabbed the arms and bumped it forward a bit.  Immediately, I thought "I hope I didn't rock the rig and wake her up."  Probably not much chance that I moved the house. 😀

Wishing you the best.  There's a lot to be said for exiting the lifestyle gracefully rather than the result of some kind of catastrophe.  It sounds as though you are going to be able to ease into the next stage of life's adventure.  

On 9/16/2023 at 8:19 PM, Dutch_12078 said:

We sort of have the best of both worlds when it comes to severe weather. When a storm is approaching, we often switch from Dish to the DishAnywhere app on our Firestick that's streaming from the H2 at our Upstate NY cottage. The weather is usually sufficiently different between there and where we are that the service on that end is either not affected or at least the storm hits at a different time.

That's a nifty solution!  I know that cell data options have improved a lot over the past few years.  Although I think it can still be a challenge in some of the more "wide open spaces" parts of the country.  

Kind of funny for us now in stix and brix is that not only do we have an amazingly fast internet connect, but we also have full scale unlimited 5G.  I would have been thrilled with one or the other while we were on the road.  Now, I have more than I can use (and for less money than we were spending on unlimited data + satellite TV.

We were Dish Satellite customers for many years, even before we went full time, so we were already used to occasional outages during rough weather.  When we bought a house a couple of months ago we went with all streaming services and left satellite.  Just yesterday we had our first bout of heavy weather.  It crossed my mind as I watched TV that for many years I would have been wondering if the signal would fade during the worst of it.  

This, of course, isn't all that big a deal, but it is another of those little frustrations that were pretty common for us in the RV that we don't have now.  

Some of my thoughts have already been mentioned, but I'll add weather related issues.  I didn't like being in the RV during threatening weather; trying to figure out just where we were in relation to weather warnings; trying to decide whether we should find shelter (or where that shelter might be).

Related, dealing with extreme weather.  We dealt with the big Texas freeze up a couple of years ago.  Sitting in a RV park, iced in, with no campground electric, roads closed (too icy to walk on them, much less drive), was not the adventure we wanted.  Or the reverse, finding ourselves in a recording breaking Pennsylvania heat wave and our a/c can't quite keep up.  

To be clear, we loved full timing, but that doesn't mean that every day was peachy!  

I won't keep posting about our now non-RV related trip, but thought I'd give a quick update for those who are interested

Here’s our new “house.” This is student housing; however, it has four flats with a bedroom/living room, kitchen, and bathroom. One interesting thing is that we were told that our flat was on the second floor. However, at some point, prior to arrival, I remembered that in the UK the first floor of a building is called the “ground floor.” The second floor is called the “first floor” (first above ground), and the third floor is called the “second floor.” In other words, we’re on the third level rather than the second one. And, no, there isn’t a “lift” in the building. Hopefully, we’ll benefit from the extra exercise!

Jet lag is a real deal. That, and a sleepless night on the plane, left us very tired once the adrenalin began to wear off. By Wednesday afternoon we needed a nap! We slept like logs for two hours and only woke up when the alarm on my phone went off. We were then able to stay awake until around 10:30 local time. That’s 4:30 in the afternoon in Texas and according to our body clocks! However, that two hours of sleep didn’t come close to leaving us rested so we went to bed and slept hard for most of the night. We’ll see how day two works for us.

Our biggest chore of the day was going back to the grocery store. We actually went to the store soon after we arrived to get enough food to last us a day or two.  The one we went to was in more-or-less reasonable walking distance. What a disaster! We were very tired, walked farther than we expected, and when we got there everything that was refrigerated had been lost due to the terribly hot days preceding our arrival! The coolers just couldn’t keep up with the heat and all the food in them was lost. Today’s trip was to a bigger store (Tesco), and they were well stocked except for a couple of empty coolers which had signs on them apologizing that due to the hot weather their units had failed.  Happily, the temps are back to the normal summer 60s and 70s now.

Our journey to the store included our first Manchester bus rides. The busses are all double decker versions. The story is that that particular road hosts the busiest bus route in Europe. You’ll see a bus every few minutes, so no schedule is necessary. We got a day rider pass costing us about $6.35 (USD) each.  We only rode to the store and back, but two one-way tickets would have cost a bit more than one day rider pass.

Obviously, I’m not going to do a long post every day, but everything is fresh and interesting to us right now and I want to share while stuff like this is on my mind. http://pastorscott.com/travel

Last year Jackie was looking at a denominational website where she saw a story about a retired librarian who had volunteered at Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, England for a year.  At the bottom of that article there was a link to more information for others who might be interested in volunteering there.  Thus began an interesting year of research, email exchanges, and many hours of discussion and prayers.  The result was an invitation to come, provided a UK “Charity Worker Volunteer” visa could be obtained.  Jackie would volunteer in the library 3-4 days a week and I would help out with the sound system and other things as needed.  As volunteers we would receive no salary and would pay our own transportation and living expenses.  An on-campus flat would be provided.

We decided to go for it.

As I have already written, we have been in the midst of winding down our fulltime RV lifestyle.  What better time to begin a new adventure!

Today our UK Adventure begins for real as we board a flight to England.  We’ll post updates with photos often: http://pastorscott.com/travel/2022/07/19/beginning-a-new-adventure/

Thanks for the insightful replies!  I'll add that it's a wonderful thing to make a change like this because we want to rather than because something has happened that forces it.

We started our fulltime RV adventure over 9 years ago in May of 2013. Our travels have taken us across the USA, coast to coast, and we have thoroughly enjoyed the journey. The past couple of years brought some major changes to our lifestyle.

1. For one thing, COVID cramped our style the same as it did for everyone else. We hunkered down in a comfortable urban campground for the duration.
2. Meanwhile, I kept getting requests to serve as interim pastor in different places. What with COVID making it difficult to plan and the satisfaction we get from helping churches, we took the departure from our touring lifestyle in stride and enjoyed ministering to some wonderful people.
3. Also, medical stuff has occupied more and more of our calendar. Thank God, the concerns haven’t been major. They have, though, impacted our travel plans as well as our bank account!
4. While we full well know that there’s a lot to see and do in this country, we’ve had a bit of a feeling of “been-there-done-that.” There are many gaps in our travel, but we’ve seen a great deal over the past several years and have visited some favorite areas more than once.
5. We’ve gotten kind of tired of living in a RV. I think this is related to slowing down our travel the past couple of years. Doing typical RV chores and living in a small space is well worth the inconvenience so long as the tradeoff is going places and seeing new things. For us, the less we have done, the less we have enjoyed the RV as a residence.
6. Finally, skyrocketing fuel costs have influenced our thinking. Fill ups costing hundreds of dollars do make one think twice about hitting the road.

Had the slowdown not happened we might have continued the RV life a bit longer. You might say that we lost much of our “momentum” waiting out COVID, etc. Frankly, we never retired to live in a RV – rather we retired to travel in a RV.

All this to say we are retiring from fulltime RVing, at least for the foreseeable future. Even as I write this the motorhome is on a consignment lot waiting for the right buyer to come along. I expect to get a smaller rig at some point in the future so we can do some seasonal, short-term travel. Time will tell.

All of this, though, doesn’t mean our unconventional retirement adventures are over. In a few days we will begin an entirely new adventure. I’ll write more about that in a few days. We’re excited about this next step!

http://pastorscott.com/travel/2022/07/16/winding-down-our-fulltime-rv-adventure/

I wish we could have gone north already - and a move to much cooler temps is coming, but it sure is a challenge to stay cool here on the Texas coast.  The living room a/c runs non-stop from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm.  The bedroom does a bit better.  We have the "air dumps" on on both.  Have a small fan on the bed pushing air forward.  Have a circulating fan in the front, curtains behind the front seats and a few other things.  Cleaned the coils on both units.  We make it, but it's a challenge!

50 minutes ago, 2gypsies said:

I have to subscribe to read it.

Interesting - I was able to read it without being subscribed.

Just read an interesting article in WSJ that helped clarify for me different understandings of "free speech."

2 hours ago, 2gypsies said:

Here's a video of the motorhome and car being dug out and towed.  A GPS has been mentioned over the course of this tragedy and I'm surprised there hasn't been a recovery report and map on the GPS if, indeed, they were following a GPS.  This video showed that they had a printout map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvuZ_y75EU&ab_channel=HeavyDSparks

Thanks for the link - very interesting.

17 minutes ago, 2gypsies said:

There are a least two of us doing it your way!!  I plan with paper maps and then create a GPS map with many waypoints so we can see what WE want to.  Never got lost using a variety of paper maps.

Good to know!  It's kind of funny, but when I am in the car I happily turn down most any road just to see where it goes.  But with the motorhome I'm just the opposite - no freelancing for me!

I've always come close to obsessing over our route with the RV.  At the same time I've never wanted a RV or trucker GPS, preferring to do my own research.  Google Maps is my main mapping tool.  I've often zoomed right into the street view mode to get a good look at a section of highway.  I've even used it to read clearance signs on bridges.  Without zooming in, though, I've found that if I get close enough to spot an 18 wheeler or two I know I can make it through too.  (Also, the trucker's mountain guide is a terrific tool.)

Really, fooling with routes and stuff like that is practically one of my hobbies so, unlike many people, I don't see it as a chore at all.

I've often put waypoints in to force Google Maps to take me a particular route.  Also, I've been known to pull off into a parking lot to recheck my route if I've come upon unexpected construction or an accident.  Better to do that than blindly following signs detouring traffic into a residential area.

32 minutes ago, wtmtnhiker said:

  For myself I would describe it more as apprehensions not necessarily a gut feeling that I shouldn't go.

Wishing you the best as you work through this.  I remember spending considerable time working on our potential finances, wanting to be sure we could afford to do what we were planning.  There was, though, never a doubt that we wanted to full time if we could afford it.

The "gut feeling" comment is related more to a nagging feeling that we need to rethink a proposed course of action.  We usually get that when we know, but don't want to admit it to ourselves, that we are about to make a questionable decision.  From what you are saying that isn't where you are right now.

Again, here's hoping you make a good decision that you are happy with.

31 minutes ago, Kirk W said:

I could not disagree more! If I had thought that way I would never have gone fulltime in the first place. 

 

So you are saying your gut feeling was that you shouldn't go but you ignored it and went anyway?  

My thinking is that if your gut feeling is to rethink the big trip that you should pay attention to that feeling.  Honestly, the experiences of others, yea or nay, won't apply because by the time we reach this stage of life our personal situation can be vastly different than that of others.  
 

Personally, I don't think they blindly followed the GPS off of a highway onto a dirt track.  I think they were looking for a place to camp and the GPS directed them off road.  Still, just guessing, but the only one I can find is Fish Lake Valley Hot Well which is about 10 miles from where they were found.  

It is just beyond my imagination that anyone would turn off of a paved state highway and onto a dirt road just because their GPS said "turn here."  There has to be more to it than that.

5 minutes ago, LindaH said:

If you enjoy this type of thing, you may be interested in reading (if you haven't already done so) Tom Mahood's account of the Death Valley Germans.

I did the same thing with this story -- got my maps out and tried to follow along.

Thanks!

2 hours ago, Vladimir said:

Lots of comments.

 

Won't quote your entire post, but thanks for the interesting information on map sources.  

The only GPS I use is the Google Maps one on my phone and I don't really trust it all that much - usually verifying the route using street view.  Anyway, thanks for the informative post.

1 hour ago, Vladimir said:

With just that picture....I would go down that road and probably most people on this forum.

There is NOTHING wrong with that road at THIS POINT.  In fact, it looks really good like it might go through those hills off in the distance.

 

Yeah, I think you are right.  I'd go down it if I was turning at a sign pointing to my intended campground or camping area a mile or so that-a-way.   However, if I had Las Vegas punched in the GPS I wouldn't mistake it for the route there.