It is human nature to dream of a different reality than the one we occupy at the time. Many of us dream of the freedom of traveling, exploring this vast world, without giving much thought to, actually executing a plan to make the dream reality.
For me the dream to travel started at a very young age. I was a voracious reader as a child. My elementary school library had a series of books about different countries as well as regions of the United States. I remember there were about 20 or so large coffee table style books dedicated to a specific place with lots of pictures and information about the natural wonders, culture, food, society, wildlife etc. Each time I checked out one of those books and read it at home I was left with an intense longing to see that place. Additionally, my folks subscribed to children’s literature such as Disney’s Wonderful World of Knowledge, a kid oriented version of an Encyclopedia and National Geographic, all of which, I read cover to cover when they arrived each month. I couldn’t get enough. Yes, I was a book nerd.
While I was reading these books in grade school around ages 8 – 11, my husband who is 13 years older was embarking on a career as a tower crane operator that took him all over the country and gave him a unique perspective of different places from his perch 140 feet above the ground. It also placed him in these different areas, sometimes, for months at a time. While I was reading about different places in books, he was experiencing our country and its varied landscapes first hand overlooking the area while setting steel and concrete precast to build everything from grain elevators and water towers to hospitals and condos. We were simultaneously nurturing a yearning to travel long before we would meet some 30 years later in life.
We bought our first 5th wheel about 6 months after we married in 2002. We were hooked. We had several friends and family who owned campers and went as a group several times a year. But more weekends than not we went alone. We just wanted to be in the campground where things are simple. We began taking our vacations with the camper and visited several areas for a week or so at a time and found we were quite comfortable in our space. Over the years our campers grew as our lust for traveling grew.
One night about 5 years into our marriage we were camping solo one weekend and pulled an all-nighter sitting at the campfire talking. The topic was ‘wouldn’t it be cool to be one of these people who lived in the campers and worked in the campgrounds?’ We talked and talked that night and before we knew it the birds were waking up and dawn was breaking, it was 4:30 in the morning and the seed was planted. This was a lifestyle we would work toward.
Over the next 10 years we became the “diehards”, who were commonly the first to go out in the season and the last to winterize for the final time. One mild New Year’s Eve we pulled the camper to our friend’s home where we normally spent the night anyway on that night and guess what? They weren’t the least bit surprised at our impulsive move to un-winterize and bring it out for the weekend. We were on mission to use it in each calendar month in Iowa. Not an easy task if you are familiar with Iowa winters. To date we have 11 months covered. February continues to elude us. The two years, when there were decent temperatures for a couple of days, they fell during the week and I couldn’t get the time off work to go. Boo!
The next step in the process was when we sold our acreage. When we first talked about selling it the original intent was to make the transition then. As we talked more seriously I got cold feet about giving up the brick and mortar home and we shifted gears and bought a place in town and decided we would become snowbirds at some future date. The acreage would be too much to manage being gone 5 months out of the year and we bought an old, neglected house in Williams, Iowa in dire need of a great deal of work. Champ was up to the task and worked tirelessly to take the poor old house and rehabilitate it back into a nice home. We lived in the camper in the back yard for 8 weeks until the house was livable (barely) and the cold drove us inside. The camper was working fine it was the water freezing in the hose running from the house to the camper water hook up that was giving us fits in single digit overnight temps and highs barely above freezing. But the lesson we learned is, there was no doubt in our minds we could live comfortably in the 5th wheel. We even had one of the grandkids for 4 days during that period and he was totally unphased that we were in the small confines of the camper versus the house. By this time, we had traded 4 times and were enjoying a 35’ Montana with many of the conveniences sought out by full timers.
Moving to Williams, we thought we had given up on the dream to go full time. In hindsight, it was just another step that got us to the place we are today. Champ had retired about three months before we sold the acreage. Soon after, I left my position as Operations Manager at a credit union, a job that was literally sucking the life out of me, and took a job as a secretary for a construction company. Champ worked on the house we lived our life. Two things came out of those 3 years. The first was the wonderful experience we had as residents of Williams, Iowa. I wouldn’t pass up the experience of meeting and getting to know our friends there for anything. The second, was I really wanted to stop leaving Champ for 10 hours each day to go to work. I was really starting to resent the fact that I had to continue to work full time as his retirement years started to click by. The next step was about to happen, we just didn’t know it yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment