It has been a busy summer so far and it is only June 14th! We
just returned from a memorable vacation to the Black Hills with a family group
of 16 including two of our three kids, four of our grandkids and our son-in-law’s
family. We rented a big house outside of Deadwood and spent a week exploring
the area. The weather was perfect, everyone had a good time and got along well
all week. I couldn’t have dreamt of a better vacation.
 |
| The whole gang at Mr. Rushmore |
 |
| Arrival time at the "cabin" |
During the trip we had a chance to go spend part of day with
Russ and Nancy Barnes. They are fellow
RV Volunteers like us that we met through other RV friends several years ago.
Although we have never worked with them other good friends of ours have worked
with them and we have been able to get to know them when we visited our friends.
Social media has helped us stay connected with them. They gave us a guided tour of the D.C. Booth
Fish Hatchery where they are working this summer in Spearfish SD, then took us
to their favorite local restaurant for lunch. While we were visiting with them, I starting
thinking about all the times we meet up with people we have met on the road and
the vision of a huge web with connecting points all over the country formed in
my mind. We will intersect with many people over the course of the next few
months, all of whom, we have met through our full time RV lifestyle.
 |
| With Russ and Nancy at their site |
Later this week, a couple we were down the street from two
winters ago in Mercedes TX will be staying at Saylorville for 5 days. Our
conversations with them that winter revealed that despite their extensive
travels they had never spent any time in Iowa. It is not all that uncommon,
despite Interstates 80 and 35 intersecting in Des Moines many people simply go
around thinking there is nothing here worth seeing. Since we started this in
2016, we have had three couples come to Iowa at our encouragement and all were pleasantly
surprised at how beautiful Iowa is in the summer and how much there is to see.
We will make our, one year delayed, trip out to Maine in
August to see Chuck and Julie who we became good friends with, in Florida three
winters ago. Their neighbors are a couple, that Julie introduced me to through
Facebook who are birders that I had a chance to do some birding with, the year
we were in Mercedes. Not only will we get to see Maine but will get to spend
time with them and let them show us their home turf.
On our way to Florida this fall we will stop and see Barb
and John who we also met in Florida and likely stop in the Florida panhandle to
see former Volunteer Village friends who are working in the area. The world is
wide, but the web is woven ever more tightly the more we move about during the
winter. The country is becoming less a place that seems unfamiliar and more a path
of places where we look forward to meeting ‘on-the-road’ friends and getting
private tours of the areas they call home or are working at the time. Next February
we will be on the receiving end when our good friends John and Cathy come to Florida
for a month to take some much-needed time off from work camping and visit us in
the Keys. We will have been there three months by then and will know the lay of
the land. I am hopeful that when we depart around the first of March we may
even travel together up the East Coast for a couple of weeks as we make our way
back to Iowa and they head toward their summer gig.
Years run together and have become a continuous string of
timeframes to look forward to as we cross paths with our like-feathered friends
that are the full time RV community. I can’t imagine my life without having
know many of the people we have met in the past five years.
Until Next Time…
