Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Move Is Complete !

Well it took 2 long days but we've finally moved out of the townhouse and into the coach. Wednesday was devoted to getting the final items into the coach; moving the food from one fridge to another, the final few clothing items and computer, etc. We also had lots' of visitors and conducted a bunch of "tours" of our new home. Many of the guys from the fire department stopped off to say goodbye and get a look at our new toy ! It was a nice touch and I appreciated their efforts and time spent visiting.

We moved the rig over to it's temporary home: a spot in the campground where we have stored the rig(s) during the years we've been in PA.

This morning was an early wake-up and we went back to the town home and finished packing the last of our stuff for storage. The movers showed up on time about 10.30 and it took till 2.30 to fill a 26' truck to the brim ! It then took another 3.5 hours to unload it and stuff it in a 10 x 15 x 12 storage unit. It was on the 3rd floor of a climate controlled building but thankfully the elevator was huge and they had lot's of carts.

We'll go back over the weekend and clean up the town home and move Kristin's stuff out on Saturday. We've got some other housekeeping chores in town and closing is scheduled for Monday. We'll leave for Long Island and the grand kids on Tuesday.

We're tired; we're excited; we're having fun; It's the adventure. We'll keep you posted.

Gene & Laurie

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Hello and welcome to our World. This is the start of our new adventure: to see as much of this wonderful country and the world as possible in the next few (could be more) years. We'll be leaving notes of interest and thoughts on our travels. We'll tell you some things about ourselves and we'll look forward to reading your thoughts and comments as well.

To begin, it is the end of July, 2008 and we have been on a hectic whirlwind of activity for the past 90 days. It is winding down and we leave here on Tuesday, August 5th. A brief synopsis of how all this came to be.

As many of you know we have been "campers" or RV'ers for the past 35 years. Our first truck camper came around 1974 and we've had many since. In November of last year we purchased a new 2007 Newmar Ventana coach. It's 40' and has 4 slideouts. It also has all the "bells & whistles" that anybody could ask for, including 3 flat screen tv's, full washer & dryer, sat tv, etc. etc.

After buying this we thought long and hard about our current lifestyle and realized that we now had the perfect opportunity to fulfill a longtime dream and travel full time. The coach comes with a 5 year, 100k bumper-to-bumper warranty package and it seemed foolish to leave the unit parked for long periods of time and watch it depreciate.

So by late December, 2007 we agreed to put our town home up for rent and travel. We have owned a fabulous (those of you who have been here will agree) 3 story townhouse on a golf course in suburban Philadelphia. The community is called PineCrest and has a championship par 70, 7300 yd golf course and about 325 homes. Montgomeryville is an eclectic community with major shopping, an abundance of restaurants and just about every convenience a person could want including access to the wonderful city of Philadelphia. We were also only 135 miles to our eldest daughter and 3 grandchildren on Long Island. Our youngest daughter also had moved close by and we had an idyllic place to live and we traveled. I joined a brand new volunteer (combination) fire department; Laurie joined the Arts Alliance and Red Hatters. We made friends; retired life was good.

But we're still young and there is so much more to see and do and we said it was time. When we returned from Florida in the spring of this year we put the place up for rent. Well, that was not what we expected. It became a bidding war of folks looking to get this place. It also quickly became obvious that we couldn't limit the size of the family that might rent and what the eventual wear and tear was going to be on the home and its' facilities. We'd be "absentee" landlords and it would be costing big dollars to keep the maintenance up. Our profits would be used up in costs. Plus the worry and legal hassle's all added up to a NO.

So, we scheduled an open house for June 1st, put as few signs up and a couple of ad's in the paper and Wow ! the house sold in an hour ! We've been packing ever since and it's getting close. We've had 2 garage sales, the last one today and we've unloaded lots ! The new owners have bought quite a bit of furniture and we've given our daughters more.

We'll still have have a storage unit in Bensalem and maybe someday we'll have another "brick & mortar" home but for now, we're off on this new chapter in our lives.

We'll move into the coach this Wednesday and the movers come on Thursday.

More to Follow:

Gene & Laurie