Thoughts on our Third Year as Fulltimers

I wrote last year in my end of the year posting: “I will admit I have been a little remiss in blog writing lately, so I will make keeping the blog more current my 2010 New Year’s resolution. Now all of you can see how well I do at keeping New Year resolutions. ”


Well, as we all now know I did even worse in 2010 than I did in 2009 at: “keeping the blog more current”. I was never able to keep the blog even close to current after March. I even skipped over our first 10 day visit to Fredericksburg, Texas at the end of March just to try to get the blog caught up. Fredericksburg is one of the best places we have visited since we have been on the road. We spent 20 days there in total on two different visits. At some point I will have to write that blog entry.


At least in part, the reason the blog has been so far behind is that we did so much this past year. I wrote in last year’s end of the year message: “This year we learned to stay in one location longer and really get to see the area.” Clearly in 2010 we forgot that lesson.  In 2010 we drove over 18,000 miles, visit 28 states and 4 Canadian provinces. Twenty of those states we had never been to before and all 4 of the Canadian provinces we had never visited as RVers. A huge part of being so far behind with the blog is due to the 1,000s of photos we have taken this year. It takes us a lot of time to download, edit and select the pictures for the blog and slideshow. At least that’s my story and I am sticking to it.


As in the past two years we continued to visit and see some absolutely remarkable places. These would have to include Sonora Caverns and the “Hill Country” of  Texas, Jamestown and Yorktown in Virginia, the entire state of Maine, the villages of Louisbourg and Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia, Niagara Falls and the Thousand Island area of upstate New York
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Particularly exciting for us was our visit to Washington DC; neither of us had every been there. It was just amazing to visit the National Archives and see the actual Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. To visit the Smithsonian Museums and see the actual Wright Flyer, Spirit of St.Louis, Hope Diamond and the countless other items at the Smithsonian. Equally incredible was to tour the Capitol building and to walk among the famous monuments that we had only seen on television or in movies.


There were also wonderful experiences like sailing on Lake Champlain and whale watching on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick on gorgeous sunny days!


I am not even going to attempt to list all of the truly wonderful people we got to meet and visit this past year for fear that I would forget to mention someone. However, we had wonderful experiences visiting family, old friends and meeting new ones during this past year.


To bring the blog somewhat up-to-date:


As in years past, we returned to our hometown of San Jose, California to spend our time between Thanksgiving and Christmas visiting with family and friends. Plus lab tests, visiting doctors, dentists and Raider’s Vet for annual check ups. Our departure from San Jose was delayed a week because Raider had to have surgery to remove a large “fatty tissue tumor” from his side and a melanoma from his foot. Fortunately, both were benign, but he needed some extra time to recover and have his stiches removed.


Plans for 2011:


Having travelled so many miles last year, for 2011 we are going to try to go no further than the Mountain Time Zone and stay at places longer. We are also thinking that  we would like to do some volunteering at a wildlife refuge, state or national park. We don’t want to commit to a 3 month stay, but if an opportunity to volunteer for a month so that  we can “get our feet wet” in volunteering were to come up we would jump on it. However, the plans of fulltime RVers are always cast in Jell-O.


New Year’s Resolutions:


1. To get the rest of our 2010 travel blog and pictures posted.


2. Do a better job in 2011 than I did in 2010 at keeping the blog up-to-date. Really, could I do any worse?