Looking Back #2
During our 23 years in Jacksonville, FL we had two homes built from the ground up. It was fun going by and checking the progress and inspecting the work. The first one was a smallish all brick 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms on a ¾ acre lot just 5 miles from Naval Air Station Cecil Field, where I was stationed. The second was our retirement home. It was much larger with an in-ground pool and in a golf course community. Linda and I both loved to golf and were planning on retiring and travel around America where golf courses were plentiful. However, Linda became disabled by a chronic condition and could no longer work full days or golf. Because her condition is not life threatening or debilitating, we started looking for other retirement options. We had traveled around the USA a lot but were never able to take the time to look around and enjoy America. We started reading trip, travel blogs and decided to hit the road in a small RV home. At the time of retirement, I was 63 and retired from the Navy, DOD and on SSA and Linda was on SSA disability retirement at 60. Well, we sold nearly everything in the house, plus our car, boat and truck and purchased a new 38’ fiver and a Cummins powered Dodge Dually to haul it with. The first couple to look at our home purchased it without any haggling. They even brought us gifts to the closing because the house was completely ready for them.
You know this is going somewhere, don’t you? Once we started advertising and selling things from our home, we found eBay. Most of the things we sold there were by auctions. It was fun and exciting and once we hit the road it became one of our enjoyable things to do. Linda always liked to read. I liked fishing and old military things. I had opened a separate eBay banking account when selling home things and linked it to a PayPal account. On the road we went to yard sales and flea markets and purchased things we thought might be profitable. We allotted enough RV storage space for 200#. To ensure our weights (GVWR, GCWR, and GAWRs) were remained within the limits set for them, we scaled our rig about 3 times a year. My items were mostly old fishing lures, military Zippo lighters and pocked knives. My prized finds were Cattaraugus knives. I found a few that looked like they were in such bad condition I wouldn’t have put them in my junk toolbox, and then they would sell for hundreds of dollars.
Linda was very good at finding pristine condition 1st edition books which can also bring in hundreds of dollars. But, remember this, it was a hobby we could do together, and it was fun. We had some really nice dinners from any profits we made. (We shipped from where we were at and return shipments went to our USP mailbox at Jacksonville, FL. (Our sons managed our storage space).
During my Navy years we transferred coast to coast 5 times. From the time our two boys were in 1st and 3rd grades we rented pop-up trailers and camping equipment from Navy MWR and went camping and fishing. By the time our boys were in their early teens they had been to a dozen or more national parks/forests. From Acadia in Maine to Los Padres NF in Calf they explored wildlife and forests even walking on fallen red woods in Sequoia. From all that experience we decided to never dry camp in our retirement adventures. And we never parked in someone’s parking lot. You can count on one hand the places we parked with only water & elect. I think we did gray water dumping less than 6 times.
Here are some places we do not recommend. The Salton Sea, it stinks. John W. Star SP, Starkville, MS. FHU? Yes! Still yucky!
Helpful hints about some of the things a full timer will eventually add as necessary. Almost all Military CGs with FHUs will have an extra 15 APMs available at the power connection area. Some civilian CGs will also have the extra power available. I got a 15 AMP extension cord and run it up through the laundry chute into the bedroom, where the extra power is welcomed for hair dryers and curling irons, those things that often got me hunting for the CG circuit breaker box.
