Answers To Comments

My post from Friday brought in quite the large number of comments.  I guess everyone is interested in this RV lifestyle, in one way or another.  Some of the comments came with a question attached, so I thought I’d take today’s post to answer those.

When I mentioned that we hadn’t learned a great deal in the past 2 years about RVing I was just referring to ourselves getting adjusted to our fulltime lifestyle in our small space.  Since we were former full timer's and had also been long-time RVer’s, moving into the motorhome was no strange thing to us.  It required very little adjustment in our lives.  Judy thought I meant that we were not learning anything during our travels.  No, Judy….we enjoy learning new things about the various places we visit.   In fact learning new things is one of the best aspects of traveling on any type of vacation.  Travel is the most mind-broadening (is that a word?) experience Bruce and I can have.

Gypsy commented on my statement about living in a small apartment when our FT days were over.  She is now living in a small apartment and has this new experience.  Yes, there may be noisy neighbors or folks you don’t care for and we will not be able to drive away to a new location without the RV.  That is just something that will have to be endured when we get to that phase of our lives.  No place is perfect.

                                            These are the 2 boxes of books we store in our daughter’s garage.

A question was raised by Carol K about what our plan would be if the RV needed to have service work done and we could not stay in it?  We have found on a couple of occasions that RV dealers or the factory will do their best to allow you to stay in your RV on their lot if possible while work is being done.  Of course, if the whole thing has to be torn up for major structural work, you may have to be out for a few days.  This did happen to us in Aug. 2009 at the Winnie factory.  We had to go to a motel for 3 nights.  We have meals and lodging coverage on 2 policies for up to 3 days…if the work is covered under that policies guidelines.   If it doesn’t cover it, or if it is longer than 3 days, we may just have to pay for lodging. 

The question of juggling family time vs “us” time was raised by Mike and Gerri.  Currently, we spend more time in Tumwater to be around our grandkids than we probably will in a couple of years.  They grow older and don’t care so much about you after a while.  As far as our 2 grown kids are concerned, we hope they realize that we have a right to pursue our own dreams and not just be hanging around waiting for them to work us into their busy schedule.  If they don’t realize our need for dreams of our own….we’re sorry about that….but we’re still full timing !!  We come back to Tumwater a few times a year and the the rest of the time we reserve for ourselves to do what we want to do.

                                            We have an eclectic mix of older books we have yet to read.

Eventually, we all have to park the RV or sell it off.  We’ll get too old or have health problems that force us to make a new life for ourselves.  Jerry and Suzy are in the phase of no longer full timing because of some health needs right now, but are doing part-time travels in their motorhome.  They have a winter home in Benson, AZ that they just love to be in now.  They had been full timer's for a number of years before making a home in Benson.  It will happen to everyone and we’re no different.  We don’t have a plan yet for where we will live, but it will not be large !!

A good question about healthcare was asked by Levonne.  She was wondering if we went without healthcare insurance as fulltime RVer’s.  No way!  Nothing changed for us in that department when we moved into the RV fulltime.  We have purchased private health insurance since 1986 when Bruce quit working.  We have not gone one month without it.  Currently with only the 2 of us on the policy, we pay Blue Shield $937.00 per month with a $5,000 deductible.  Bruce will be 65 in 2012 and can qualify for Medicare, but we will still maintain a supplemental policy.  Bruce had a quadruple bypass operation in 2005 and the cost was over $160,000.  No way could we have paid for that in full by ourselves.  We paid our $5,000 deductible and we were done.  We would never go without some type of health insurance.  Our policy only covers 50% of costs if we seek voluntary medical care outside of Washington, but it will cover everything in the event of emergencies, no matter which state we are in. 

                                                  Bruce checks out the inventory to bring some new ones home to read. 

Fellow fulltimer, Phyllis, left a cute statement after her comment.  She says for her and Len, “Living small is living large” and I totally agree with that statement.

I hope this cleared up some issues I may not have covered completely on Friday.  If not, let me know.  We’re pretty much an open book around here….don’t have too many secrets. 

                                            These are some older best sellers that I’ve had for a while.

It rained a bit here in Tumwater this afternoon.  Nice change in temperature from the high 80’s we had a while ago.   Cloudy, overcast is OK with us. 

Until next time….so long for now!