1st quarter 2023: Big change. BIG.

So uh, remember last update when I said that pesky medical follow-ups were keeping us in TX, but at least none were serious? 

One got serious. 

And that’s why we’re still here, but that’s not the BIG change. I’ll get to that.

It’s a little bit about me, and a lot about Tim and boats.

I won’t leave you guessing about the medical thing. 

My doctors found that I have some precancerous endometrial lesions, and the treatment for someone my age and with my cancer history is a hysterectomy. I’m scheduled for the surgery in April, and we expect to begin our trek toward WA & AK in mid-May, assuming I get an all-clear from my medical team.

Quite honestly, it’s a relief — and also a good excuse for a heartfelt reminder to get your regular check-ups, and also your irregular ones, for symptoms and conditions that just don’t seem right. Don’t wait.

So yeah, other than a 10-day visit to Tim’s folks in Mexico, we’ve stayed put here on our friends’ property in Boerne, TX, and since I have no RV travels to report for this quarter, I’ll jump right into what’s happening later this year.

And now… for something completely different. 

If you were paying attention last summer, you might have noticed my somewhat cryptic caption on the photo of Tim at the WoodenBoat School in Maine.

It was here, in July, that we started seriously discussing the “what ifs” and “just maybes” of that rekindled flame.
(This is a screen cap of the slide show from the original post, not a new slide show, so don’t click the little arrow thingies because they don’t do anything.)

Tim loves wooden boats, and …

… he once built a wooden boat, and …

… our older son went to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, WA, ten years ago, and …

… Tim’s been thinking about it ever since, and …

… we knew we’d be returning from Alaska to Washington in September of this year, making it an ideal time to start school there, but …

… Tim didn’t know what he’d do with the skills he’d learn and the degree he’d earn, so …

… after a lot of drive-time discussions and no small amount of soul searching, he decided to let those wood shavings fall where they may, because life is short, and it’s time to fulfill this dream. A post-graduation plan will eventually reveal itself.

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tim applied in January, pretty much the second admissions opened for the 2023-24 school year, and – – – paperwork, interview, more paperwork – – – is now enrolled in their 12-month Boatbuilding AOS Degree program, starting in October!
It was in fact while we were living in WA 20 years ago that Tim built his first wooden boat, laying the keel after returning from a lengthy Navy deployment in 2003, and launching in 2004.
The 15’ solid wooden and fiberglass sailboat was based on Harold Payson’s Gypsy.
Tim modified it in 2005, refurbished it in 2015, and sold it in 2016, shortly after we took to full-time RV living.

We have what feels like a shipyard’s worth of logistics to plan before school starts. Are we going to book an RV site for a year? Rent a furnished place? Sell or store Tex (5th wheel) or Road Island (truck camper)? What about the cargo trailer with all Tim’s tools in it? What am I going to do while Tim’s in class every weekday from 8-5 for a year? If I get a job, won’t we need a second vehicle? And oh yeah, there’s this summer’s trip to Alaska in Road Island, for which we don’t even have the bare minimum of dinghies in a row yet. Ack!

And then… there’s the weather. We’ve visited family in western Washington countless times, plus we lived in Bremerton for a 2-year tour of duty, and it was the longest, coldest, darkest, wettest 6 winters I’ve ever experienced. Please send a sun lamp and other mood lifters. I’ve already bought the wildest pair of rain boots I could find.

The father will follow in the son’s footsteps, right through the doors of the boat school, 10 years later. It’s kind of like a legacy admission, only… backwards?
Plus, that boy of ours still lives in the area, and the prospect of more family time definitely puts some wind in this mama’s sails.
(Photo taken at the school, the weekend our son graduated)
And if I knew where to find this old license plate frame, which I had custom made for Tim when he finished the sailboat in 2004, and is now buried in a box in our storage unit, I’d definitely give it a shine and put it on the BFT.

As we muddle our way from springtime surgery in Texas, through an Alaskan summer road trip, to settling into student life in Washington in the fall, check in with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for brief updates on how it’s all going. Until the next long post here, I’ll leave you with a joke.

Question: What’s the biggest advantage of going back to school as a retiree?  
Answer: If you cut classes, no one calls your parents. 

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.

4th quarter 2022: WheRVe we been?

We went up, up and away in Albuquerque, and then traveled back in time in Sedona, before landing at our winter home base near San Antonio.

Come on. I’ll take you.

Dawn patrol rising at the 50th annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
Not so much time on the road this quarter.
In Road Island (truck camper), we completed the big loop we’d started in April,
driving from Albuquerque to Sedona to Boerne (1470-ish miles),
where we promptly moved back into Tex (5th wheel) on our friends’ property a few days before Halloween.
Other than a Christmas week gathering with RV friends in Georgetown, we’ve been parked here ever since.

Albuquerque NM – Sept. 27 to Oct. 11

Balloon Fiesta hadn’t been on our bucket list. If I’m to be honest, I’d say it held a firm place on our “Oh my god too many people let’s just watch videos online because I wouldn’t even go if you paid me ” list.

Turns out that after being convinced by friends we trust — who also happened to be co-coordinators of this year’s Escapees Boomers Balloon Fiesta Volunteer Crew — we paid them to go (the Balloon Fiesta organization, not the Boomers), and $50.00/night for dry camping at that.

And you know what? Totally worth it. In fact, we got off cheap for the scope and breadth of experience we absorbed, simply by attending mandatory crew training and learning some new skills — oh, and by volunteering to use those skills after walking more than a mile to the launch field at ungodly dark & early hours every day, and then sometimes doing it again the same evening.

We knew before we arrived that being offered a flight was not guaranteed, and we adjusted our expectations accordingly. But each of us got to go up! In fact, our pilot didn’t even have the question all the way out of his mouth that first morning, before I had one leg inside the basket.

We worked hard, lost sleep, learned a lot, made new friends, witnessed jaw-dropping visual spectacles, and enjoyed all kinds of crew perks as we became immersed in ballooning culture. As with other sports and activities, especially those that are more on the fringe, the community is passionate and close-knit, and eager to welcome more enthusiasts to the fold.

  • Mostly, we helped our assigned pilot with inflating to go up…
  • … and wrangling to come down.
  • Being up there? Indescribable.
  • View from aloft
Up I went!
The biggest shock is that I didn’t puke.
Nothing like a thrill so unexpected and so intense it makes you completely forget you’ve suffered
from motion sickness all your damn life.
I know that for me it’s as much a mental issue as a physical one, and right here is proof of what happens
(or doesn’t happen)
if I don’t have the luxury of over-thinking it first.

Sedona AZ – Oct. 16 to Oct. 21

We’d first heard about HistoriCorps in the summer of 2021, and immediately signed up for a project in Oregon that October. Unfortunately, it was canceled due to wildfire smoke, and we couldn’t find a project that fit our travel timeline again for an entire year.

When we got to Sedona, we literally parked beneath a rainbow, met the rest of our Week 1 crew, and got to work helping to restore historic buildings at Crescent Moon Ranch, which dates back to the 1880s.

I’ll post some of my own pics in a slide show, and for a better summary of the work HistoriCorps did, I’ll also embed a brief local news video below. We’re not in it, as it must have been filmed during the 2nd or 3rd work week, but we definitely recognize staffers Pete and Sarah — and every structure shown.

  • They do say Sedona is a mystical place. Our work camp was right there at the base of Cathedral Mountain.
  • This is my “Oh great, I’m the only chick” face.
  • See that rusty roof on the well house?
  • We pried it off, and I’ve still got rust stains on those pants to prove it.
  • Our crew shored up the supports; the next week’s crew installed the new panels.
  • Working in shifts, we spent hours & hours grinding the rust off the paddle wheel.
HistoriCorps volunteers help preserve structures at Crescent Moon Ranch in Sedona

Boerne TX – Oct 26 to present

It’s our second winter in a row on our friends’ property, which is a great place to get work done — both theirs and ours, working together. For us, it’s mostly RV maintenance (2 x RV = 4 x work). For them? Well, you just never know what might come up. Or drive by. Or moo at you.

It’s also in a convenient location for visiting friends, family, doctors and dentists everywhere from San Antonio to Austin and into the Texas Hill Country, and we’ve done a lot of that too.

  • October’s full moon…
  • … and a cow that I rather doubt tried to jump over it.
  • I never know what I’m going to see right outside my windows…
  • … but we’ve worked with all kinds of cool toys.
  • Christmas was quiet — after we quit laughing at our unintentional boob lights
  • And Frosty the Doughman made a welcome repeat addition to our holiday potluck.
Look at me learning a new trick like a big girl.

Where to next?

A long string of pesky dental and medical follow-ups has us staying put here in TX through at least mid-February. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’ll always take pesky over serious, and this situation allows us more time to catch up with family, friends, the aforementioned RV maintenance, etc.

We’ve also thought about making a return trip to Mexico, but this time it would be a short visit to a single location, not a repeat of our 2-month tour in Feb/March of 2022.

Around April, we’ll start moving toward WA to stage ourselves for a summer touring Alaska in Road Island. So far we’ve made precisely one reservation for precisely one week.

We also plan to register for Escapees Hangouts in Fairbanks, Seward and Valdez, so that will cover another 3 weeks, but mostly we’ll wing it like we typically do.

We’ve got you covered, 4th of July weekend.

Alaska will be our 50th state since we started full-time RVing in 2015. No, we did not RV to Hawaii, smartass. We stashed the 5th wheel at a military campground near ATL and flew there during Year 4.

Checking off the last state doesn’t mean we’re done roaming, but it does open up some space for recalculating and reevaluating our priorities for whatever comes after — and I won’t lie, we’re doing that.

There’s a specific plan percolating, but whether or not it happens is not under our control. Nope, we’re not buying a house or land. Yep, I’ll be able to share the news in our next quarterly update if it’s a go, and if you’re one of the few who’ve heard us talk about it in person, hush.

Until then, Happy New Year, and be sure to check in with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for brief updates, random thoughts, stuff I’m cooking, stuff Tim’s repairing, and occasional selfies with animals.

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.