A glipse of 'retirement'

Cynthia and I love to go RVing. In fact, when she retires in just a little less than a year from now, we plan a trip out west and up the California coast, and maybe even Oregon, Washington and whatever other states we can go through.

Our first trip will be an extended vacation, like two, three or possibly four months. It’s a year and a half away, but we’re already taking steps to make it possible.

First of all, we have purchased our second RV since we got married just over five years ago. We’ve gone from a 28-foot Class C to a 22-foot Class B. Yep, downsized. The Class C was just too big (for our driveway) and too hard to handle, so we decided to go with something a little smaller.

We had to keep the other one in storage and go out and get it every time we wanted to go somewhere. With this one, we just park it in our driveway, load it up and take off. Cynthia has taken Aunt Mable home (to Heavener) in it and stayed at the Long Lake RV Park, near Poteau. She’s taken it to her daughter’s in Bryan and stayed in it.

Actually, it’s a BT Cruiser, sleeps two, has a kitchen, a bathroom and a refrigerator. Just the right size for Cynthia and I, and it’s more economical to drive. It better be, the way the price of gasoline is going up these days.

We took it to Lake Tawakonie, about 60 miles from Tyler, last week, to get a better idea of how comfortable we’d be, and just how much we liked it. I must admit the best part was that our friends Robert and Elaine took their camper along, too. Robert also took his boat and he caught a pretty good mess of catfish. I’m not much of a fisherman.

There’s nothing better than fresh catfish, fresh hush puppies and fresh fried potatoes. Mmmm.

We had a grand time and ate some good food cooked on the grill.

One thing we took along for the fist time was a tent, an OU tent, really just a canopy, which we set up to relax in the cool breeze away from the sun.

The next trip will be a little longer, sometime next fall (2009) to visit her brother Jim in Miami, en route to Kansas to visit an old classmate – John Marvin Wright – then come down through Oklahoma City to visit some friends, before heading back to Tyler.

Then, it’s the biggie. We have our good friend, Dixie Linville, to come stay in the house, someone to mow the yard and Cynthia has started paying the bills online. We have a new wireless laptop for that and can still get emails, and write blogs, of course.

We have a membership in 1000 Trails (campgrounds) and there are 1000 Trails parks up and down the California coast, so we plan to just hop from one to the other.

We can’t wait.