A Blogging We Go

For approximately the last three months, Sally and I have been experiencing a change in our lifestyle, relationship, and experiences, unlike anything during our thirty seven years of marriage.  We purchased a 2011.5 Thor Challenger motorhome last July in preparation, of my planned retirement at the end of December. Sally, cautiously agreed to support full time Rving for a couple of years. We would explore, sightsee, and take the opportunity to look for a possible location to plant roots again. My argument was, the RV would allow us the time to spend time in different areas, and really determine a good location to buy hopefully, our last home.

Our last 18 months of my employment had been spent in Bath Maine, with me supporting the installation of two new Advanced Gun Systems (AGS) on a new class of Navy Destroyer. The new ship was being built by Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath.  Prior to that, we had spent 15 years living in the Minneapolis area. After nearly 17 years of that environment, we had determined that between Minnesota and Maine; we were tired of snow and winters!

February 2011 Bath Maine

We finished up my work assignment in Maine the week of Thanksgiving. We packed up and left Bath the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, reluctantly saying goodbye to the close friends, colleagues, and neighbors. I had spent the last 18 months watching the New Navy Zumwalt Destroyer being build section by section, unit by unit. I repeatedly reminded myself during that 18 months of the fantastic opportunity that I had spending that period witnessing that once in a lifetime experience.

Fore Body of USS Zumwalt DDG 1000

We headed to Arkansas, where my parent and our newly purchased RV was located. We spent three weeks doing upgrades to the RV, adding solar panels, inverter, satellite receiver, tow bars, base plates, wiring harnesses, backup braking systems, and all of those amenities that you never envisioned when you first had to hair brained idea to purchase a Class A motorhome!

On December 21st we took off on our maiden voyage heading for San Diego to spent Christmas with our daughter Courtney. What should have been a three day, 1700 mile trip, exposed us to the challenges, surprises,  and exhaustion for newbies of RVing. We made it to our daughters on the afternoon of the 25th, a little later than anticipated, but safe and sound.  Our brand new rig wasn't as fortunate; no longer in one piece, but as I said, we were safe and sound!

First Night on the road at Love's Truck Stop

We hope our blog provides an opportunity for friends, relatives, and anyone else to follow and hopefully enjoy our experiences, lessons learned, and testing of a mature marriage! Hopefully Sally will do most of the blogging; she's the creative writer in the family; I tend to write like a third grader! I'll just talk about techie things like repairs, problems, and dealing with Thor Customer Service.

Dave