A Complete Change in Direction

What Have We DONE?

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking and soul-searching lately about what we want from retirement. This camp host position opened up an entirely new train of thought.  And this train seems to be taking us to a new station along our Life Unscripted in Journey.  

We’re going to Oregon!

Yup.

We’re going at the wrong time of the year.

We’re going for longer than we thought we were going to spend in any one place so early in our unscripted journey…

But, at least we’re living up to our billing!

We accepted another volunteer position.  This time with the U.S. Forest Service at Siuslaw National Forest!  We need to be on-site on or before November 1 and we’ll be staying at least 6 months — possibly longer.  The opening is open-ended:  we can stay as long as we choose, or, if another opening occurs within the Forest purview  we can transfer to another position.

But Why?

I suppose some background is appropriate here.  In the early 2000’s I spent three years  driving flatbed semi for Roehl Transport.  That job kept bringing me back to Brookings Oregon. I picked up load after load and the more I came there the more I really liked the rugged area.  I was there in several seasons, but I never stayed more than the few hours it took to load my flatbed and get it tarped.  About three years ago Peg and I visited the Oregon Coast with a longer stay in Newport OR during September. WE liked the area — both of us.  We know there’s fog, drizzle, LOTS of rain, narrow roads and it’s a long to major healthcare facilities but we like it. Would it be a place we might eventually like to settle down. We don’t know, but I have been fantasizing about what it would be like to live there for years.

After we started our current gig we began talking about what ‘life‘ would be like if we volunteered regularly, or periodically, or never again. We had never talked about ‘working’ in retirement.  We know some full timers did it, but it was one of those ‘Well, someday…’ sort of conversations for us.  It wasn’t an easy idea to work through.  Retirement is so new to both of us that I’m not sure either of us know the answers to the philosophical question: ‘what do we want out of retirement?”  Yet, that has always been the way we made up our minds about anything.  Talk about the idea, the concept, first.  If we like the philosophy behind a possibility then look for an opportunity to try it out.  Whether or not the opportunity was ‘perfect’ never mattered to us — perfect opportunities usually don’t exist.  But we have always been up for an adventure, and in almost 45 years we’ve taken our share of adventures.

• We didn’t  and don’t, want to give up our freedom;
• we still want to be productive (in some form),
• and as I said when we first started we don’t have a lot of money to throw away — so there is some incentive to volunteering as a means of making our retirement $$$$ go further.  I’ve always loved a bargain.  If I can get something I want, doing something I enjoy or am willing to do, and I’m satisfied with the exchange that’s all that matter.

Philosophically, one of my primary retirement goals has been to spend time shooting at Wildlife refuges.  I have looked at volunteering at National Wildlife Refuges that have volunteer programs as the “fantasy” match for us. In time we shall do that I’m sure. But the reasoning has been that refuge volunteers spend 24 hours a day in the refuge so that when the workday is over you am still within ‘shooting’ distance of the birds and critters without a lengthy drive to and from the refuge. Working on my bird photography is important to me even if I have taken the better part of a year off from it. This has always been in our sights.  How to we get close to what we want?

Over the last 3 weeks we sent out inquiries and used volunteer.gov to submit some applications for the coming winter. We were aware that we were late to the application game for this winter, but we tried anyway.  A few days ago Siuslaw posted a new listing — Just where I have been wanting to go for a long time.  Siuslaw won’t exactly meet our longterm objective but it gets us closer. We will be in closer proximity to the forest and the wildlife that goes with it and we think with a work schedule that may be better for our objective.

BUT…

I was only too aware of the fact that this is NOT the time to be heading for the Oregon Coast. Between November and January those folks get +10″ of rain a month.  It gets cold there — but not like Wisconsin. Their winters are much more mild that ours here in Wisconsin.  This is certainly not what we talked about BEFORE going mobile.  And yet…

I kept saying to myself, if I really like the Oregon Coast, and I can stand being there during the WORST time of year, then maybe I really DO like it a lot.  So we sent in our application.

The job itself is at the other end of the volunteer spectrum.

• we won’t be dealing with campers regularly
• we won’t be liaising with multiple rangers
• we won’t be driving a golf cart
• we won’t be dealing with reservations.

Instead, we’ll be roving caretakers, stationed near Lakeside OR. There is a government vehicle for us to use as we check in on several campgrounds 5 days a week for a shorter average day.

Yes — this is completely different than what we planned.

No — it doesn’t make any rational sense

And, OH — did I tell you the job is open ended — assuming we don’t screw up we can stay on as long as we want.  Our supervisor out there did the same job for a year and a half, after moving there from FL after 30 years as a sunshine stater.  We are committing for 6 months — we’ll see what happens as we go along.  If we LOVE it, we might be there longer.  If we don’t love it, 6 months will be over at the end of April and we can spend the summer in the N.W. on our own.

So, we’ll see what happens.  It’s a change in direction for us and a wonderful opportunity to either add one possible future long-term home site to our list of ZERO scoped-out-prospects, or scratch one possibility permanently from our site list.  🙂

So there you have it.

Getting there…

We have a few days to make travel plans, probably leaving Milwaukee about the 12th or 13th of September.  And it’s been a few years since my wife has seen her brother and sister-in-law who live in S. Lake Tahoe.  That means there’s at least one detour along the way — possibly more. Knowing that we will be in the NW for at least 6 months we are seriously considering a circuitous route that’s doable in 15 days of driving which means if we have just under 6 weeks to get there we can afford either 2 nights in each spot (if they are spots we might WANT to stay 2 mights) or a few days of short hops followed by a longer stay (like in Death Valley and Lake Tahoe). All of this is dependent upon the weather.  If winter approaches rapidly we might shorten the journey — in days or miles — I don’t carry chains for the RV — and even though we won’t be facing too many mountain passes this way I’ll sit out a closed pass if and when the time ever arrives that snowy passes and chain laws come into play.

And that’s were we are at the moment.  Excited.  In need of some serious routing research. Eager to get started.  We’ll keep you posted as the details work their way out.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll talk with you tomorrow.