Do you really need Plan A, Plan B, Plan C?

It’s time for me to come clean! I’ve been struggling  for 3 1/2 years — ever since we decided to sell our house and go mobile.

About most things in life I’ve never been a follower.  I’ve been happy to break rules, go my own way, and be happy about the things that make me happy — not the things that make someone else happy.

So then, why is it that no matter what I do I can’t stop thinking about some ‘plan’ that we should be following for now and/or for the future?  We talk with all these people who go ‘here’ every year for 6 months or they go back and forth between two places every year — as regular as clockwork.  And there’s this part of me that keeps wondering why we son’t have some kind of plan?

You can know intellectually and not know it emotionally.  Or vice versa.

No matter how many times I say, There’s no right way to RV. there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to embrace the reality;  there’s part of me that longs for some sort of structure; yet in the midst of one of those structured periods I’m longing for the structure to be gone.    I never said we were a rational couple.  We’re working it out as we go.

Neither of us has been the sort to return to places year after year.  There have been some that we’ve wanted to revisit maybe 5 or 10 years later, but we like seeing new things and enjoying new places.  When we were at Palmdale last winter it was hard to understand the folks who would return to So. Padre Island every year for 20 years and then when they retired they bought a park model mobile home and have been returning another 10 years.  That’s just not us;  so then why do I keep thinking a Pazucha version of that dream is something we should be looking at?  Beats me!

South West Wisconsin

These things being true, in our undocumented times at Potosi, and Thomson, and here at De Soto, we have been scouting around SW Wisconsin in search of private campgrounds that might be suitable for a periodic — or regular return.  We really like this area and if we could find a place we liked we might be willing to consider returning; after all in 3 1/2 years we have been back to one of these Corps Campgrounds four summers in a row, and we have been to a couple of them three years out of four.    In short doses we haven’t minded being in the same place; just not for months at a time.

 

I was saying to Peggy just the other day that Bosque poses a strange situation.  I have wanted to volunteer at a Wildlife Refuge,  I can think of no better Refuge to do it at, and yet I’m chomping at the bit about having made a commitment 6 months in advance and right now it feels like that time will never get here.

And then I do something like this.  Monday we are going to visit the Genoa Fish Hatchery. We made an appointment last week, to talk about volunteering there.  They have recently added an RV site to their facility and while I am not a fisher-person, and know nothing about fish, the idea of learning about what goes on at a fish hatchery is a curious draw for us.  So we’ll see whether it’s something that we might like to try.  Not this year, probably not next year either.  We’re just reconnoitering.

If we were to try to follow any kind of annual ‘plan’ other than wandering-as-the-spirit-moves-us there are a regular patterns that some RV’ers follow. We talked about this for the first time just the other day:

• Spend every Summer in one PLEACE and spend every Winter in ONE place
• Spend every Summer in one general LOCALE and travel every winter.
• Travel every summer and spend every Winter in one LOCALE
• Travel every summer and spend every Winter in one PLACE

There are a lot of parks where you can buy your own lot;  there are a lot of parks that are happy to have return renters in any season.  The opportunities are all out there.  But far the only ‘constant’ in our travels has been our annual return to WI physicals — in September.

We will scout out some other campgrounds in September, when we get to Milwaukee.  It will be something to do, informative, and maybe we’ll find something near our daughter that is appealing.  If not,  we aren’t in a position where we NEED to make any decision or commitment.

I am coming to think that I’m a bit different from a lot of RV’ers.  For one thing I find no great joy in setting up camp, or taking it down again when we move.  For us, it was an easy choice between a 5th Wheel, a Class A Coach, or a Class C Coach because in our opinion our Class A requires the least effort to set up, and to move.  I’m inherently lazy.

When I think about RV’ers who spend half year or more in a place I remind myself that RV’s seem to do best when they are being used, and not when they are sitting unused.  I think that applies as much to the mechanicals of the coach as to the appliances, etc..  The running gear needs to be run.  The brakes need to be used so rust doesn’t develop.  Things need lubrication, they need to be aired up and deflated, pumped up and released.  Our current lifestyle — the one with no definition — accomplishes just these things.  We work the slide mechanisms.  We work the dump valves and the air bags.  We work the engine, see to the routine maintenance and make sure all the moving parts move the way they should.  Sitting in one place for 5 or 6 months at a time doesn’t accomplish that end.

There is no resolution to this post.  I still find myself pondering plans; I don’t need them, but like our daughter there is a part of me that likes planning.  So, I do my research and sometimes we put plans down on paper and having no more than completed the task I tear them up and think up something better.

I don’t know if you need a Plan A, or Plan B,  I don’t even want to talk about plans because they never seem to go the way you plan them;  but for now I’m happy to be free to do just that.

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