The closets and cupboards in the RV are empty. Our home for the past five years sits in covered storage for now. Our new house in Midway Arkansas, six miles outside the city limits of Mountain Home, is a work in progress. This is where we want to be for the foreseeable future. We have officially joined the 80% of fulltime Rvers who will not make it past five years on the road.
I kept a list next to the computer regarding topics for this blog post. There are 18 points I wanted to make. But for the sake of your time reading, I think it best just to answer questions someone like me might ask after reading a fellow RVer left the road. And maybe add a little about our new lifestyle unrelated to Rving.
A fellow blogger told us years ago that he had a deal between himself and wife which was if either one wanted to leave fulltime travel, then they will give the other six months notice. I’ll say that is our reason for settling down. For those just starting out, there will be plenty of times when you have a discussion to leave the road, more so in the first couple years. Usually, the six-month clock will start and end a few days later after whatever is the issue has been forgotten, replaced by a wonderful view or experience on the road during which you will want more.
We came to the point where it was readily apparent the six month clock this time was for real. Karen and I had an agreement to leave it to chance if we found a new home in north Arkansas that we would settle down, if not, we would continue to RV through the winter and maybe a spring/summer trip. As chance would have it, after researching online we toured two homes in Midway Arkansas and were sold. That’s hard to do in this real estate environment where everything is overpriced and what is left on the market is otherwise junk. We made a cash offer on a home and two weeks later wrote the check at closing.
The other side of my brain wants to add a comment about how I determined the value of a home in order to make an offer. The average home increases in value three to five percent a year and from that appreciation an owner will have to subtract the real estate agent/closing cost (7%) and add in any major improvements such as a room addition. The buyer will have to factor in the cost for any major repairs that are needed such as a new roof. The buyer can find the original price of the home and add in the three to five percent annual increase in value and what major home improvements are worth to them. In this seller’s market I think we paid maybe five to ten thousand more than this home would have otherwise been worth. But we got it for 14% under listed price, one week after the original owner passed away and the estate trustee apparently wanted to get it sold as it had sat vacant for a few months. All the proceeds went to the local hospital so I’m now fine paying a little extra rather than waiting for a buyers’ market. Here is a link for other “exit strategies” I considered before we took off fulltime traveling in 2019.
Another hint, perhaps obvious, when you decide to come off the road simply research where people retire too within whatever state you are leaning towards. They moved there for a reason! Although I suspect many will want to live near the grandkids because otherwise they would never see them. We don’t have nor expect grandchildren and found a place much different than where we last lived but within reasonable driving distance to family and our daughter.
We enjoyed our first real snowfall after years of avoiding it. Especially as the views come from the many windows of the new home and we don’t have to drive anywhere if we don’t want to – a benefit of being retired. Here in north Arkansas the winters are much shorter than what we both lived through in our past lives. And we no longer have to deal with booking campsites way in advance, all the route planning and what had become the dreaded move day. I was always apprehensive about move days but usually after less than an hour on the road, that anxiety left and was replaced by the views and experiences found while driving through places we had never been. After a while, however, those new views out the window became less impressive. I should add all the new people we met at campsites never got old and are within the best parts of fulltime RV life.
We have wonderful neighbors around our new home who are very helpful. Most are retired and moved here from distant places. It’s as if they already know the questions we would have upon arrival, such as which is the best internet service or where the water department is located. Or most important, where can we store the RV. In our case, the neighbor drove me over to where he stores his RV. We are paying $330 a year for covered storage with no electric connection. The RV will be in storage at least until the end of March when Karen and I should know if hitch itch will cause us to take a long trip. For those non-rvers, hitch itch is when you sit for a long time, as few as a couple days to a couple months and the urge to move becomes overwhelming. If hitch itch does not occur, then we will most likely sell the larger RV and truck then decide if we want a smaller rig for shorter trips or vacationing or not. We plan to take a trip to Kansas City without the RV to get our stuff out of the 5×10 climate-controlled storage unit we are glad to have paid for over the years.
Regarding stuff we still own in storage. Glad we saved the items that are hard to replace such as artwork. We both are not sad at all that we sold off most everything we owned to go on the road. I consider the price of a storage unit as if it’s insurance. Get a larger one if you want to be more insured that you will not miss your stuff and come off the road early. For us, the transition back then turned out to be a wanted change in life which does not include junk lying around we are not using.
Turns out that five year or older TV we would have kept in storage most likely would have been replaced with the more modern, and less expensive, TV we bought yesterday for the new house. Much of the furniture we sold off to go on the road was warn and needed replaced anyway. For the new house we agreed all the soft furniture items, such as cloth sofa and bed mattress would be purchased new. All the hard sided furniture we are first looking to buy at the same places we sold all or old stuff five years ago and at the same discounted rates. Turns out living in a retirement community has the added benefit of lots of estate sales. Even neighbors have come over to tell us they have an extra dining room set or whatever which they are looking to get rid of.
We spent a few weeks traveling between the RV campground and new home. Funny how we found ourselves furnishing it in the reverse order that we used to downsize our last home. We first found a nice dining room table and chairs on Facebook Marketplace. Now we have chairs to sit in and a table to add to the folding table from the RV. Then we asked around for furniture store recommendations and found one five miles from home. Bought a mattress and box springs for the floor. Now we have a place to sleep and can stop driving back and forth from the RV campground and work later into the evening painting. After a week of patient waiting, Karen found the perfect bedroom set used for $600.
I opened a contractors account at Sherwin Williams and made a list of what we needed. Paints half price and everything else is 10 to 15% off with a contractors account. Home Depo and Lowes have 10% veterans discounts which are actually easy to setup online if you have a copy of your DD-214. We painted the main bedroom and living room first which are our current living spaces. The kitchen and two bathrooms only required a little touch-up for now.
We moved most everything that is not RV specific from the RV before it went into storage. Karen decided if we continue to RV she will not want all the same kitchen, towels, bedding and stuff for vacationing or short trips and would rather handpick what we would want to move back into the RV. It was unbelievable how much stuff was actually in the RV once we got to moving it! I kept a list of whatever I moved out so it will be easy just to refer back to the list once and if we decide to move stuff back in. The RV is only 10 miles away in case we missed something which after 60 days has not been the case.
There were eight freaking paint colors in the existing home. Thankfully cans were left in the garage just in case we need to match anything. I used the cans with white colors in the closets so saved a few dollars. We are really wanting to make use of whatever the old owners left us rather than making everything new. This is a two-bedroom home which is perfect for our needs. Most importantly the homeowner’s association mows the grass and we take care of the planting beds around the home.
We decided not to go to Texas for the winter because there was so much to do inside at “home”. And once spring arrives, we have a lot of plans for outside stuff to fix. I’ll learn a couple new skills such as brick tuckpointing. We figured we would rather be inside working for the winter than during the spring. We can always take off if we change our minds.
Living in an older home is like having a daily easter egg hunt. Most days we discover something new about the place. The prior owners moved here from Chicago. The husband died years before the wife. I wished we could have found a place that was 100% perfect, maintained by a retired guy with nothing else to do. The surviving wife apparently valued nice window shades and kitchen appliances more than keeping windows caulked. Or it might just be she found it hard to get someone to do the maintenance. Just yesterday I emptied the house vacuum system container which had not been cleaned out for who knows how long. Nearby the cannister was a shelf where brushes were found. I discovered those were used to clean the vacuum cannister. Every time I find myself asking “wonder why they left that or wonder why they changed that.” I eventually discover the reason. The husband who lived here was a retired landscape architect so we will find many new discoveries in the yard once spring arrives which we are looking forward to.
We are not returning to our old way of living when it comes to a home. We moved to a life near the lake and away from the city. We are satisfied that RVing fulltime was a good thing. We never intended to visit all the states and decided long ago if there are places we miss then we will travel there in a car, plane, ship or RV someday if we still want to visit them. We are thinking it might be nice to experience a few cabins in campgrounds as well. Karen saw all she wanted on the road. I only missed Washington DC and the Grand Canyon on my bucket list.
We most likely would have never found this new home had we not been Rving and staying in areas for longer periods to explore. And we definitely would not have had the extended time with family which is sacred in our memories.
Above are wildlife photos taken from a window looking into the backyard. There are two Walmarts located within 20 minutes in either direction from home. One photo is on a route that overlooks the lake and river below the dam. We stop sometimes and marvel at what we get to experience every day and forever.
Early during the transition, I had an emotional moment thinking, wow, we have moved to a place where someday we will die. That was replaced jokingly with, at least it’s only a three-hour drive to our cemetery lots in south Missouri. We are surrounded by older people which in five years we will join the ranks of their ages. It’s a good thing we will never have to move again, a major hospital is four miles down the road and there are plenty of services for the elderly around town which is an industry here. We can continue on with the fun parts of life.
My neighbor Richard and wife have made the transition easier, for example. He still has all his stuff from their old house like a 20′ extension ladder and a woodshop. We enjoy the company and loan of tools I may never have a second use for so refuse to own. Yesterday he stopped by the house. I had a chance to invite him to breakfast somewhere as just a simple repayment for his generosity, to include Christmas dinner. Karen has already joined the lunch group where the ladies go once a month someplace to eat. Richard said he may be the one buying breakfast as he needed my help with a computer thing. Figure I’ll also help him stain his deck in the spring as I know ladders might be hard on him. In our old neighborhood, before rving, it would have been weeks or months until the neighbors bothered to have this level of a relationship. Or perhaps making new friends is influenced by the way we grew to make them on the road? No one is a stranger.
I’ll have to admit, after just a couple months in the new home the memories of living in the small, confined spaces of an RV are already starting to fade. I know from past experience in six months this new place and community will feel like a home.
We have so many things we want to do in the area. Hiking local trails, some in the national forest where building a campfire on the trail for lunch might be fun. And of course, learning the two lakes here and how to fish the different species. I can see a boat in our future. Branson is an hour away for entertainment, otherwise Mountain Home has little to offer in that arena. We are in search of a church. As times get worse for Christians it’s important to come together more often as a church family. For now we continue to watch Jack Hibbs from southern California online. I’m seven months into reading the bible start to finish and have not made it out of the Old Testament. I’ve also started organizing and preparing for more research regarding family genealogy, from Europe to Missouri. Time on the road in an RV made it possible to visit some of the very old family settlements. I’m going to write a book someday about the family, focusing on stuff one can’t find on the internet.
The future of the blog might be a question someone would have. I’ll keep writing for now but the posts will be further between. I’m guessing others could benefit from learning what we did after life in an RV and for now at least I’d like to document events. Figure I’ll download the blog contents, edit them and send it out to have a tabletop book assembled so we can look at the pictures every now and then.
That’s all for now other than to answer one more question someone might have which is who the heck would want to live in Arkansas? The reasons for us should be obvious if you have read this post and the two before it. Yup, it can be a small redneck state, for lack of better words. I’m glad it’s not flooded with people moving here which should keep the place livable for at least my lifetime. It’s a conservative state for the most part, although I did see a teenage girl at Walmart dressed in pajamas and wearing a six-foot dog leash around her neck. Some might want to see that as normal, but I don’t. Folks here are more likely just to take things day by day at a slower pace than the rest of the world. If it does not get done today, then there is always tomorrow. I’m welcoming the laid-back attitude that is evident in about everything we do. For example, when we went to the water department to have the service turned on we found they take checks and not debit cards. I did not have my check book. The lady said, no problem, next time you drive by just drop it in the payment box. The guy that owns the RV Storage lot said don’t worry about the extra couple weeks we would have the RV stored in December. He will start the first payment day on January first. Just move in and give him a call next time we are in the area to meet with the paperwork and payment.
As always if you find yourself in the area let us know for a visit.
Mark
Our Future in an RV 