Our First Christmas in "The Rose"

Ellen and I had a great time at the RV park this past weekend but then again we always have fun when we get out in the motorhome, no matter where we are. After we got the rig setup and settled into our spot we fired up the Smokey Joe to cook some burgers and fries. We don't have burgers or fries very often (trying to eat healthier) but when we go camping we always love to start the weekend off cooking burgers on the grill and having a few cold ones to relax.

On Saturday we rode our bicycles around the park to get a little exercise and to see all of the different motorhome setups that people have. We didn't realize how big this place really is until we started riding around it. While we were riding we met a gentleman from Chicago who has been fulltiming in his RV since 2005. He has the same model motorhome as we have and he told me about a forum that I should check into on the web that had a lot of useful information on Tiffin motorhomes. If you have a Tiffin motorhome and haven't heard of the site before like me, here's the link to it tiffinrvnetwork. While 95% of the content is specific to Tiffin motorhomes everyone is welcome to join the forum. It seems like you always learn something new from someone on every outing that is so helpful to you in some way. We have learned so much since we started RVing from people that we meet along the way.

On Sunday we explored the park further on our bicycles and for Christmas dinner we had the traditional turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce.  We have always stayed at home, cooked out, and invited friends over for Christmas or we would go to one of our friends house. This is the first Christmas we have spent by ourselves out in the RV and we had a wonderful time.

At one point during the weekend Ellen and I did discuss the disappointing news that we received from the realtor about the value of our home and as we talked it over were able to put things in perspective. We discussed a few options that we'll look into in the next couple of weeks and decide what our next step should be. For now we'll continue getting things ready for another yard sale about the middle of January. One thing we have found out is that we have way too much "stuff" and we still need to get rid of a lot of it.

As usual Ellen got tears in her eyes when it was time to go "home".  Believe it or not I think I did too.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

Until next time...

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

This is our first post and here we are on Christmas Day, sitting in our motorhome at Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort in Clermont, Fl. The reason we are here is we have this dream of selling our home and traveling full time in our motorhome. We want to see all of the beautiful places in this wonderful country that we are so fortunate to live in. Ellen and I found each other in 1996. We purchased our home in 1997 and added many upgrades throughout the years to make it the perfect retirement home when we reached that magical age.

How did we get to this point? We became interested in competition BBQ several years ago and finally got the nerve to try our luck at competing. We purchased our first motorhome in July of 2010 mainly  to give us somewhere to sleep during the weekend at these events and maybe do a little camping at other times. To make a long story short, let's just say we fell in love with camping, the lifestyle, and the people. Since we were still in "Corporate Daycare" for a couple more years, we decided to upgrade the motorhome to something that would become our new retirement home and sell our sticks and bricks. We targeted January 2012 to put our house on the market and live in the motorhome until we could hit the road.

We were surprised to see our neighbor up the street sell their house within two weeks of listing and got excited at the prospect of selling our home quickly too. We met with the same realtor last week and the air was quickly let out of our balloon. We discovered that 51% of the homes in our county were upside down with their mortgages.  Our county has been hit extremely hard by the economic situation this country is in.  Oh my gosh, we were among the 51%! We were literally devastated. Ellen, being the optimist of the family, said "Where there is a will - there is a way and we would have to figure it out". Since this was a long holiday weekend we decided to pack up the motorhome and get away.