This is another in an occasional series of blog posts about impending retirement.

Our next significant hurdle looms as my wife and I prepare for our first out-of-town excursion in our shiny new fifth wheel travel vehicle.

We’re taking our rig on the road, westbound on Interstate 40 to an RV park on the western edge of Albuquerque, N.M.

My wife made this call and, as usual, it’s a good one.

We chose Albuquerque as the place where we’ll indoctrinate ourselves with the open road for a couple of reasons.

One is that we love the city. There’s plenty to see and do there. Downtown is quite interesting, with a wonderful Historic Route 66 district. Old Town is quaint. Sandia Peak features a spectacular tram ride to a summit that’s more than 10,000 above sea level.

The other reason is that Interstate 40 is a relatively straight shot between Amarillo and Albuquerque.

We don’t envision a lot of challenges between the cities. The landscape is wide open. We’ll just set the cruise control on 60 mph (or thereabouts) and head west. There will be some mountain grades to climb as we approach Albuquerque, but our Dodge Ram pickup — which we’ve named Big Jake — is quite capable of completing the climb.

The “Big I,” which is the I-40/I-25 interchange in the middle of the city, could present a mild challenge as we navigate our way through. Our hope is that we’ll time it so that the traffic isn’t so bad once we get there.

We’ll spend three nights at the fully equipped RV park, getting more acquainted with our rig. We broke it in nicely a few weeks ago with a local outing in Amarillo. The time is coming for our next big challenge. We’ve been to this place already, visiting my sister and brother-in-law who were camped there overnight this past March. It’s got all the amenities we need: water, sewer, electricity, cable TV, Internet access.

We’re trying to be systematic and methodical as we adapt to this new way of life.

Wish us luck.