This is another in a series of occasional blog posts commenting on impending retirement.
It’s been some time since we’ve slept in our recreational vehicle.
Our fifth wheel is getting more broken in and my wife and I have gotten pretty good at setting it up, hitching it up, hauling it down the road, setting up camp and then de-camping when it’s time to go home.
We’ve made a decision on our next destination. It’s in-state: We’ll be taking it to the Davis Mountains region of far southwest Texas. I’ve long had this fascination with Lake Balmorhea State Park. So, that’s where we’ll be heading with our fifth wheel.
Each trip we’ve taken has been longer than the previous one. Our most recent trip was to Allen to see our son, daughter-in-law and our new granddaughter — who just turned 1 on March 6. Prior to that we went to Albuquerque; our maiden trip was just across town to an RV park here in Amarillo, where we got acquainted with our new vehicle.
The Davis Mountains trip will be the most challenging for us. We’ll likely be on the road for most of the day we’ll drive there. The state park, though, is fully equipped: sewer, water, electricity, cable TV, Internet … all the creature comforts of home.
We’ll be traveling to a part of the state we’ve only seen briefly on an earlier drive through the region. It’s an exciting thing for us to be able to explore a new place, though, and we plan to do so once we arrive.
A good friend described the Davis Mountains region as looking like “the dark side of the moon,” not that my pal ever has seen the moon’s dark side. I’ll take him at his word, though, that the landscape there is as spectacular as he describes it.
These short trips are in preparation for our master travel plan once I retire fully from the part-time jobs I’m working now that I’m in semi-retirement mode. Plan A will involve us taking our fifth wheel out for weeks — maybe months — on end, exploring North America from coast to coast, from top to bottom.
It’s an exciting time for us. Our fifth wheel has been shut in long enough. Spring is arriving soon. The time has come for us to hit the road.
I’ll have more later.