{"id":28408,"date":"2018-03-02T02:55:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T02:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28408"},"modified":"2018-03-02T02:55:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T02:55:12","slug":"happy-trails-part-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28408","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trails, Part 79"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LAKE ARROWHEAD STATE PARK, Texas<\/strong> — As the saying goes: There’s a first time for everything.<\/p>\n

Now that we’ve stipulated that truism, I hereby disclose that for the time in my life, or my wife’s life or in our life together — which covers more than 46 years — we no longer are tethered to a physical address. We no longer have a house we can call “home,” a place that sits on terra firma.<\/p>\n

Our mail goes to a post office box. Our home at this very moment sits on four wheels and it follows along behind a pickup truck.<\/p>\n

We closed on the sale of our house this morning. We said goodbye to the place we called home for more than 21 years.<\/p>\n

My wife and I — along with Toby the Puppy — are officially footloose. Fancy free? Not really.<\/p>\n

For the past several weeks I have taken great joy in seeing the faces of those who ask us about our plans once we sell the house: We look at each other and say, occasionally in unison: We don’t have any plans.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is where our retirement journey has taken us. We now are doing what we want to do on our own time<\/em> and on our own terms<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After signing the papers that closed on the sale of our house, we hooked the truck up to our fifth wheel and headed southeast along U.S. 287. We’re going to spend the next few days visiting our granddaughter, her parents, her brothers and her other grandparents.<\/p>\n

We’re going to look around the Dallas Metroplex for a place to park our RV. Then we’ll counsel with each other. We’ll return to Amarillo for a while longer, park our RV at the park where we’ve been living for the past few weeks.<\/p>\n

Then we plan — eventually, but likely quite soon — to decide where we’ll haul our home on wheels to set up our next temporary residence.<\/p>\n

But you see, this vagabond existence upon which we’ve embarked fills us with great joy and a certain sense of relief from the trials and travails of “traditional home ownership.”<\/p>\n

We intend to travel. Yes, this new life has been a dream of ours for quite a number of years. We have wanted to see much of North America while hauling an RV. We have seen a good bit of already, but there’s about 7.5 million square miles that are beckoning us. Will we see all of them? I won’t guarantee we can do that.<\/p>\n

We intend to give it our best shot.<\/p>\n

Yes, we’ll resettle. We need to determine the precise location. That, too, will come in due course. But … hey, what’s the hurry?<\/p>\n\n

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LAKE ARROWHEAD STATE PARK, Texas — As the saying goes: There’s a first time for everything. Now that we’ve stipulated that truism, I hereby disclose that for the time in my life, or my wife’s life or in our life together — which covers more than 46 years — we no longer are tethered to … Continue reading Happy Trails, Part 79<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3920,4058,6016],"class_list":["post-28408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-retirement","tag-rv","tag-toby-the-puppy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28409,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28408\/revisions\/28409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}