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1 year, cross country and back- it's Now or Never


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How about "Criss-Crossing the Nation in One Last Gasp to See it All Before Both Major Political Parties Ruin it!" See why I was holding back?

This is amazing. Good for you guys. Can't wait to hear about it.

That's a good answer, but the common link between Dolly and the Nebraska sand hills I was going for is "things that are not flat".

So, maybe it's time to change the thread title as we aren't stopping after a year. We found what we expected (and were warned about by veteran fulltimers)- the weekly move schedule was too exhausting but more importantly, we were missing too many awesome sites.

We decided and are finally making it official that the road life is for us. We are filing the papers to become Florida residents and fulltimers for realz.

0d983c7927a9d00f924585f660f58ab2.jpg

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So, maybe it's time to change the thread title as we aren't stopping after a year. We found what we expected (and were warned about by veteran fulltimers)- the weekly move schedule was too exhausting but more importantly, we were missing too many awesome sites.

We decided and are finally making it official that the road life is for us. We are filing the papers to become Florida residents and fulltimers for realz.

0d983c7927a9d00f924585f660f58ab2.jpg

I'm not sure if I should say congratulations or give my sympathies on becoming a Florida resident. Haha.

Just started reading along and have a lot of catching up to do. Sounds like an adventure so far, with lots more to come.

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I'm jealous, Doug!

Ha! It's pretty exciting that everything has lined up. We are blessed/lucky/you name it to be able to do it.

I'm not sure if I should say congratulations or give my sympathies on becoming a Florida resident. Haha.

Just started reading along and have a lot of catching up to do. Sounds like an adventure so far, with lots more to come.

Ha! My saving grace is that I will only be visiting the state from time to time.

YAY Doug and family!!!!  8)

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm not usually one to say, "I told you so" BUT....   [emoji6] 

Ha! So, secretly, we have known for a while. Before we fully decided, I accidentally booked us for the Alberquerque Balloon Festival (like totally forgot we were supposed to be off the road by then). But, we have been talking seriously about staying fulltime since late October. We just didn't want to announce it or even really 1000% admit it to ourselves until now.

It's still hugely anxiety provoking to think of taking this step.

Congrats.  What made you decide on becoming Florida residents?  Any advantages over other states?

A few things came into play. Technically being "homeless" let's us choose where we want to be residents. The biggies for fulltimers are Texas, South Dakota, and Florida as they don't have state income tax. There was something about SD not being as homeschooling friendly as Texas or Florida.

And Florida won from 2 perspectives. The first is the biggest: when we do come off of the road, Florida is way more likely a possibility for our home than Texas. The second lesser is reading about some hassles folks have gone through to get the changeover complete. I just really didn't want to spend a couple of weeks getting things switched. Where I had plans on being in Florida for an extended time any way.

So are you staying somewhere in the camper or going to rent a house?

Neither. There's a whole process and more to it, but basically my mail forwarding company is good enough for me to establish residency in the state. We will be in the state (and actually are right now) for a while, moving about in the camper. But, I don't see us settling down somewhere for a while- but crazier things have happened!

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I'm jealous, Doug!

Ha! It's pretty exciting that everything has lined up. We are blessed/lucky/you name it to be able to do it.

I'm not sure if I should say congratulations or give my sympathies on becoming a Florida resident. Haha.

Just started reading along and have a lot of catching up to do. Sounds like an adventure so far, with lots more to come.

Ha! My saving grace is that I will only be visiting the state from time to time.

YAY Doug and family!!!!  8)

Thanks!

Yeah, I'm not usually one to say, "I told you so" BUT....   [emoji6] 

Ha! So, secretly, we have known for a while. Before we fully decided, I accidentally booked us for the Alberquerque Balloon Festival (like totally forgot we were supposed to be off the road by then). But, we have been talking seriously about staying fulltime since late October. We just didn't want to announce it or even really 1000% admit it to ourselves until now.

It's still hugely anxiety provoking to think of taking this step.

Congrats.  What made you decide on becoming Florida residents?  Any advantages over other states?

A few things came into play. Technically being "homeless" let's us choose where we want to be residents. The biggies for fulltimers are Texas, South Dakota, and Florida as they don't have state income tax. There was something about SD not being as homeschooling friendly as Texas or Florida.

And Florida won from 2 perspectives. The first is the biggest: when we do come off of the road, Florida is way more likely a possibility for our home than Texas. The second lesser is reading about some hassles folks have gone through to get the changeover complete. I just really didn't want to spend a couple of weeks getting things switched. Where I had plans on being in Florida for an extended time any way.

So are you staying somewhere in the camper or going to rent a house?

Neither. There's a whole process and more to it, but basically my mail forwarding company is good enough for me to establish residency in the state. We will be in the state (and actually are right now) for a while, moving about in the camper. But, I don't see us settling down somewhere for a while- but crazier things have happened!

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  • 3 months later...

Blogging is hard and time consuming! I posted some more catch-up blog entries:

Back in November/Thanksgiving, we went to Los Angeles area:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/04/acton-ca-for-exploring-los-angeles.html

And then we headed in for some RV service/upgrades and played at Disneyland:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/disneyland-and-some-rv-service.html

We spent Christmas near San Diego:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/a-california-birthday-christmas.html

And then we drove across the country to Florida over the month of January:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/we-drove-from-california-to-florida.html

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Ok Doug, I had a fair amount of catching up to do, which I valiantly tried to do in one sitting.  And I was making good progress until I got to a pic of some peanut butter pie in Boulder City, and my eyes glazed over like Homer Simpson's.   Mmmmm, pie.  I couldn't continue, but I will.  Good stuff, and I'm glad the experience is going well for you.   

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Great updates, Doug, with wonderful photos.  Thank you for sharing your trip with us.

Thanks, Gwen. It's a lot of fun to write up so far afterwards- I get to relive a lot of it!

What a neat childhood you are giving your children.

I'm thru the Lo Angles area blog.  Back later to read the next one. 

Los Angeles was a good one. The Disney one, if you followed the TR here, you can mostly skip as it is repeats and less pictures.

Great job with the blog updates.

So, now you're a Florida resident!  Congratulations.

TCD

Mostly! Still have MD licenses as I need to get the vehicles tagged before anything else can happen. Weird stuff as a fulltimer.

Buc Ees, so big they echo inside and are in 2 different time zones!

Ha! They remind me of a store back in the PA-area called Sheetz. Only bigger and badder. :)

Ok Doug, I had a fair amount of catching up to do, which I valiantly tried to do in one sitting.  And I was making good progress until I got to a pic of some peanut butter pie in Boulder City, and my eyes glazed over like Homer Simpson's.   Mmmmm, pie.  I couldn't continue, but I will.  Good stuff, and I'm glad the experience is going well for you.   

Oh that pie! That's a great stopping off point as that pie was killer good. I'd almost go back just for that pie.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Once we left Tampa, we did a bunch of Disney visits. Let me share my entries since my last post:

After Tampa, we headed to Fort Wilderness for the Princess 5K. I think I covered some of this in a Trip Report here, but for blog prosperity:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/the-mouses-house-disney-world.html

 

Leaving the Fort, we went up the road to Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort. Pretty quiet stay, but we did make a couple of trips into Disney again:

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/groveland-fl-at-clerbrook-golf-rv-resort.html

 

We left there to another Thousand Trails park called Peace River in Wauchula, FL. Nice place and we had a pretty quiet stay. It was great until our friends "talked us into" heading back to Clermont. So we cut it a couple of days short.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/peace-river-in-wauchula-fl.html

 

And our last Disney-fied update, we stayed at Thousand Trails Orlando for a week.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/thousand-trails-orlando-which-is-really.html

 

From here, we head north. I'll hopefully get those updates written shortly!

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/5/2016 at 11:48 PM, twiceblessed....nacole said:

This is cool!!

This is cool, but I have noticed a conspicuous lack of pins in the New England area!  I hope they get to travel through our nice looking part of the country sometime!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/5/2016 at 11:48 PM, twiceblessed....nacole said:

This is cool!!

Thanks! My wife found the cork board at Target or somewhere like that. The pins were here idea. She's still not crazy about the style of pin, but it's tiding her over for now.

On 7/3/2016 at 0:30 PM, disney4dan said:

This is cool, but I have noticed a conspicuous lack of pins in the New England area!  I hope they get to travel through our nice looking part of the country sometime!

Believe it or not, that was initially the plan. Since we thought this was a 1-year trip, we'd exclude the north-east since we could explore there any time from our home in Maryland. Now that we're staying on the road, it's hard to say when we'll make it up there.

 

But, in other news... blogging is hard. It took me over a month to get the next less than 1-week installment out. We made our way to Myrtle Beach where we stopped at a Harvest Hosts location in Johns Island, SC. It was a nice farm and the scene of my infamous emergency exit attempts. Up in MB, we stayed at Ocean Lakes and had a nice visit. A little chilly because it was April, but we enjoyed ourselves.

http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/07/a-long-weekend-in-myrtle-beach.html

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