Planning Ahead

Following our morning workout at the fitness center, we spent some time catching up on a couple of the Christmas movies we copied from the Hallmark Channel and started to read through magazines that have been lying around. Most of the magazines we get are through annual memberships - like  AAA (Highroads), AARP (AARP Magazine) and Costco (Costco Magazine). There are also some that I get from life memberships that I signed up for years ago, like Thousand Trails (Trail Blazer), Good Sam Club (Trailer Life), NAHC (North American Hunting Club) and the  NRA (American Hunter). I also have one subscription to Laptop Magazine, so you can see how easy it is to get behind in reading material. On top of those, throw in periodical publications that we get from other places and their are lots of magazines that we need to sort through.

While reading through these magazines and sitting on our porch, we decided to set a goal for ourselves. Next year, following our workamping assignment in Wyoming, we would visit Patty and her family in Chicago before heading back to AZ for the winter. We would stay at Lake Pleasant next winter and leave around the first of April to head north to visit Kristine and Tracy in WA and then head to Alaska. After spending a couple months traveling to, and visiting places in Alaska, we would head south to Canada, drive east through Canada to New England where we would spend the fall (October?) and then head to Fl to visit Josie's family there. The trip back to the west would not be a straight line but would include places we haven't been yet, such as Branson, MO, south Texas along the Gulf, and others that we haven't yet identified.

It actually represents the start of our "real" retirement. We would have sold the Jeep before heading north and just using our truck. The plan would be to sell the truck, sell the fifth wheel, buy a new vehicle and find a home base in AZ to use for winters. We hope to be able to buy a small trailer to use for weekends and for travel to another, summer base, somewhere up north.

There's a lot of time to plan this future, so a lot can happen between now and then. If all goes well, it will be accomplishing several goals. Number one, we will have traveled to all the areas we set out to see almost 5 years ago. Secondly, we would have gotten full benefit from our investment in the truck and fifth wheel - and the Jeep. Thirdly, we would have seen enough areas to decide where we want to spend our retirement years. Lastly, we would have seen our beautiful country the way it should be seen, while we were still healthy enough (hopefully) to enjoy the time. Sounds like an aggressive plan and we hope we are able to make it happen...