Learning to do nothing and other stories of retirement.

It all started when we began to talk about retiring, sorting through our lives, anticipating leaving L.A. for good.  The first thing that came up was the wish to travel.  Both of us love to get up and go, at a moment's notice, without any plans, any baggage.  As a matter of fact, that was our honeymoon trip.  But, I'm digressing.

We looked at RVs and  travel trailers. We had traded in a comfortable passenger car for an SUV as our preparation step.  Hubby wanted a truck, a big one, with power. We compromised.  The SUV, we reasoned, could haul a travel trailer as well as transport passengers and gear. Neat uh!

We moved to Oregon with our books, computers, clothes,  and a telescope,  filling up the SUV.  We had moved a few times across the nation. Each time we moved for a good distance we ended up ditching every thing else.  You see, most of the stuff we owned came from Goodwill Industries; we just returned it for others to us.  But, our last move was different.  We had lived in one place for over twenty years, and had accumulated good stuff that our children were happy to take off our hands.  Since we were moving to a small cottage by the sea, smaller digs, we didn't need much, and didn't want anything that reminded us of our working days. 

In Brookings, sixty miles from Port Orford, a town big enough to have a furniture store, we stopped to purchase a bed. My American Express card was denied and it took a few manuvers to get that credit approved.  We bought three beds, one for each bedroom, just in case our children would rush up to visit and spend time with us. We also picked up lamps and a working desk. We bought kitchen utensils, plates, life vests and rain gear from the local hardware store.

We looked at RV's and trailers for months, driving to every lot. hours away, tried every model and we agreed on the one we wanted.  It looked like the one pictured above, a one unit that drove like a car, no set up problems, no worrying about hooking up anything.

Our house came with outdoor furniture and a canoe. Hubby and I would sit out on the deck, captivated by the whitecaps out on the Ocean visible from our deck.  We couldn't get enough of those views.  In the morning, we'd sit with coffee and the newspapers, and the evenings, we took out our telescope and stared at the stars.  Life on that deck stretched out like that for weeks until the rainy season.  The canoe waited for our children to visit.

It was after that first storm that we entertained the idea of purchasing an RV again and return to visit the children in L.A. Weeks of rain makes you want to escape for a while. 

Stay tuned for the continuation of this story.