Getting Away

Retirement is different things to different people.
Hubby and I did not know what we wanted for our golden years. We never talked about it during our working years, too busy to keep everything else straight and on task. The one thing we had agreed on was that if we moved away from our children,  the place had to appeal to them too, so they'd drop by and spend time with us.

We wanted to downsize and simplify our lives.
We wanted fewer possessions to go along with fewer needs.
We wanted solitude and natural beauty.

 We could not afford Malibu, or its neighboring suburbs. We actually started out in the hills of Malibu, visiting those beautiful beaches every weekend we could getaway. When we looked for a place to relocate, Malibu and all other towns in California were out of our reach.

So, we kept going North, as in moving to Oregon.

The greenery and the remoteness became very attractive. Hubby commented that it felt like "going home" for him, a child of the Northwest for most of his formative years. I had never seen so much greenery; so many rivers and forests and unspoiled beaches. I did not know people could exist in such tiny hamlets.

We kept looking for a place that would feel like a vacation spot.  We took many pictures on our first foray, and back home, we shared  these vistas with our grown children and friends. We became the envy of everyone even before we retired.

Yes, indeed, we were satisfied with our quest for a vacation place that everyone would love to come and visit us.
Only, to reach us, our children and friends had a long way to go.
Too long.
Long enough that dropping in unannounced would never be the case.

After twelve years, we still love our place. Only, our children don't come up to visit us that often; and we do miss seeing them. We got what we wanted at a price we didn't know we had to pay.

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.