Hi. I’m Diane. I, and my husband of 40 years (John), are embarking on a year-long travel adventure around the United States. A blog seemed like the easiest way to help our kids and friends “follow” us around the country. For those of you who don’t know us personally but might have found our blog on the Internet, we live in Yorba Linda, California. We have three grown and married children and seven grandchildren, all age 7 and under. We will miss them terribly (especially the grand babies) but will keep in touch via Facetime and are hoping to fly home a couple of times during our adventure to spend time with them.
We are both recently retired and, up until now, had never been able to take more than two weeks vacation at a time. We’ve been on quite a few cruises (Caribbean, Europe, Canada, etc.) but haven’t really seen too much of the U.S. Here’s a map showing the places we’ve visited in the U.S. before our trip:
John Steinbeck wrote in his book, Travels with Charley, that “New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my country”. We too do not know our country. We are excited, first, to behold the beauty of this country created by our God, secondly, to expose ourselves to the history of this country by visiting historical sites and museums, and, thirdly, to experience the different cultural aspects of this county.
When we first started discussing this trip, we thought we would take it in our Class A motorhome with our tow vehicle. But that decision probably would have resulted in death or divorce! I am an admitted “Nervous Nelly” when John is driving that monstrosity. He would have either divorced me somewhere in Texas or we would have died in a horrible crash when I screamed and startled him into oncoming traffic. So we decided to leave the motorhome at home and buy a Lance trailer that we would pull with my Toyota Land Cruiser. The living space of the trailer is 1/2 of the motorhome but after taking it on a few short trips, we love it. I choose to describe it as cozy. In real estate terms that translates to tiny. But it has all the necessities. Some might think we are crazy to go through the transition into retirement and being together all the time with the transition into such a small space but we’ve survived 40 years of marriage so we think we can survive this too. Another advantage is that I can help with the driving. I’ve been practicing by driving through L.A. and over the “Grapevine” surrounded by 18-wheelers. So far so good!
Lord willing (He is in control, not us), we will leave the day after Christmas 2015 and drive through Arizona and New Mexico (we can visit them easily another time from California) and really start our adventure in Texas.
I can’t speak for John but I do have some fears. What if one of us gets really sick? What if we hate it? We’ve rented out our house to a dear friend and I don’t think she would want us coming back and asking if we can sleep on the couch! What if we have car trouble? What if…….? But then I remembered how afraid I was to go ziplining in Costa Rica but I made myself do it. I loved it! If I had listened to my fears, I would have missed out on a grand experience. Soooooo, off we go!