February 2019 – Welch Party of 3

We had this great plan…go to Florida for January. We knew that was the plan about a year ago. We knew we could start booking spots right away before they all got booked up. We didn’t. When we told people in August, September, October, and even November that we were going to Florida for January with no reservations yet….well, they laughed at us. “Newbies!”

We went to Florida for January. And we rocked it!

Nine nights at Fort Wilderness for Disney…done!

Two days before we were leaving I snagged a space at Fort De Soto State Park just outside of St. Petersburg. Everybody we met there said it’s their favorite SP (State Park for you S&B folks….oh, and S&B is “Sticks & Bricks”) and they couldn’t believe we found a last minute reservation. Yeah, we rock.

While we were there we got a call from friends who said “meet us in the Keys this weekend….oh, an find someplace with two spaces, one for us too!”. Last minute, in the Keys, in January? Yeah, rocked that one too at Venture Out RV Resort…score!

Banged out a few nights nextdoor to #ZooMiami at the Larry & Penny Thompson Park…last minute (in the overflow lot with no hookups). We had a blast there, even met some great folks with a six week old baby…born in their Airstream {insert #WTF emjoi here}!

Headed from there over to Sanibel/Captiva Islands on a last minute Fort Myers/Pine Island KOA reservation. Oh the sea shells…holy moly! Memories went down on those beaches.

Rolled back across Florida on a random last minute find for a City of Jacksonville park called Hanna Park…with FHUs (full-hookups)…right on Atlantic Beach…only beach for miles that allows dogs. In the RVing pet-lover world, that’s pretty much like a hat trick!

And that was Florida. We came. We beached. We conch-ered. (See what I did there? Like conch shell? Another emoji here please.) And we headed off to Georgia.

But when you have a six night gap in your schedule this close to Florida beaches and find an opening right on the water (I mean practically pull your front tires into high-tide), you turn around and head south to Florida folks! Just when we thought we were done, weeeeeee’rrrrreeee baaaaaaccckkkk!

Sunset on a beautiful Saturday night in Florida.
We are certainly blessed to have a lot of “moments”.

It’s February 2nd already. We’ve been on the road 216 days since we left Houston at the end of June last summer. We’ve traveled from Texas to Ohio, Ohio to the Pacific north of Seattle, through Oregon to San Francisco and flown to Hawaii, to Utah and Colorado, back to Ohio for the holidays and finally from Ohio to the tip of Florida in Key West.

So what have we been doing? We get asked daily about our favorite place. About the one experience of the trip. What’s the one thing we’ll remember most. And we answer. Moab was magical because of the people. That evening watching sea lions eat salmon at the mouth of the Klamath river with the sun setting over the pacific was priceless. Spending the holidays with family and not being rushed was refreshing.

But you know what I’ve come to more recently as we start watching the clock run down on our 1 year journey? It’s not the one place we’ve been. It’s not the “single experience that we’ll never forget”. You know what it is? We’re living a life we love. We’re living our life everyday. We still take time to pay the bills. Gotta stop for gas. Need to run to the grocery store. All the normal stuff. But we’re not doing that before and after work robbing us of precious time together as a family. We’re living life everyday and we work regular stuff in as it needs to get done to keep this dream moving. And it’s amazing!

Take that into your own life in the way you best can. Maybe for you it means not putting in 10 hours of overtime so you can spend 10 extra hours together that week as a family. Could be hiring that help with the yard, the pool, the laundry, the stuff that needs to get done but takes time away from the ones you love. Maybe it’s taking a chance on a new opportunity that affords you more time freedom even if everyone else laughs at you because it’s not “normal”. Or heck, maybe it’s going all in and selling your house to travel full-time as a family to see all of the amazing people and places in this great country we live in today.

Whatever it is for you, start living a life you love a little more. You won’t regret it. I know we don’t.

And with that I’ll sign off and give you what you want, just a smidgen of the people, places, and things.