"The It Factor"

 7:23 am - Thursday - July 17th - 1st round of 'The Open' - LPG&RVR - 62° F, humidity 25%, wind 2 mph out of the south......blue, smokey skies today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2016 we took possession of our 'lido deck' turf.....

Then.....

....now

....hard to believe it has only been 9 years....seems like we've always had it.  We were, ironically, watching the 4th round of 'The Open' that day.

Here we are in the middle of our 15th year living fulltime in our 1982 Newell Classic, and in the middle of our 14th year traveling fulltime.  We are so far divorced from our workaday lives  now that it has begun to feel as if we have always been vagabonds.  Intellectually we know we raised 5 children to majority, and lived that workaday life to its fullest. I was in insurance broker from 1971 to 2012.  TLE was a stay at home Mom from 1972 until the early 90's, and then worked in 'sales and service' industry (she worked for a food broker) until her retirement in 2012.  We did the usual Mom and Dad things with our kids, which included youth soccer every weekend for more years than I can remember.  I say we understand that intellectually, but it feels like someone else's life now.

And then it all began to change in 2004 when sold our 1973 Columbia 26' sloop rigged sailboat which we kept in a marina in Long Beach, CA, and  bought our first motorhome (1986 Fleetwood Tioga 26' Class C).  It wasn't long until dreams of full timing began to infect our brains.  By 2008 we had upgraded to our 'next' motorhome, our 1982 Newell Classic, thinking it would just be a stepping stone in our fulltime life.  We, however, fell in love with the Newell's simplicity, and ability to stand up to full time living, and have never looked back.

Our nomadic lifestyle has evolved considerably over the almost 14 years we have been on the road from crisscrossing the USA twice in less than 9 months our first year to a much more relaxed travel style.  Those first 9 months we behaved as if we were on an extended vacation trying to see everything in one year.  Then we worked our first workamping job at Amazon in Campbellsville, KY where we sat still in one place for over 2 months.  From that point on we began to travel more slowly, traveling fewer miles per day, and staying in one place for longer periods of time, including a 5 week stay in Cedar Key, FL (about 1 hour west of Gainesville, FL) in 2013.

In the summer of 2014 we began the first of four summers working at Tahoe Valley Campground.  In the Fall of 2014 we spent two months volunteering at the Cape Blanco Lighthouse in Oregon (near Port Orford in southern Oregon), which we repeated in 2015.  In July of 2017 (our fourth summer at Lake Tahoe) we left the job early, and headed to Yellowstone NP for the balance of the summer, then headed south to the Grand Canyon for the winter (we won't do that again....lol), followed by a summer in Bar Harbor, Maine.  Being able to live for months at a time in these amazing places was eye opening.

Now in the summer of 2025 we find ourselves spending our fourth summer here at Likely Place Golf and RV Resort, and will be heading back south to northern Arizona for our second winter there.  Our lifestyle has settled into a 'north/south' routine now as we pass the midpoint of our 8th decade.  We've been to all lower 48 states over the last almost 14 years, and seen almost everything we wished to see.  When we bought our Newell in 2008 she had 103,000 miles on her odometer.  This year she will pass 193,000 miles.  She has been a wonderful, reliable nomadic home for us, we love her dearly, and cannot imagine living any other way.

Over the years we've worked at Amazon three times, worked the sugar beet harvest once, and the Indy 500 once.  Mostly we've worked at RV parks, but always in places with what we call the "IT FACTOR".  Our year living on the Oregon Coast at Seal Rocks RV Cove was one of our favorite jobs ever, and it definitely boasted the "IT FACTOR".  What is the "IT FACTOR"?  A place where we spend more than a month has to have a great view, or a body of water, or both (Cape Blanco, Bar Harbor, Seal Rocks, Lake Tahoe, Cedar Key, etc), or be an iconic National Park (Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Acadia).  Here at LPG&RVR we have the "IT FACTOR"....great views, and a golf course.  At The Wilson Wilderness the "IT FACTOR" is living off the grid, solitude, independence, great views.

All that being said, at the end of the day, the most important factor in our nomadic travels has been the enduring friendships we have made along the way.  Those friendships, forged working many types of jobs all over the country, have been the biggest 'IT FACTOR' for us.

Thanks for stopping by!