What does TLE think?

 

I know you all have tuned into the blog today to hear Clarke's take on our daily travels, but I wanted to take some time to say hi and give some perspective from  the "TLE" point of view.

Many of you have asked over the past year about how it is to live and work on the road. The working part I have down -- I don't, but Clarke does.  When he needs work we might sit still in an area for a bit longer than expected...in some cases it may be a week, but he has found it very easy to get his work accomplished (well...there were a few instances of not good Internet where once he had to climb a hill to finish his work!)

Ok, let's go back to the beginning.  Years ago we owned a sailboat and it made for many great weekends of getting away for a few hours, but one day after our oldest son got his first RV he said to his dad "you know that sailboat will never go out to the desert, Dad". That got us to thinking about traveling more than just to Catalina Island.  Many of you know I am a land sailor. If I can see land I am ok! Selling the sailboat and buying an RV looked good to me.

We started with a Class C Tioga.  After the 26' Columbia sailboat it seemed huge.  Within a short time I enjoyed being able to go places, camping with electricity, or generator, having my creature comforts such as indoor plumbing, a shower in the RV, indoor cooking if the weather was bad, and best of all.....a real bed off the ground!  This got us to discussing retirement.

I cannot stress enough the importance of planning.  Clarke and I spent many nights over the next couple of years sitting around our outdoor fireplace discussing how we could retire at 62 and travel.  One of the first things was what type of coach to get.  At this point we decided we needed to move up from the Tioga to an "interim" coach.  We set a budget and started looking.  I am going to coop Clarke's "serendipity".  If you have read the blog you know the story. Short version, we were blessed to be going to Palm Springs at the same time our Newell came on the market.  This coach was within our current budget and I fell in love with it.  It was so quiet inside, felt immediately comfortable and I could walk around the bed!  YES.....We now had what I will call our final coach not the interim one.

So now you have the beginning, tune in again for "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey always said.

FROM CLARKE:

As you can see, there is more to come from TLE, and, in fact she is composing her next installment already...stay tuned for more!

My normal daily blog entry will follow a little later today.