I’ll bet you’re surprised to see a blog entry from me pop-up today! I can’t believe that it’s been over 9 months since I posted my last one. Even though Karen and I consider ourselves “full-time RVers”, it is a bit difficult to make that claim when we’ve spent 3/4 of a year not being in an RV, right? Originally, we planned to spend the winter months in Florida at Emma & Robin’s apartment just outside of Orlando and then head out RVing again sometime in late March or April. That plan fell through for two reasons. First, of course, was the lock-down caused by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if we were inclined to travel during those first couple of months of it, many RV parks were not accepting new visitors and many of the places that one would want to explore (national parks, state parks, etc.) were closed, too. It wouldn’t have made much sense to head out and then find ourselves struggling to find a place to stay and not be able to do much exploring. The second reason for our plan falling through was that our RV needs some serious roof work done and the place we wanted to take it to pushed us back from an initial estimate of bringing it to them in early April to bringing it in the second week of June. As I’m writing this, they have had our RV for two weeks, so we’re hoping they’ll be finished with it by next week. 🤞🏻
Karen and I are so grateful to Emma & Robin for “housing” us for the past 6 months. Though I’m sure we’re all ready for a change of scenery after having been in lock-down for so long, I know that Karen and I are thankful that we had the opportunity to spend this much time with them and with Gabe – it’s not something that we expected to be able to do nor do we take it for granted. Once your kids hit college age and beyond, you’re just not sure how much time you’ll get to spend with them as they pursue their adult lives. In March, Gabe joined us at Emma & Robin’s right at the beginning of the pandemic because it was his spring break and UMD had decided classes would all go virtual for the rest of the semester. He’s still here with us and will actually stay down here after we leave because UMD will be offering his Fall semester courses remotely. Jillian also came down for several days back in March but had to return to Boston because of her job…and her cats.😉 So, for the past 3 months, the five of us (me, Karen, Emma, Robin, & Gabe) have been able to socialize among ourselves, play games, watch TV/movies, play pickleball (when the courts are open), play spikeball, ride bikes, and do a little kayaking/tubing. I think that having five of us together has probably helped us stave off the boredom a little easier than those folks who have weathered this time by themselves or with one other partner.
So, other than COVID-19, what else has been happening for us since my last blog post in Sept 2019? Well, those of you who follow us on Facebook are probably aware of much of what I’m about to write, so feel free to skim/skip these next few paragraphs. After visiting Glacier National Park in Montana, we basically sped our way east to Minneapolis, where we put our RV into storage with a plan to stay with our dear friends Stu & Gayle for 3 or 4 weeks in Sept and Oct. The four of us knew that we were going to have a good time together, but we had no idea how much we’d enjoy getting to spend an extended close time together…something that most adult friends don’t get to do. We were enjoying it so much that we all agreed to extend our stay with them to 8 weeks! Here are some photos from our time in Minnesota:
The first weekend of November, about a week before we left Minnesota, we flew to upstate NY for our nephew’s wedding. Jillian, Emma, and Gabe also came to the wedding, so it was the first time the Levine family was able to get together since our fun vacation in Idaho/Wyoming back in August. The wedding was beautiful and we all had a fabulous time. It was also the first time that all of the cousins (our kids and Karen’s brother’s kids) had gotten together as young adults, so it was really nice to see them have so much fun together.
After flying back to Minnesota from the wedding, Karen and I packed up and said our sad goodbyes to Stu & Gayle as we hopped back into the RV for a fast drive back to Maryland. I think that Karen and I were both surprised at just how nice it felt as we drove the RV into MD and started to see all of the familiar sights – it truly felt like we were coming back home. We decided to rent an Airbnb house for 6 weeks so that we could help prepare for Emma & Robin’s wedding, which would be in Washington DC in early December. It also allowed us to have a space for our kids to stay in when they would be around for wedding related stuff…would have been quite a tight squeeze having everyone in the RV! Emma & Robin’s wedding was one of the best days of our lives and it really couldn’t have gone any better!
A couple of weeks after the wedding, it was time to leave MD and head down to FL for the winter. Karen, Gabe (who was on winter break from UMD), and I hopped into the RV and took a few days to drive down to Emma & Robin’s in time for the holidays and for Karen and I to begin our first winter in FL. We had been to FL several times in the past for Gabe’s baseball tournaments, but those times were always in the late spring, summer, or fall. Our past experience of FL was usually hot and muggy weather, so we weren’t entirely sure what to expect in January through April. I’m not sure I can adequately convey how surprised and pleased that we were by the absolutely beautiful weather we experienced most of those months. It was enough to convince me that I’m ready to become a regular snowbird. Even Karen, who loves her seasons and likes to see snow, admitted how nice it was to enjoy the outdoors on a daily basis in a way that we couldn’t have done while up in MD in the winter. Even when the COVID-19 stuff started to ramp up in mid-March, the ability to be outside in really nice weather helped to make us feel less confined by lock-down. I will say that once we got to mid-May, the weather started to become the FL weather we had been familiar with – upper 80s and low 90s with humid mornings and nights…and some pretty fantastic thunderstorms. We thank FL for all of the wonderful weather we experienced…and we’re more than happy to get out of here as we deal with mid-90’s most days!
So, what’s our game plan once our RV is ready for us next week (hopefully)? Well, with the recent resurgence of COVID-19, it may change our plans, but here’s what we were thinking of doing. Our RV roof is being worked on in a shop near Chattanooga TN, so we’ll head from there to the western part of the North Carolina mountains for a week’s stay at a ranch that we had stayed at back in October 2018 when we were on our first RV trek from MD to Austin TX. We’ll use that week to get our “RV legs” back — getting used to RV living again. After NC, we will begin working our way toward MD to try and do some safe, social-distanced visiting with family and friends. We’ll probably keep our stay in MD fairly minimal as we strive to keep our visits shorter while visiting in areas that are highly populated. After that, we will be head to Millsboro DE, where Jillian is currently living while working remotely for Harvard University. Millsboro is a small town and it’s about 30-35 minutes from Bethany Beach, Rehoboth Beach, and Lewes DE, so it will permit us to stay out of highly populated areas, but will also allow us access to beach areas, if we’re so inclined and if we can find parts of the beach that aren’t highly populated. We figure this part of our plan takes us through the end of July.
After we leave Delaware, the next part of our journey will be to head to upstate NY to visit with Karen’s family who live in the vicinity of Saratoga Springs. Before COVID-19 and our RV roof repair pushed our timing back so far, we thought the next move after upstate NY would be to head northeast toward Bar Harbor ME and possibly on to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia…but that’ll probably have to wait for another RV journey. Rather, the endpoint of our summer/fall RVing trip will be to head back to Minneapolis MN to stay with Stu & Gayle again for several weeks – we all had such a great time when we did it last Fall, so we want to repeat it again this year. In order to get a longer stint of milder weather while we’re up there, we want to arrive sometime in mid-to-late August. That’s as far as we’ve gotten in our planning so far. As always, thanks for having taken the time to read my blog post. I’m expecting to post again once we’re back in the RV and starting our journey!
