We Sold the Farm

A Sunday morning routine of coffee and You Tube would be our luxury down time. At the time, we both worked in law enforcement and our daily life consisted of a four plus hour a day commute, after long work hours and for John, routine call outs. My call outs were rare and generally manifested as extra-long days. This schedule left very little time for the remaining child at home, who was busy with her own college life, and little very time for each other. We spent our free time working on our 5 acres; mowing the fields, tending to chickens, turkeys, and gardens of fruit trees and flowers.

Sunday mornings we lived vicariously through others who dared to do something different. We drank the morning’s hot beverages, and watched serial videos of people living alternate lifestyles. We talked about the “What ifs” of selling it all and going on a big adventure. As time went on, we thought living on a boat would be great. We had to start somewhere, so why not a tropical paradise?

John retired from law enforcement in 2018 and put a couple of college degrees in his back pocket while we were waiting for my time to retire, I had a few years to wait. One of those degrees was a BS in Marine Maintence Technology along with is ABYC Master Certification. This fit nicely into our boat plan and most of all, he enjoyed it.

We started looking at ways to travel while I was working and in July of 2020, we purchased our first 27’ Airstream travel trailer. A travel trailer was never our first choice but it allowed us to be on the road, have a vehicle while at our destination and a place to stay while visiting friends and family. We made a few trips to test it out and loved it. John’s general smarts about all things mechanical and his degree (directly transferrable to RV’s) allowed us to be very efficient in how we traveled and we were quite comfortable.

We spent the next couple of years looking at our options for long term, post retirement travel. The big question, how did our house fit in that picture? Did we sell, rent, buy something smaller, build on less property, build a tiny home on our property and rent the big house….the list went on and on. In July of 2022 the decision was made and two weeks later our house was on the market. Four months later we moved into our Airstream and 2 weeks after that we purchased our 30’ Airstream, where we live now.

Why the desire to live this life? We both had lost friends, family, and co-workers, many way too early. The catalyst for us was loosing John’s sister just a few years ago, when she was too young. We already knew we wanted to live our lives to the fullest while we healthy and could travel, but loosing her was a sad reminder that life was not guaranteed.

This is the start of our journey.