The why we chose

hello friends,
When I look back six years to the beginning of our journey I know my short term goal was to get out of the rut we were in and simply do something! Our careers we over, our children had busy families of their own, we lived in virtually two rooms of our 8 room house, our yard work was absolutely no fun anymore and all the things we thought might fill the big hole in our lives were not doing the job! I was beginning to be a real self-absorbed pitiful Pearl! I knew I needed a change....Paul was dealing with his paradigm change much better and was actually ok with the way things were. Travel has always been my passion...so my thoughts turned to a long road trip. After much thought and deliberation....cost/size/must-have features/upkeep/towability/and COST....I decided on a Casita Freedom deluxe! We bought a Nissan Pathfinder as our tow vehicle drove to Rice, Texas and picked MiniPearl up on Valentine Day 2012! We leased our house for two years, moved everything to a huge storage unit and hit the road....for that long road trip .... which turned into a move to Kansas City, selling our house and living in a one bedroom apartment on the eighth floor overlooking the Country Club Plaza! Oh! The places you’ll go!
I thought I had become a minimalist but that was a joke. I still was shopping...my happy place! For four years we didn’t do much traveling and that was ok, but I was dealing with my relationship with things and the realization that those things were really holding me hostage! Plus I was spending too much money on stuff, plane and simple. I wanted to be free of the weight of those things!
We still had MiniPearl and Willy Nelson (out Nissan)....this time our adventure would be full-time with perhaps a five year duration. No large storage unit...we’d only keep what would fit in the very smallest and cheapest. We held a 6 day estate sale, and  the remainder of our stuff cleaned out and picked up for a meager $300. That was hard to watch....all that stuff meant something to me, it had value way beyond $300....but now it was gone for good....I have to admit I had a melt-down.
Maybe this has been way too long...sorry. On one hand I’m pretty sure most quit reading at the first sentence, but if you stuck it out to right here perhaps you’ll see my story is one of victory with a happy ending! Kind of like Bilbo letting go of “the Ring”.....I let go of my stuff so I could have adventure!

TTFN,

CATHY

Wintering

Hello friends,
We have spent all of the new year in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. Quartzsite for a little over 6 weeks and now we’re outside Yuma near the Army Proving grounds on BLM land. This entire time we’ve been “off grid”....which means no electric, sewer or water! To achieve the ability to be off the grid and live for free costs quite a bit! Anything solar is pricy...then there’s batteries to choose, oh don’t forget a blue boy .... what’s a blue boy? It’s a totable, portable for hauling your grey and black water to a dump station. As for drinking water...most folks buy theirs. We’ve had a 90 watt portable solar suitcase-type set-up for several years. It works very well for us and keeps our rig up and running. This trip we added a 100 watt Goal Zero Nomad, a light, foldable solar panel which has been awesome for keeping our also new Goal Zero Yetti 400  charged. As for batteries, we have a new AGM. For now we only have room for one battery, many folks carry more. We bought a new, smaller blue boy and use a moving dolly to haul it behind our car to the dump station. We bought a Berkey Water filtering system for our drinking/cooking water and have been very pleased. 
So far we have spent $600+ for the 100 watt panel, $400+ for the Yetti, $300 for the AGM battery, $225 for the blue boy, and $200+ for the Berkey!
We paid $180 to stay at the LTVA sites in Arizona and California ....that’s Long Term Visitor Area. For that we get access to a dump station, potable water and trash bins. Good from October-April.
We will probably stay on LTVA BLM land into March hoping to recoup some of our original out-lay of funds...we also plan on staying on as much free spots as possible.
That’s WINTERING in Arizona desert regions...our way....There are other ways to winter but this is what we chose and in my next blog I’ll tell you some of the reasons why we chose this style.

TTFN,

CATHY