Chapter Seven

As we grow up, we go through different stages or chapters in life.  The first chapter is when you are young and carefree…

Second, once you become an adult, you are learning who you are, what you want to be in this world, and you start looking for that life partner …

Third, when you are in your first truly committed relationship, you get married, and are having to learn how to live with another person …

Fourth, is when you have children and all the years of raising them to be responsible adults then sending them out in the world …

Fifth, empty nesting when the children have flown the coop and you re-learn all your partners foibles and strengths and you get to go out in the world as a couple again …

Sixth, for us, was when we went full-time and lived in our RV for the past 7 years trying out a completely different lifestyle …

And now we are entering Chapter Seven.  We have decided to hang up the keys and settled down again, at least for a little while, until the travel bug hits us again.  We have been in all 50 states and 6 Canadian Provinces but there is a whole world out there we have yet to explore.

So, when we last left you, we were headed up to Erin’s graduation in NY.  We had a lovely time with Erin’s family celebrating her master’s degree.  After completing all the yearly maintenance on the RV in Red Bay, AL, we headed west.  It was a fairly quick drive (for us) across the US with only a couple longer stays.  One in Wichita where we fell in love with the Wichita Botanical Gardens, one near Denver where we stopped for a lovely visit with our longtime friend and fellow Barberville workamper, Rhonda, and then in Utah where we visited the Golden Spike National Historic site.  It just so happened that the day we were visiting they had a Naturalization Ceremony taking place and it was heart-warming to see how proud the new citizens and their families were as they took this momentous step, starting a new chapter in their lives.

During the last year we had been contemplating our next chapter and we started making plans last winter while we were still in Umatilla.  We spent days researching areas of the country we loved, determining that we really wanted to get back to the Pacific Northwest, and finally deciding that Redmond, WA was where we wanted to settle.  In April, while we were packing up in Florida, we had our daughter, who lives just north of Seattle, start previewing apartments for us.  We have always known we did not want to own property again, and we wanted the freedom from yard work, etc. so for this chapter in our lives we knew we wanted the flexibility of apartment living. 

By May, we had settled on the Bell Marymoor Apartments and even signed the lease though it would be a month before we would get to WA.  Apartments go fast in the Seattle area, and we had found exactly what we wanted and knew we couldn’t delay the decision. 

So, we spent part of the trip coming across the country going to furniture and mattress stores to identify and purchase furniture as we had sold everything when we went full-time.  We even pre-ordered the bed so that it would be delivered the day after we got the keys to the apartment!

Once we arrived in WA it was a pretty fast move out of the RV.  We rented a U-Haul and emptied the coach and our storage unit that we had in the area and moved in to the apartment.  For the first month we lived with camp furniture in the living room but at least we had a great bed!  Slowly over the last couple of months we have been getting the apartment put together.  We have built soooooooo much flat packed furniture – desks, cabinets, bookcases, chairs, counter stools, shoe bench, dining table …. I developed blisters from the screw drivers and allen wrenches!  We are still waiting for our dining room chairs and one of the dressers for our bedroom set that were back ordered and won’t be in until mid-September.  Now that we have most of the furniture, I’ve been working on decorating which has never been my forte, but I am having fun and being a little bit more whimsical and daring than in the past.

We have the RV for sale at a local Camping World (if anyone is interested in buying it let us know!!!!!) and are hoping that it sells soon which will close out this chapter in our lives.   

From here …. where this next chapter will lead us … who knows?????  It is wonderful living closer to our daughter, Becca and son-in-law Jason, and our son Alex and his wife Erin will be visiting in a couple of weeks, and we actually have a guest bed for them!  Once the RV sells, we hope to change up how we are traveling, trains across Canada, small cruise ships on the rivers of the world, Europe and Asia await … so many places to see.

But for now, we are just settling into life in one place.  We have found a great pickleball community and our apartment building backs up to Lake Sammamish and the 640-acre Marymoor Park which has hiking & biking trails, live music, and it even has a velodrome with races every Friday night.   We can walk down to the lake to go kayaking or in the evening just sit and enjoy a sunset.  Even though we live in the Seattle metroplex, and we are getting used to all the traffic, we feel as if we are still close enough to nature.

So, after 7 years, this blog is coming to an end.  I hope you have enjoyed traveling with us.  Once we decide what our next adventure will be, I will consider starting a new blog but for now, it is time to say see ya down the road!

If you are ever in the Pacific Northwest be sure to reach out, we would love to see you.  Keep in touch!!

 

Joanna & Jonathan