Welcome to our sites
Have you discovered, as we have, that good vacations are always over long before you’re ready to come home? Have you wished you could step off the “work treadmill” for an extended amount of time before your “time is up”? Do you want to take a sabbatical but you’re not a college professor? What if you could extend your vacation travels for months, or even years. And what if you could plop your “hotel suite” down at the edge of a flaming red rock canyon or amid the fragrant pines and cool breezes atop a high mountain pass? What if you could sleep so close to the ocean that the surf lapped right up to your doorstep. Do you wonder if the time and opportunity to follow your travel dreams might be slipping away? We found a way to make it happen for us and are eager to share it with you. And who knows, maybe it’s time to rethink and start planning your own escape!
We are Mark and Bobbie Johnson and our “hotel suite” is a 26 foot Excel fifth wheel RV that we pull behind our 2001 ford F 250 pickup truck. We are about to quit our jobs, sell our house, and embark on our third “sabbatical” in the past 8 years.
I (Mark) was 49 when we made the decision to pursue our passions for exploration and adventure the first time. I will admit, it was a bit scary to quit our jobs during our prime earning years and venture out. But “father time” seemed to be relentlessly rushing us toward our senior years at a blistering pace. When a few friends our age died prematurely, we knew that for us, it was time to stop dreaming and start fulfilling.
So come along with us and explore scenic out of the way places. Check out the photos and descriptions of our adventures and learn where and how you can park your RV hotel suite on the edge of a canyon or right on the beach.
And just for laughs, we will share with you some of our successful, and some of our disastrous (lots of these!)attempts at watercolor painting (our new passion)!
Our RV Philosophy
Since we do not have work related retirement accounts and are not financially set for life, we know that working is in our future. We would just like it to be on our terms. Working is not “work” if you love what you are doing and where you are doing it, right? So at some point, this journey will include jobs for one or both of us. It might be campground hosting in a beautiful area we want to stay in for a while. It might be working for a state park, national park or the forest service in some capacity. It might even be volunteer work if it is challenging and rewarding. It just has to be in places that captivates, inspires, and provides ample recreational opportunities.
We need to be frugal whenever possible so we won’t be driving long distances every day from one RV resort to another. What fun is that, anyway. Our plan is to linger in the places that feed our souls. Just like music or poetry, the landscape can do that. For us it’s part spiritual, part visual, part freedom and part simplicity. We will attempt to blend “boondocking” (we have solar panels) with RV resorts about 50-50. Boondocking is a great way to get away from “the noise” and get in touch with yourself. But after a few weeks of that it’s nice to have a swimming pool, hot tub, cable (football weakness here) and a community of other RVers like ourselves. If we travel slowly, I think we will spend less on gas than we do now while commuting to work.
The Art Part
Well I guess the best way to put it is “we are aspiring artists”. And that is a whole other journey in itself. Bobbie and I started this journey together “on a whim” by taking a few watercolor lessons several years ago. She has many more successes under her belt than I do and she has even sold quite a few. So we are hooked on the challenge. Our individual styles are still evolving and only about one in ten paintings are “acceptable”. But maybe now with more time to paint we will see improvement come a little faster.
We appreciate your feedback to help us improve this site. Enjoy, Mark and Bobbie Johnson
Our journey has grown into THREE sites
NEW!
