We are hanging up the keys

     Well, I guess, after that title, I don't have to write a blog. We started RVing in Alaska (Elmendorf AFB) with a tiny Apache pop up in 1964. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture from those days, but I do have a picture of the Coleman pop-up we used in Colorado around 1970.

         This was taken at 11,000 feet in the ghost town of Animas Forks in southwest Colorado. Note that it does have a propane bottle. The Apache didn't even have that. This combination made several memorable excursions into the Colorado high country including a few with chains on all four corners.

     Just before leaving USAFA in '74, I sold both the Jeep and the Coleman, and bought a used, iconic 1972 Winnebago Brave. It was an 18 footer with a small Chrysler V-8. We put 120,000 miles on it, finally selling it in NH ten years later. I even commuted in it. From then until '96 we did without as I was immersed in my civilian career with several companies. In '96 we went to an RV show in Boston and bought a 36 foot Bounder at the show. I then retired for the second time in March 1997. We put a lot of miles on it until we traded up to  a 2003 Allegro Bus. It was our first diesel pusher, and I loved it. Here it is in a friends backyard ("We have plenty of room."). I found a spot where the two passenger side slides straddled a tree.

     In December of 2006 we traded up again to our current and final rig, a 2007 forty foot Allegro Bus with all the bells and whistles that were available ten years ago.

          We used 2007 to be sure it was broken in and that any bugs were resolved. Then, in 2008, we did our lap around America. It was a wonderful 11,000 mile adventure that also prompted the start of a travel blog so that family and friends could tell where we were. That was 760 posts ago. The blog was a piece of cake in the early days with land mark sites occurring on a regular and frequent basis. As travel slowed, so did the blogs. Blog writing came to be like making gravy with nothing more than a cup of water and a bay leaf. What follows are some of the more memorable pictures.

The Badlands near the Black Hills

                           

Caption not required

Devil's Tower

Little Bighorn

Caption not Required

Up Close and Personal

Crater Lake

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

USAFA

Decisions, Decisions

          Obviously, the logistics of this blog do not permit an endless array of "What I did on my vacation" pictures. These were all just from 2008. Although there were many more travels (We accumulated over 350,000 miles on four motorhomes.), we gradually transitioned to spending the entire summer comfortably ensconced on the shore of Penobscot Bay at the Moorings RV Resort. Here there were day trips galore and many photo-ops. But the iconic institution here was the daily "Happy Hour" at five-o-clock.

"What do those folks talk about for all that time?"

     So, what do you think we are going to miss most; Mt. Rushmore or that little afternoon circle of chairs on the edge of the bay? You're right, and it isn't even close. The camaraderie and sense of close-knit community engendered there will always be the most pleasant and most important memory in our half century of RVing.

     I choose not to go into an "organ recital" of all the medical factors that drove the decision to hang up the keys. I'd rather not, however, hang up the keyboard with the keys. It remains to be seen what the transition will be like. That said, I hope you have enjoyed the decade documented here.