Well, at last they update the website!  Where the heck have they been and what have they been doing.

Here is the answer!

Libby and I arrived back in Okeechobee, FL  a year ago.  We parked the Rolling Home at our lot at The Big O Resort and prepared to settle in for the winter.  We had a lot of fun with our RV resort friends during November and December and most of January.  Then, toward the end of January, one of the folks in our park told me that a new RV dealer in town might be interested in having me install satellite dishes on their rigs.
 

I went to the lot in late January and wound up being hired to sell RVs.  Libby joined me about a week later.  Our plans changed and we decided to stay until April when we were to leave to manage the cafe and hotel in Utah.  We started making some good money selling RVs so we had to spend a great deal of time thinking about what to do.  As the stock market had not yet recovered enough to bring our income up to an acceptable level, we decided to just stay put in Okeechobee, sell RVs and not spend the money to travel to Utah.

However, sitting in the RV for 6 months is not fun.  Its great when one is traveling, but if one is going to stay put for a long period, then the RV gets real small real fast.  About mid June, we got the urge to find a house.  GASP!  Not only would we have more room, but if we waited several more years, it appeared that we might not be able to afford to buy one.  We did some house hunting and finally did buy a 3/2 on a corner lot in a nice section of Okeechobee, FL.

Our current plan is to pay this house off within three years and then spend more time traveling in the motorhome.  Of course, we had to adjust to spending the summer in hot and humid Florida for the first time since 1995.

Just to make life even more interesting, Hurricane Charley headed for us in late August.  We moved the RV to the store and tucked it in between a couple of large fifth wheels.  The storm only provided us Tropical Storm force winds.  We spent the evening with our friends Becky and Harold Hilliard.  No problem.  Then, on Labor Day weekend, Hurricane Frances scored a direct hit on Okeechobee.  We had been in our house for 7 days, had furniture for 2 days and then boom, the power went out for 13 days.  No real damage as Libby and I rode out the hurricane in our house.  We lost a few shingles and some tree limbs.  We managed to get some sleep when the eye passed directly over our new home.  The storm moved so slowing that we were in the eye for over 5 hours.

After the storm passed, we spent the next many days living in our motorhome.  No power, water or sewer in the house, but the RV made do as a lifeboat in our driveway.  After five years of fulltime living in the Discovery, it really did us proud during this hurricane emergency.

Three weeks after Hurricane Frances hit us, Hurricane Jeanne followed the same path and scored a direct hit on Okeechobee.  Lots of damage from those two storms but again our house came through fine and the RV became our lifeboat.  We did take it to St Petersburg to miss this one, but it managed to impact us over there too.  The kids lost power on Sunday, so we powered their refrigerator and tv with our diesel genset until Monday when we left to return to Okeechobee.

The dealership suffered significant damage to the main building, our friends Becky and Harold lost their roof and thus their house during Frances.  They spent the rest of the month and all of October in an 11 foot slide in camper in their driveway.  They now have an 02 Pace Arrow motorhome and a lot more room for living.

We will be going to the Florida RV supershow in Tampa as vendors so maybe we will see some of you there.

We are planning to leave Okeechobee in early May of 05, heading for the Dayton, Ohio Hamfest in mid May and then turning west for Montana and Glacier National Park.  Libby has never been to Glacier so we are going there and perhaps on to Banff and Jasper.    We plan to return to Okeechobee in September or early October.

So, no more are we fulltimers.  We are enjoying our new home, large shower, big screen TV, room for ham radios, but will always cherish our five years on the road.  Of course, we will continue to travel in our RV and most likely will spend more time out on the road than in our house after we pay it off.  We did manage to get up to North Georgia last week and spend some time with our friends Pappy and Cecile Doughty.

We will keep the website up and do occasional updates until we can travel again.  Until then, enjoy the lifestyle and keep the shiny side up!

John and Libby