We are now practicing our new lifestyle, drive a little, stay a lot.  This good advice is given by our friends, Barb and Ron Hofmeister.  They have over 11 years of fulltime experience and are really considered the gurus of this lifestyle.

We knew our first year in the RV would be lots of driving.  We moved into the rig in August 15th of 1999 and spent September  to mid December in the Lake Nottely RV park in Blairsville, Georgia, and we hit the road at the end of December to start the rolling part of the Rolling Home adventure.

We have 22,500 miles on the Discovery, of which 21,000 are our miles.  We have put various parts of our bodies in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, the Arctic Ocean and Lake Michigan in the last 12 months.  We traveled with several friends for some time during the year, including all the way from Dawson Creek, BC to Tok, Alaska and back with the Holders, Don, Liane, Tommy and the wonder pug, Peanut.  We traveled from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Goshen, Indiana with Jim and Patti Hammond, who are just starting out on their own fulltime adventure.

We have spent time with the Hammonds in a park in Washington, the Holders in a number of parks starting in Livingston at Thanksgiving of 1999, continuing on to Harlingen, Tx, Deming, NM, Benson, AZ, Lancaster, CA, Chimacum, WA and Abbotsford, BC not to mention all the places we were together on the trip into and out of Alaska.  We boondocked in the driveway of Sarah and Larry Wise, old friends from Boca Raton, Florida who now live in Georgetown, Texas.  We spent several days with Nancy and Patrick Gallagher in Abbotsford, friends from the Y2K party we attended last February.

We have stayed in first class resort parks and less than first class parks in 28 states and three Canadian Provinces.  We have boondocked at WalMart in Anchorage, in Death Valley, in Indiana, in Yukon, BC and Alberta, Canada.

We have been serenaded by coyotes right outside the coach in Furnace Creek, California, been surrounded by a pod of Killer Whales (Orcas) in Prince William Sound, Alaska.  We have been stopped on the road by herds of elk in Northern California, a coyote in Death Valley, a beaver in Alaska, stone sheep and caribou in Yukon, bear in BC and Colorado and deer in many places.  We have seen antelope, musk ox, arctic hare, arctic fox, bald eagles, buffalo, elk, moose, beaver, bear, stone sheep, dall sheep. caribou, coyote, road runners, salmon, swans, Canadian geese in the wild, no fences between us.  (some a little too close with no fence)

We have traveled 4 wheel roads in Big Bend National Park, jet boated 53 miles up the Rogue River in Oregon, taken the 20 Mule Team road in Death Valley, been driven in a van for 500 miles of dirt, mud, rocks, stone and spectacular scenery on the Dalton, Highway in Alaska.

We have hiked in 111 degree temperatures in Death Valley, held glacial ice in our hands in Alaska, walked on the permafrost and tundra of the Arctic.  We have been to the the farthest south one can go on in Texas and driven as far west as one can drive on a continuos road in the continent of North America at Anchor Point, Alaska.  We have been closer to Tokyo than Atlanta.

We have met hundreds of wonderful people, some of whom will be friends for life.  The Emonds, Rich and Diane who flew to the Y2K party in Texas last February because they did not have their motorhome yet. The Paynes, Linda and Norm, who were already at Harlingen when we got there and have become part of our extended cyber/rv family.  The Holders, Liane, Don and Tommy, who became close friends as we leapfrogged across the country last winter and traveled to our 49th state with them in the Spring.  Melva, our free spirited matron of the Y2K party.  Nancy and Pat Gallagher, unbound energy and the best planners we have ever met.  Drinking cheap beer and boxed wine with Dave Peters, Willie Nunez, Dutch Souder and the gang at the Y2K party was a highlight of our winter sojourn to the Rio Grande Valley.  We got together with Dave and his wife Carol later on in California and met up with several cyberfriends at the Escapee Rally in April in Lancaster.  Brian and Hope Walker, fellow hams and Discovery owners who we met last winter in Florida and who attended the Y2K party with us in Texas.  Willie and Sanda Horeis became close friends at the Plantation, the SKP park in Summerdale, Alabama.  We ran across them again in Livingston, Texas, Harlingen, Texas and last month in Goshen, Indiana.

We are inspired by our friends like Lila Oster who started fulltiming 7 years ago at age 69 and has been to Alaska five times, once all by herself.   Hawk Milner, who along with his dog Huck, is a solo fulltimer at age 79.  Hawk was a B17 pilot in W.W.II, shot down on his 23rd mission, spending the rest of the war as a POW.  You don't meet these kind of people sitting in a rocking chair unless its on the porch of a Cracker Barrel.

We have run across fellow Escapees all over the country. Ken and Beau Marler, whom we met in Goshen in 1999, visited in Kissimmee, Fl in January, 2000 and ran across in an RV park in Great Falls, Montana in July.  Jim and Betty Roughton, lot owners at the Plantation, Ginny and Ron Norton, more Plantation visitors who we have kept in contact with via e-mail for almost a year now.  Tim and Jan Johnson, in a campground with us in Dawson Creek, BC and again at Liard Hot Springs in the very northern part of BC. Stan and Betty Bober who took us to a couple of nice local eateries in Michiana while we were up there in early September. There are so many more folks that we have met and become friends with, it just boggles the mind.

Coming back to Blairsville this week has been like a homecoming event.  We are excited to see our old friends and share our adventures of our travels with new friends.  So much has happened to us in the last year.  We sold our home, left our friends, made many new ones, traveled all over this great land and will continue to do so.

Our cyber links have been an invaluable part of this experience.  We have received e-mail from all over the world from folks who have read our website.  We have met a number of them in person as we traveled through their hometowns or just happened to be in the same place at the same time.  We spent about three wonderful hours in North Pole, Alaska with a young school teacher who saw the URL for our website on the back of the motorhome and sent us an e-mail.  Two nights later we met him and had just a great time talking about Alaska and the RV life.  We were contacted by a fellow in Montrose, Colorado who saw our rig as we were leaving that nice place and e-mailed us to let us know that he hoped we had a good time there.  Just today we were in a park here in Blairsville looking at some deeded lots when the manager,  Jim Lasssiter,  looked at Libby and said "Oh,  you're TheRollingHome.com"    You just never know when you are going to meet someone who knows you.  We were contacted about six weeks ago by a production company out of California who wanted us to be in a TV  documentary about alternative living arrangements.  We spoke with them several times and finally decided that the website was notoriety enough.  They originally found us through our website.

We have met so many nice folks and seen so many wonderful places in our short time as fulltime RVers that we just cannot wait for the next bend in the road to come along.  I cannot imagine stopping and settling down again.  I guess the best way to sum up this first year is to quote a saying I saw on the back of a Bounder at Raccoon Valley SKP park in Tennessee last week.

"The road goes on forever and the party never ends"

John and Libby