This is a blog about two baby boomers who are retired and living full time in their Class A motorhome. We stay mostly at Thousand Trails campgrounds. We use a drone to film our adventures and share the video on the blog
My wife drives our 42 ft Class A motorhome, I fly the Drone and we are having a blast in our new liftstyle.
I posted this video over on YouTube and wasn't planning to post it here since I assumed it would be more appropriate over there on YouTube.
But Pearl has been on the phone with a friend of hers all morning and she wasn't sure how to tell her how to get to the YouTube site so she gave the Blog address here. Her friend mostly wanted to see pictures of Tinker and this interview with Pearl is probably the best one so I was instructed to put that video here and do it right away.
So here it is, hope you enjoy it, and there is a subscription button on the video somewhere that you can click and subscribe to the YouTube videos if your so inclined.
Well here it is the middle of November and we have been to 5 or 6 campgrounds since arriving in this Large but Lovely state. That isn't even counting the free camping we have done at some of your homes, cities and businesses (Thank You).
Every few days I ask Pearl if she is ready to consider Texas for our next home so we can start looking but so far I haven't made much progress. It seems the humidity and distance from Melissa and the rest of the family are the two main reasons. I'm not giving up yet but it appears it will be an uphill battle.
After leaving the cousins reunion at Lake Buchanan, we headed over to Lake Conroe for 3 weeks. This is one of Thousand Trails best campgrounds and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. We did take one day and go into town to visit with our cousin Paul Ray and he took us out to lunch at one of our favorite places "Sweet Tomato" and it was ever bit as good as they are in Nevada. Thanks Paul
We have now moved on to the Colorado River Thousand Trails campground. It is much smaller and a little more rustic but nice. We have a good site with full hook-ups and 50 amp electric service which always makes it nice. The door on the cloths washer broke off yesterday so I spend the afternoon getting the old broken latch off and locating a replacement. I was able to find what I needed and it should be here Monday so we should be able to do laundry by Tuesday with a little luck.
We were able to drive up to Pfluggerville (Austin) a couple of days ago to visit with Clint and Laura. It was a great visit and Clint and I really enjoyed discussing different perspectives on how some management personnel may be lacking in recognizing and appreciating some of the talents their employees might possess as well as the value of those talents. I was able to see that some of my prior misconceptions may have been a little off base in this area. Luckily, I don't have to resolve this issue as I am out of the game and no one really cares what I think anymore and that makes us all happy!
Clint did show me some of his video talent as well as his knowledge of social media, boy do I wish I had some of those talents (I am guessing he picked up a few hints from Laura) to help me with my youtube videos. His stuff really looks great.
We still have another week here and then we head out to San Antonio for a couple of weeks before going down to South Texas for the winter. It has been a ton of fun and we have enjoyed visiting with family and friends along the way. We actually hooked up with a couple that we met up in Birch Bay Washington last summer here at Colorado River. Hopefully we will meet a few more down in South Texas but if not, I sure we will find some new friends along the way.
Here is the video for Lake Conroe and Colorado River but if you click on the subscribe link to our youtube channel, there are a couple of extra videos over there focusing completely on RV living, Retirement and other subjects that may not be as appropriate here on this blog.
October has been chocked full of events and interesting campsites. I am still trying to convince Pearl that Texas would be the perfect place for us to settle down and purchase a nice lake front home. We have seen many of them that look perfect, but I am not getting the feeling that I am making any headway in persuading her. That being said, we both are very much enjoying our time there in the Great State of Texas!
We have been here in Texas since October 1st, and our expenses are back in line with the previous month (excluding September) which is nice. We are still running several hundred dollars above our initial predictions, but still within acceptable limits. We were hoping our annual expenses might be under $40,000 from reading and watching other full time rvers reports, but it certainly doesn't look like that is going to happen from our 5 months of living the full time RV lifestyle.
Although, our next 5 months will be fairly economical since we will not be traveling many miles at all, and it looks like we will be staying in Thousand Trails campgrounds exclusively through March so that eliminates approximately a Thousand dollars a month from our historical average expense of approximately $3,800. While we may not be buying Diesel, I am guessing our entertainment expenses may increase since we are so stationary. But, I don't know just what type of entertainment we may find in Southern Texas at the Age Restricted campsites we will be in (55 or Over) It doesn't cost a lot to play Dominoes or Shuffle Board.........
No need to redo the entire expense spreadsheet here since you can simply watch the video.
If you have any interest in how Thousand Trails works you can watch the section at the end of the October Expense video for a 5 minute walk through of how Thousand Trails works for us and might work for you if you are thinking about living full time in an RV. In a nutshell, we have spent $4,607 on thousand trails this year, and it will only be $607 per year indefinitely until we sell our membership.
We have currently spent 114 nights in a thousand trails campsite for free, so at a conservative value of $40 per night that would mean we have saved over $4,500 in campsite fees already with two months to go in 2017. Our Savings next year will very substantial since we only pay the $607 for the entire year.
Enough of all that, here is the video and I hope you find it somewhat insightful in what it cost to live this lifestyle.
