What’s here?
Our brand spanking new travel trailer.
A little back story on our decision to get a new, smaller, trailer.
After this past year with many months sitting at home in quarantine, we started considering what we wanted to do with the remainder of our traveling years.
We love volunteering. It can be limiting in some ways (length of stay, commitments when other opportunities pop up, etc.). It can also be a wonderful opportunity that would be unobtainable if we weren’t volunteering (access to areas that are off limits to the public, private camping areas, learning new skills, and meeting really nice, fun people).
Behind the locked gates at Laguna Atascosa NWR, Texas.
So, we made the decision to, not necessarily quit volunteering but, to change the way we volunteer. To not commit 1 - 2 years out, and to shorten our length of stays.
When we left Goose Island State Park at the end of December, we were told that whenever we wanted to come back to lead bird walks -- even if it’s just for a month -- just to call them up and we would be welcomed back. We had never thought much about volunteering for just a month. That really started our decision to downsize our RV and opened up a lot of new opportunities for travel.
We also wanted to get back to our original travelling roots and make shorter and more frequent trips throughout the year.
Before we retired, we had
a very small travel trailer for 2 years then a fifth-wheel for 10 years.
We drove the tires off those trailers!! Yearly trips to Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Many trips every year to beautiful state parks in Texas.
Glacier National Park
Once we started volunteering our travel destinations changed drastically. We traveled to places we would have never thought to visit and stayed in some really amazing areas of the country. The volunteer “work” was enjoyable and gave us a sense of pride and accomplishment in our daily lives.
Mark milking a cow at the Sauer-Beckmamn Living History Farm,
LBJ State Park, Texas.
Feeding Atlantic Salmon. Green Lake NFH
Ellsworth, Maine
But, with this past year behind us and moving into our new home, we came to realize that we really want to do more traveling. We want the flexibility of hooking up the trailer and heading out where ever and whenever we feel like it.
We’ve come to the decision that there is a very large world out there that we want to visit. Even though there are some places in the world we have no desire to see, there are more than a lifetime of countries to explore.
Without volunteer commitments we have the flexibility to hop a plane and fly anywhere we want or hook up the trailer and head down the road.
So, the decision was made to buy a smaller trailer. One that we can quickly pack up for a week or two and head out. We also wanted a smaller trailer in order to be able to get into areas that our large fifth-wheel just wouldn’t fit.
We also wanted to buy a couple of kayaks to take with us and now, with a travel trailer, we will have the back of the truck to carry them
Mark built a very nice rack in the garage for our new kayaks.
So, with all kinds of new ideas and thoughts towards destinations, we put our HitchHiker up for sale.
The day we picked up our HitchHiker, December 27, 2011:
We ordered a Grand Design 2500RL Imagine.
It took a few weeks to be built and delivered but that gave us plenty of time to get a new RV pad put in.
We picked up our new trailer on Thursday. We have reservations next week for a 2-night shake down trip close to home. We also have reservations for two other trips in the next couple of months.
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