Our Five Year Full-Timing Anniversary

We have been living in our RV full-time for five years!  Our official anniversary is January 13^th.  It has been the best decision we have ever made.  We love our lifestyle of living simply, enjoying our families when we can and experiencing the joys of traveling and exploring this amazing country.  Once in a while, we check in with each other to see if we are still okay living this way.  The answers every time have always been: we wouldn’t change a thing.  We love doing this!

It’s been a cold winter here in the Whetstone Mountains.  At about 4600 feet of elevation, we often get a little sprinkle of snow.  This year we saw the ground covered for a day or so and lots of white on the mountain we call Muffin Top behind us.  Snow like this is just pretty and because it’s so rare we all enjoy it.  And we even had a snow day when the Cave Tours had to close because the tramway was icy.

But I’m writing this while our neighbors in Texas are suffering with catastrophic cold weather conditions, leaving most of them without water, without electricity, without food, gas and horribly without heat.  We wish for them the warm days coming in our weather forecast.

We are only two months into 2021 and maybe because 2020 was such an awful year, we thought 2021 would be like a beautiful sunrise – the dawn of a new era.

The tragic seditious takeover of the Capitol on January 6^th shook us to our core.  Seeing a Confederate flag and anti-Semitic themed shirts parading through what is a sacred space to us was horrifying.  For me, it was the nightmare that I worried about for the past five years.  It isn’t a great feeling to have a nightmare come true.  But Democracy won.  Biden’s in office and the news is mostly good.  My obsession of watching CNN every day is starting to ebb – the virus is still awful, but vaccines are coming; there seems to be an end in sight.  Schools are not all opened yet but there is some hope that they will be soon.  Businesses are open and slowly, very slowly, the world seems to be edging towards a new and maybe even better normal.  I no longer wake up with the fear that something terrible happened in DC while I was sleeping.

For Doug and me, the first two months of this year have been fine.  We are able to continue working in the Cave because the precautions taken here help keep us safe.  But we also take our own extra precautions.  Now we wear two masks – a K95 and a cloth mask over it.  I’ve been doing tours through the Cave – talking for 1 hour and 45-minute tours – with two masks and not having any problems.  Guests can hear me, and I feel safe.  We also help with the extra sanitation of the handrails and often wear gloves in the Cave.

At work we feel in control, but we are still washing clothes by hand.  The drying becomes more difficult on cold days that are overcast and we often bring them in damp.  We hang them on a tripod dryer in our shower.  They are always dry by the next morning.  So now no public laundries.

Grocery shopping is almost exclusively done by curbside pickup.  Our order is usually correct and complete with an occasional surprise.  But it keeps us out of harm’s way in the stores.  Unfortunately, our local stores do not enforce their own mask mandates and only about half of the customers are even attempting to wear a mask.  There is a lot of bandanas and masks below the nose here.

In spite of all our precautions we were exposed, but we tested negative.  Yeah, masks!

I love doing tours – it’s a chance for me to show off our beautiful cave and I love to see our guests become entranced with its wonders.  Their exclamations of awe at the magnificence of Mother Nature’s underground artwork are thrilling to hear.

Doug is enjoying driving the tram and trailing tours.  Recently he was able to trail my tour and doing that together was a great experience for us.

We are catching up on doctor and dentist stuff as we usually do when we are in Southeastern Arizona.  All is going well. 

I was in a Golf Cart accident, but I survived with only the tiniest cut on my arm.  The Golf Cart was driven away, after the Maintenance Crew cut it out of the mesquite tree, with only cosmetic damage.  I was incredibly lucky.  I kept a piece of the mesquite tree that almost got me as a reminder that my Guardian Angel still has plans for me.

We have had a few cheerful outings with friends and family.  We had bagels with Amy and Brodie at a Tucson park.  Jayne and Paul came with us on a great day in Bisbee where we once again enjoyed the food at Santiago’s.  Jean, Jayne and Sylvia and I spent a perfect morning at the Mini Time Machine Museum in Tucson, followed by lunch at Beyond Bread.  Our Friday night Flamingo gatherings are weekly warm moments with our fellow volunteers around a fire.

Kartchner Caverns is part of 2021’s celebration of the Year of Karst and Caves.  There is a greatly reduced number of guests allowed on tours because of COVID.  A total of 60 guests are allowed on tours each day.  In non-COVID years we see anywhere from 450 to 650 people per day at this time of year.  This year, though, we enhanced our on-line visibility with weekly social media posts.  This keeps Kartchner Cavern’s presence more viable even with restrictions and keeps us an integral part of Karst and Caves.

On January 23^rd, Kartchner Caverns State Park launched its Adopt A Bat program.  I’ve been very much involved in getting this program off the ground and it did just that – it went off like a bat out of hell!  Over 100 people from 20 different states adopted bats within the first three weeks of the program’s existence.  All ages are involved and lots of classrooms and homeschoolers.  It’s plenty of work for me but our mission of getting out information to help protect bats makes the world better.  Doug is doing the hard background work of turning this into a much more technically savvy enterprise.  I don’t know what I would have done without his help.

We have had some sadness.  First our friends Jayne and Paul lost one of their dear basset hounds.  Sweet Abby had gotten old and had some problems, leaving Sammi behind missing her sister.  Then Jean and Bob had to put their Bear down.  Bear was an adorable loveable little guy we often walked with his much more rambunctious brother Rusty.  Soon after losing Abby and Bear, our daughter Julie had to say good-bye to her pretty little dog Rosie.  Doug and I always tried to give Rosie a little extra love and peace when we visited.  Rosie lived with lots of worries, fears and nerves but she was our little darling.

We are planning a small, safe and socially distant outdoor gathering to celebrate Sawyer, Josh and Amy’s birthdays in March.  So that is fun to look forward to.

There are a few subtle signs of Spring here in the desert.  No giant azalea bushes bursting into pink and white blooms.  No tall trees leafing out.  But we will have pretty wildflowers soon.  The mesquite, palo verde and ironwood trees get first yellow and reddish fuzzy stuff and then teeny tiny green leaves.  The cacti – prickly pear, saguaro, cholla and barrel – will all start to get their flowers and fruit.  A little color in our brown dusty desert is always a welcome sight.

Right now, our plan is leave here by the end of April.  We are heading to the Portland, Oregon area where we will again spend time with family.  We were putting off making a decision on our end date here because we were trying to get our COVID vaccines before we left.  It was a struggle to get appointments, but I’m able to get mine at the University of Arizona and will be done on March 21^st.  Doug just scheduled his appointments at CVS so with that in place we can make definite plans for the future.

Since we can leave by early May we decided to head to South Dakota.  Our driver’s licenses are expired, and we have temporary permits due to COVID.  We are planning a leisurely trip to our home state, stopping in Rapid City to get our licenses.  While there we will tour through areas we haven’t seen yet.  We love South Dakota and the trip there through New Mexico and Colorado is just beautiful.  Maybe we will even get to stop in Hatch, New Mexico and stock up on green chiles!

When we leave South Dakota, we aim the RV for the Portland, Oregon area.  Another beautiful trip through some of our favorite landscapes.  We hope to spend time in Montana again in the sweet town of Missoula. 

We are scheduled for a new volunteer job at the Visitor Center at Champoeg State Park for July and August.  We are waiting to hear how the park is doing after a devastating windstorm took down many trees.  If the Visitor Center is open, we will do Interpretative tasks there.  If it is closed, we will help with maintenance and tending the historic garden.  We will work two days on; four days off. We are looking forward to being there.

While at this job we will be helping out with Doug’s dad, Creighton.  Dad turns 99 this August but lives on his own with a little help.  Doug’s sister Beverly and her husband Barry take care of things for him and visit him often.  With us in town, Bev and Barry will take a long overdue vacation in their RV.  And we will be near Julie and Jake and our three grandchildren.  Time spent in this area is always busy and we just love the family connections.

We just took on another position at Valley of the Rogue State Park.  This one is just for the month of September.  This area, around Medford, OR and the Rogue River is beautiful, and we have a lot of new experiences to look forward to there.  We will work 5 four-hour days at this job.  We will still have plenty of time to explore, especially since we don’t know anyone in that location.

Then we head back to Kartchner Caverns for another busy winter in the Caves!  What is not to like about a life like this?  New people coming our way; new adventures to enjoy; lots of family time; and back to our winter home with friends and family.  We are so lucky!