Category Archives: Getting Ready for Full-Timing

We have spent the last few nights at Catalina State Park a few miles from our last home.  We watched an incredible lunar eclipse as the moon rose over the Catalina mountains, said goodbye to family, and did some last minute errands.  Today we are relaxing a bit although it is hot without air conditioning in our pop up camper.  Tomorrow we get on the road heading towards Julian, CA.

A quick update since things are moving fast.  We have sold our house and we will be turning over the keys on Monday, Sept. 28.  We will be moving temporarily to a local state park with our popup camper for a few days and then heading west to California for a several week vacation.  Then we will head north to Portland and the start of our new adventure.  We are super excited!

Five months to the day after we retired, the house is finally listed for sale.  Turns out that’s how long it takes to downsize to almost nothing in preparation for RV full timing as well as getting the house and yard ready to sell.  We are now taking a long anticipated rest waiting for the right buyer to walk through the door.  The minute escrow closes we will be on the road to Portland.  We will miss our family in Tucson but we can’t wait to start the next phase of our adventure: change our state of residence, buy our motorhome and towed vehicle, and, most importantly, await the arrival of our fourth grandchild!

Last weekend, our home was at the center of a “Lytle / Glyn-Anderson / Glyn / Souto-Glyn / Tucker / Spatucci Memorial Day Family Reunion”.  This was the last celebration we will have at our home and it was epic. In addition to the pleasure of spending time with our family and close friends, our family turned the tables and surprised us with a retirement party based on a Beatles “When I’m 64” theme.

This surprise party included themed decorations and food, a rendition of “When I’m 64” with original lyrics (Becky and Paola) including piano (Jake) and guitar (Dan), and many other gifts and surprises. We were totally surprised and enjoyed every minute of it.  Thanks to our children and their families for all the planning and work that went into making this a huge success! In total, we numbered seventeen plus two dogs.

Here we are with our grandchildren.  We couldn’t get enough of them!  Every moment we spent with them was precious to us.

Now, all of the decorations have come down, the house is quiet as the coos and cries of the grandchildren are gone, the walls are getting bare as the pictures come down, the remaining furniture is being sold on Craig’s List, and the home where so many wonderful memories were made is turning back into a house just waiting for another family to create memories.  But we are eagerly anticipating creating new memories ourselves in a different venue.

It really is about comings and goings.  We came to Tucson 18 years ago and have enjoyed every minute of it.  But now it is time to go and move on to see more of the country and to have the freedom to visit all our family.  We are sad that we are leaving family behind in Tucson, but as the famous movie line goes “I’ll (we’ll) be back”! Oh, and did we mention that retirement is great (as long as you have a plan!)?  🙂

You can see it at:

Glyn/Lytle Kids Retrospective Part 1

Use the password we gave you to view it!

Hi and welcome to our blog!

We are excited to begin our full-timing adventure.  We retired in April of this year and we are now busily downsizing our life.  Our goal is to sell the old homestead and be on the road by fall of this year.  We don’t have any firm plan yet as to where we will journey first, but we intend to follow the good weather and visit family (especially grandchildren!).

So why name out travel blog WistfulWanderers?  Well, wistful can mean “reflective or meditative”.  And wander can mean “ramble without a definite purpose or objective”.  So if you combine the two, well, you get the picture.  We thought it summed up the goal of our next 10-15 years on the road.

We haven’t exactly settled on a particular RV yet.  For many years we thought a fifth-wheel was the way to go.  After looking at dozens of ‘fivers’ at many RV shows, we came to realize the disadvantages of the large pickup truck that would be required to pull it.  Once we had settled into our next locale, we would have to use the truck for all of our transportation.  The size of the truck, the hard ride, and the low fuel mileage all were negatives.  So,  on day 3 of a 4 day RV show we started looking at Class A motor homes.  With a Class A, we would pull a small fuel efficient car (a ‘toad’ or ‘dinghy’) behind us.  We had done no research on Class A’s, so we were flying blind.  We fell in love with one that had an outdoor kitchen which we both would like to have.  This unit seemed to have everything: the floor plan, the kitchen, the length was right, and lots of storage.  We were content that we had found ‘it’ the whole drive home from Pomona, CA to Tucson, AZ.

Now came the belated online research. Within an hour or two. we realized the quality and customer service for this particular brand was poor.  We reluctantly crossed the entire brand off our list.  Our short list was now Winnebago, Tiffin, Newmar, and Fleetwood.  We soon became enamored with Tiffin; especially with the satisfaction and loyalty of owners.

We were excited earlier this year when we thought we had found the model and floor plan.  It is an Allegro RED ( a rear engine diesel – a diesel pusher) about 36′ long.  But recently Tiffin dropped it from their 2016 lineup.  We still may purchase a used one though.  The one pictured below is a generic Allegro RED model.

We have put the whole which-RV decision on hold for a month or two since we are so busy getting the house ready to put on the market.  We will keep you apprised though so stay tuned!