A little over a week ago, almost exactly two years after we sold our house in Colorado and moved into the motorhome, we arrived back in Colorado. We’ve come full circle. Well, maybe two circles, to be precise, a West Coast circle and an East Coast circle. In any case, we’ve come back to the place we called home for twelve years, and it’s looking like it may be home again. More on that later.

For those of you who actually read these blog posts, you know that my last post was done over two months ago while we were parked in Austin. I promised to do another post near the end of our stay in Austin, but didn’t. I actually had one about half finished the day before leaving but then, for the very first time in the three years I’ve used it, my Macbook seized up and I had to power it down, losing what I’d done. (Huh?!! A Mac actually crashed? Somebody call Steve Jobs!) I then got busy with moving preparations and didn’t finish. Now it’s all “old news” so I’ll just give you a quick rundown and call it good.

In my last post I complained about the month of cold, rainy, even snowy weather we’d had since hitting Austin. Well, it changed. We enjoyed a glorious spring, all three days of it, and then it got hot (90+ degrees) and humid. That’s not really a complaint—we both like warm weather—but it was surprising how quickly things changed.

We had several more sets of friends and family visit while we were there. Our friends Jack and Dana from Russellville, AR spent a few days followed by a visit by Ann’s brother Colin from Cape Town, South Africa. Teri and Bob from Tulsa and Joe and Sandi from Fort Smith rounded out the crew. Thanks for honoring us with your visits, everyone! I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

We also made a lot of friends around the RV park, particularly Ken and Lydia, the wonderful owners of La Hacienda, and Gary, our new friend from Telluride, CO. We also found time to enjoy sailing, brewing beer, exploring the area, and just hanging out with friends and family. We continue to like Austin a lot. It may just be home some day.

We left Austin on May 19 and drove to Fort Worth for a reunion of my old Marine squadron. For four days we got reacquainted, repeated old lies and invented new ones, and generally enjoyed ourselves. It’s great to still feel so close to friends from forty years ago. I’m already looking forward to our next reunion.

We left Fort Worth on the 23rd and spent three days fighting winds on our way to Denver. The first day wasn’t too bad, with winds of around 25 gusting to 45. We spent the first night in Amarillo and enjoyed dinner with my adopted cousin Kim.

The second day was a different story. The weather folks were calling for winds of 30-40 with gusts to 60-70. I believe they were conservative. I unhooked the car and had Ann drive along behind, which helped, but it was still the most challenging driving I’ve done. One gust, in particular, required a steering correction of about 90 degrees. The world disappeared in a dust cloud, obscuring not only the road but also the two cars I was about to meet. Somehow, we all stayed in our lanes and passed in the dust without seeing one another. To say I was glad to pull into the RV park at the top of the pass north of Raton, NM is a huge understatement. My shoulders and arms were sore for two days afterward from the tension and exertion.

Luckily, the final day of the trip was uneventful, with the winds moderating. We pulled into Cherry Creek State Park in Denver on the 25th and began what has been almost two weeks of visiting with old friends and exploring familiar surroundings. It’s good to be “home.”

Now for the “More on that later” part. During our stay in Austin, we also began another very important process. When we started this adventure, we committed to two years on the road. We agreed that we’d then evaluate the situation and decide whether to continue or not. We agreed to base the decision on our health, whether we were having fun or not, how well the finances were holding up, and perhaps other factors that might arise. Well, our two years are up. It’s decision time.

Our health is good and we’re still having fun. The full-timer lifestyle has proven to be fairly inexpensive, one we could probably continue indefinitely if the economy continues to regain strength. If not, we (and a lot of other people) might find things getting tight some day. So the score is “Good health? — Yes”, “Still fun? — Yes”, and “Finances okay? — Probably.”

But there’s another factor that has arisen, one that is surprisingly important to us, one that is becoming a problem. We’re both Type-A personalities. We’re impatient, competitive, and ambitious. We like goals and deadlines. We like to have a plan. We like challenges. We like to feel like we’re doing something worthwhile, that we have a purpose for getting out of bed every morning.

That one word, purpose, or actually the lack thereof, is the problem. I believe I talked about this in a post several months ago. We live a very enjoyable life on the road, one filled with fun and adventure, but we lack purpose. We’re both a little surprised to discover how important this is and how empty our lives feel without it.

So, we’ve decided that we should suspend our adventure and return to a life that addresses our need for purpose. Enjoyable work provides purpose, so we’re planning to return to the work world. This will also address the financial uncertainty I mentioned above, as we’ll be able to bolster our savings in anticipation of full retirement within a few years.

With this in mind, we began to explore the job markets in Austin and Denver with the intent of seeking employment at the end of this summer’s travels. As luck would have it, Ann mentioned this to a colleague at her former place of employment in Denver who immediately said, “When can you start?” It turns out she wasn’t joking. I’ve been waiting to post this until the final piece fell into place, and it fell today. Ann signed a contract and will return to work on June 14th, bringing our travels to an end.

How do we feel about it? Our feelings are mixed. It’s the right thing to do and we’re glad it happened so quickly and easily. Ann loves her old company, “Sports Authority,” and is looking forward to returning. I look forward to returning to contract consulting or maybe writing a book, both of which I love. Being employed will reduce our concerns about the state of the economy and the health of our investments. We’re both excited about the prospect of finding that perfect little place to live—probably a lock-and-leave condo or townhome—and look forward to having a little more space, especially in the kitchen. So we generally feel good about the decision.

On the other hand, we are understandably a little sad to end our travels. In the past two years, we’ve enjoyed an incredible, non-stop, once-in-a-lifetime adventure. We’ve experienced the amazing diversity of this country, diversity found in its people and their cultures, in its farms and cities, in its food and drink and entertainment, and in its terrain and climate. We’ve met thousands of people and made quite a number of them our friends for life. We’ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Pacific. We’ve been lost in the wheat fields of eastern Oregon and tangled in Boston’s rush-hour traffic. Oh, and we’ve enjoyed the lovingly-made products of some of our nation’s most dedicated craftsmen at over a hundred brew pubs across the country. We have memories to last a lifetime, many captured in photographs and these blog entries. It’s been wonderful.

So it’s with mixed but generally good feelings that I bring this blog to its conclusion. I plan to leave it online for a year or two in hopes that it will encourage others, such as you, to seek out their own adventure. I may even do an occasional post just to keep those of you who use our RSS feed up to date on how things are going for us.

Thank you for reading these ramblings. I hope you’ve gotten half the enjoyment from reading them that I’ve gotten from writing them. And In particular, I hope I’ve heightened your sense of adventure a bit.

Please allow me to leave you with some heartfelt advice. Don’t postpone life. There’s one you, living one life, one time—no do-overs, no second chances. Don’t waste another moment of your life worrying about the future or regretting the past; you can do little about either. “Now” is all that’s real. Enjoy it.

Our best wishes to you all.

Alan