When you decide to travel full time, a whole series of decisions need to be made regarding how much of your stuff to sell off.
I mentioned in the post, Stuff, Maintenance and Alaska, we went through quite a decision process before we determined we were going to travel full time. Once we decided full time travel was right for us we had to determine what mode of travel we were going to take. There seems to be two primary camps of full timers out there. Those that live and travel in an RV and those that live aboard a boat and travel that way. Well we have a sailboat that we keep on Lake Michigan that we really enjoy. It’s a beautiful boat and sailing on the Great Lakes is a real pleasure. Wind in your face, sun on your back and no engine noise. Nice. We had already determined that keeping a house was not in the cards because of all the maintenance required when you’re not there. So do we set sail full time or do we drive? Keels or wheels?
As I said, sailing on the Great Lakes in the summer is hard to beat. In the winter, not so much. So if we full timed in the sailboat we’d have to take her down to warmer waters for the winter. The Bahamas in January does sound pretty nice. Then do we reverse the trip for the summer and come back up to the Great Lakes or head up the east coast of the US? On the other hand, full time travel in a motor home allows quite a bit of freedom to just follow the weather as the seasons change and do it quickly. Plus there are lots of locations you can’t realistically get to by boat. The Rocky Mountains for example. Why not do both you ask? Keep the sailboat for the summers on the Great Lakes and get a motorhome for travel south in the winter. After all, we are selling the house. Maybe we could do both. Well we debated that question for quite awhile.
We sat down and asked ourselves where we wanted to explore and what we wanted to photograph over the next several years. We determined that a number of the land based destinations needed to be in the summer. Alaska for example. Or Glacier National Park, or the Canadian Rockies. The list goes on. If we stored the boat in the winter and then went to Alaska for the summer, the boat would be in storage year ’round. Not good for the boat. Not good for the wallet either as storage is expensive. So we concluded we had to make a choice. One or the other. Keels or wheels. And the winner is…(drumroll)…wheels. The balance of locations we wanted to explore tipped heavily in favor of the motorhome. So, we’ll put the boat in storage for the winter as we normally do and spend some time getting her in tip top shape for sale in the spring.
It wasn’t an easy choice. Many of the decisions you need to make when you decide to go full time are not easy. But they need to be made or you may never leave. And that choice was just not an option.
