NOTE: When the final day arrived, we spent the last daytime hours at the home we'd be leaving behind for the next year, and in the early evening hours boarded a ferry for the mainland, and the start of our Great Adventure. On the ferry ride I reflected on the effort it had taken to get us to a final departure, and penned these thoughts to add to our series...
In the weeks which preceded out mid-October departure date, we began to learn first-hand what so many of our readers have been writing about these past couple of years. It's one thing to speculate -- in the abstract -- about issues such as providing for your mail; deciding on how to stay connected by phone, fax and email; providing for a home which needs tender loving care in your absence; determining how health insurance can follow you; and a whole host of other issues which are no longer abstract. They're now oh so very real! And they can't be addressed by abstract or cookie cutter solutions. They need real answers. How very different it is when you really do this thing called full timing...
Providing for mail forwarding can be challenging under the most routine of circumstances. But ours was compounded because (i) our home would be rented to friends during our absence -- and we're sure they don't want mail addressed to us; and (ii) in the same month we were preparing to leave, the City Fathers decided it would be a grand idea to change all the street names and numbers in the area where our home is located.
Our solution was to acquire a post office box, and begin a long and difficult campaign to change all of our incoming correspondence to the new box number -- which would then be forwarded to us by a local mail forwarding service. This is, of course, much more easily said than done. Have you ever tried to list all of the places that regularly send mail to you? If you're serious about full timing at some point, you really ought to at least take a stab at that exercise. We started a list with the obvious places -- your friendly IRS, driver's licenses, social security, banks and financial institutions, relatives (we have more than we'd previously counted), insurance companies, etc. At first we came up with a list of a few dozen parties we'd have to contact. Then we monitored our mailbox each day, only to find each delivery would bring us a new handful of persons we'd have to notify. Actually, there is a teaching point here. Those who aspire to being on the road for an extended period should start many months in advance compiling a list of persons to whom a change of address will need to be directed. If your experience parallels ours, you'll be astounded how long that list will get!
And of course there's the house you're leaving. Whether you're selling it or preparing it for rental in your absence really doesn't matter much. The burden will be the same. In our case, even though we were renting our home to good friends -- and partially furnished at that -- the sheer volume of accummulated "stuff" that didn't deserve to be carefully packed away for future use was staggering. With six truckloads of "stuff" going to the local Thrift Shop we began to feel a bit of an ownership interest in that place. I'm not sure why we'd kept most of it. Perhaps we thought we were saving it for the kids. And even though some of the things would fit into their households, most was outdated, obsolete, or just plain worn out. The only good news in all this was that the Thrift Shop supports a number of local community services, and at least we were finding the highest and best use for this excess accumulation.
Once we'd purchased the new rig, we arranged to keep it at our "home park" (Fidalgo Bay RV Resort) in Anacortes, so that we could begin the process of loading it with the things we'd want most to have with us for our projected year on the road. Over a period of some weeks the coach became reasonably well equipped and stocked, even as our home became much less so. Part way through this process we began to feel we were "home" when we were at the coach, and "camping out" when we were home. Odd. Then there were those last few days, when virtually all the shelves and drawers were empty. One drawer had a couple of place settings of silver; and one shelf had two plates, two glasses, and a small assortment of cooking utensils. I can recall impulsively opening a favorite cabinet where the munchies used to reside only to find myself staring into what seemed like the vastness of outer space. Nothing there...
But finally the day arrived which would be our last at our island home. All of our worldly goods which would not be making the trip with us had either been jettisoned locally, or were neatly packed away in boxes in our storage areas. The windows were washed, floors polished, garage uncharacteristically uncluttered, and even my own small shop area was unrecognizeably tidy. Stephanie's last stowage task would be the bedding, towels, and those lonely last utensils. For me, it was transferring all of our life's data onto zip disks (which will run as well from the laptop), going through the agony of trashing all the data files on the desktop computer (which would end up who knows where), pulling the plug on the computer and its peripherals, and packing away the miles of wires and connections which had made the whole set of high tech implements work so well together for the past few years.
We knew we'd had our last meal in our own home; that we'd slept in our own bed for the last time for who knows how long. It's a wonderful house, on a spectacular waterfront lot, in a very quiet, unspoiled and secluded area of the San Juan Islands. On this last evening we watched the sun begin to sink in the West, causing the sky to spawn a variety of the red, orange and gold colors that characterize this setting. We also saw with renewed appreciation those same colors mirrored in the still waters in front of us -- and for the first time wondered when we'd see such a sight again. We'd saved an extra thirty minutes for this late day departure -- and committed it to a last walk along the beach. This to say a final goodbye as we began our move from the pleasant familiarity of the present, to what we've envisioned as the exciting and challenging new experiences ahead. It was, in part, a nostalgic farewell to our island.
And now we would be off to the ferry for an early evening sail to the mainland, and the first night in our new home...