Wanted to say hi and stop lurking.  I found this site over the weekend and find I keep coming back.  While I've looked at other RV and/or Full-Timing Forums in the past, this one just has a different tone and so much fun and helpful information.

I'm Carol and my SE (Spousal Equivelant) is Johnny.  We have a 13 year old Australian Shepherd / Dingo mix named Sage who absolutely loves to travel.  Before she came to live with me 8 years ago she traveled with my dad in his 18 wheeler all over the country.  I think the happiest day of her life with me was when Johnny brought home the F350 HD Diesel King Ranch and she got to go for a ride!

I can't tell you where we are in terms of the full-timing dream.  It's really just a big question mark right now.  But I'm finding it more and more intriguing.  We just came back from a 3 week rv trip (I hesitate to call it a vacation since as a realtor I did some work pretty much everyday we were gone) and I keep finding myself wandering back to exploring the full-timing question.

As mentioned, I'm a Realtor here in Austin, TX and about to turn 50 in a little less than 6 months.  I've been getting those lovely reminders from AARP for over a year now.  Johnny is 10 years older and semi-retired.  He's 100% military disabled and works about 5 - 6 months a year at power plant outages.  We live in Austin now but Johnny lived most of his life in Louisiana where he has grown kids and 3 grandsons with a 4th grandkid on the way.  I never had any kids of my own, but have happily skipped directly to "gramma" status.

I have a big house in Austin and Johnny has a 40ft Fuzion 393 Toyhauler 5th wheel.  He had a little travel trailer, but when he started working the outages decided it was time for something more liveable.  The toyhauler lets us take the Suzuki Intruder 1500 with us on the road.  So we've got an option here...  When we travel we pretty much split the driving -- unless I do most of it.  Remember... Truck driver dad... I think it's genetic!

As we were traveling the past month we got to talking about whether a motorhome would be a better fit for us.  Johnny has rhuematoid arthritis so some of the set up gets to be a little difficult depending on how he's doing.  So being the data queen I am I started poking around the internet looking at options and found this site.  I also had a 35ft Fleetwood Pace Arrow in a previous life before Johnny...  So I've had a motorhome and some experience manuvering one.

Part of me is very intrigued with the notion of simplifying.  Just not sure we're ready to give up a bricks and sticks 100%.   But it sure would be nice to have fewer expenses and not have to work quite so much.  And having more flexibility to go visit the grandkids would be good and go with Johnny when he travels to an outage would be great.  It would mean giving up real estate and doing something else, but I've been self-employed since 2001 so that wouldn't be an entirely new thing... Just not quite sure what I'd do. 

Sorry to ramble on so long, but that's where we're at...  Looking forward to getting to know all you fine folks better.

Carol and Johnny