Our first trip is going to be Clearwater Fl as Lee will be attending RV tech school. We wanted to start out with some extra marketable skills under our belt and the ability to fix things in our own RV. He is scheduled for the January 2015 class or if the house doesn't sell April 2015.

When we left Washington state last years we had several months to travel before going into Mexico for the Winter. At the top of my bucket list was Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We wandered our way there and spent almost a month trying to see all the sights.

We experienced beautiful 80 degree days and snow storms. We saw more wildlife than I had hoped for. The natural wonders there are assume and breathtaking. We saw the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which I didn't even know existed, it alone took two days. Bison and bears and bald eagles and snow covered bison....oh my. Colors you don't even know exist in some of the pools. Stinky, bubbly, sulfur mud pools. Elk with racks bigger than big.

A month was not long enough to see it all. But the snows came and the campgrounds closed. We'll go back to see the next million acres.

It was a pretty nice beginning to our retirement.

Life is good.

Because we sold our house in the summer, our travel schedule was already set. We were in the middle of the summer art show season for Dale's business, so naturally the first stop for us was getting to the Olympic Peninsula for the Sequim Lavendar Fest, then it was a mad dash across the state of WA to a show in SE WA, then we finally slowed down a bit with the Black Hills of South Dakota being our eventual destination but it we didn't want to arrive during the Sturgis motorcycle rally so we spent a week in ID near Couer d'Alene, then a week in Wyoming before eventually getting to SD to set up our new domicile.

We are not retired so art shows and family matters tend to determine our travel schedule, but we are seeing a few things along the way, trying to not drive every weekend and if we drive on a weekend we are trying to only drive 1 out of the 2 days. Since we're still working we have less time than many of you to explore the areas we stop in, so that leaves us with a lot to see on the next visit. For the next couple of years we're likely to follow the same circuit with minor deviations depending on the art shows.

We have several places on our "want to see list" for next winter when we return to AZ, we loved exploring what we did get to see, but there's still so much to this state that we haven't seen and want to see. I'm finding that having to leave before you've seen everything the first time but knowing you'll return is so much more fun than a "typical vacation mode" where you wonder if you'll ever come back and therefore have to fit everything in on the first visit. On our list for next winter, provided we make it here before the bad weather includes the Grand Canyon and Sedona.

Our first trip was from Washington State to New England for fall colors, then down the coast to Florida for winter. It was good we did that first since we have not made it back to New England since. Not for lack of trying.

We left Western WA on August 18th and were in Western New York (Lockport) on September 14th. We got to Bar Harbor ME on the 28th, down to NJ on October 10th and entered Florida on November 4th. The majority of our travel days were under 200 miles, many under 150. This was in 2003.
Since then we have changed our travel habits a bit. When making long distances we now do two 250 to 325 mile days, then stop at least 2 nights, repeat. This gets us about 1,000 miles a week, a pace that doesn't seem to wear us out. When not trying to go long distances we travel under 225 miles and do few one night stays. If avoiding bad weather or other strong reasons to travel further, we can travel over 400 miles in a day, changing drivers every 100 miles or so.

Our first RV trip in 2003 (not full timers-layoff from work) we went to Rocky Mountain National Park. Then the Grand Tetons. Next was Yellowstone (all awesome so far). After that we went to forest campgrounds near Neihart, MT, then Great Falls, MT. After that we went to Glacier National Park and down the west side of Flathead Lake. Next we went to Mt Rushmore ( saw 4th of July fireworks there). We stopped at the Badlands during a thunderstorm on our way home. It was a great trip! Left from Perry OK and were gone about one month. Of course we did everything too fast, and covered too much in a short time. We have re-visited Yellowstone and Glacier. Before we left on this trip we had stayed a few nights at Alabaster Caverns state park in northwest Oklahoma- where my mom's parents homesteaded years earlier.