The end is in site

Well, the house is empty and all cleaned - tomorrow is the closing. Dan is working on his tools and figuring out what he wants to take with him and what will be stored. The 5th wheel is finally straightened up and I actually cleaned it today - ran the vacuum, swept the floor, dusted the furniture, and cleaned the bathroom. We still don't know when we will leave Dowling Park yet exactly - it will be either Wednesday or Thursday of this coming week.

Now, where are we going?? Well, at the end of May we were thinking we would be going to a state park in Northeast Georgia - Bobby Brown State Park. We were all set to host in the state park for a couple of months. Hosting at a state park means you will be greeting and helping fellow campers as well as doing general cleaning - cleaning campsites when people leave and keeping the bathhouse clean. For performing these chores you are provided a full site campsite at no cost. Then we received a phone call from the park manager. It seems that the state of Georgia has been hit hard by the recession and has changed some of there parks to "honor system" parks which means that there will be NO paid staff on site and the camp hosts would have to perform more duties (which was not a problem) and there would be no help if needed for about 45 minutes - as the closest park with paid staff would be 40 miles away. Dan and I talked about this and since this would be our first experience at hosting we were a little worried. When out of the blue, we received a phone call from a park we had applied to before applying to Georgia parks. We were offered a position where we would work 2 days a week and only have to greet visitors and maybe a little light dusting. Not only would we be given a full hook up site we would be paid a small salary ($15.00 each per day) and milage from our campsite to the cabin where we will be working. So, where is this wonderful place you might ask???? IDAHO! Yes, I said Idaho - actually, right outside West Yellowstone. We are so excited about this that we can hardly stand it. We will be staying and working at Johnny Sack Cabin from the end of June until the second week of September. I'll keep you posted on what we do when we are not working - since we only have to work 2 days a week we will be doing a lot of site seeing.

Also, this is my first post using the "air card" - we will see how much of my KG's on my air card this will take - but it will be a lesson for me to see. I still haven't posted any pictures yet, but I will in the near future.

More on the financial end of this endeavor will come next week, along with our impression of our first days on the road. Should be interesting!

Hollow

The house if just a house now. It isn't "home" any longer. All the personality is out of the house and it is just four walls and a roof. I'm very surprised how quickly I have disconnected - it just isn't my home any more.

The last weekend in May we went to Lakeland with a load of furniture for our children that live there - 3 of our 4 - and attended our oldest granddaughter's high school graduation. We also checked out a RV resort close to Lakeland to see were we will stay when we come back in November. Things went well until we discovered we forgot the bed that we were suppose to take to our youngest daughter. Which meant they had to come up here this past weekend for one night.

We come back to Dowling Park a week ago Sunday - picked up the new 5th wheel a week ago today - came back and started loading it with our stuff. We moved it to the RV park here in the Village on Wednesday morning and have been staying there ever since. It is now "home" and I think we will be very comfortable once everything gets settled.

This past week we went through everything that was left at the house - had our HUGE moving sale on Friday and Saturday - my friend Joyce and I packed up everything that did not sell yesterday afternoon and right now I am waiting for the truck to come and pick it all up. We did really well with the sale - all the big stuff sold except the living room couch and the swivel rocker. Not too bad considering it rained off and on the whole weekend.

We have just about gotten everything out of the house now, we still have a few things that will be going to my mother's house in Atlanta and a couple of things that is going to my oldest daughter in Atlanta. Those will be loaded in a U-Haul trailer on Wednesday and we will leave on Thursday morning - set things up in Atlanta, spend the night, and come back here on Friday. Rest on the weekend and close on the house next Monday. So far, everything has been going on schedule - I just hope it stays on schedule.

Some things have changed as far as where we will be going and how long we will be there, but I'll save that for my next post - keep you guys in suspense. Tomorrow I will do laundry and go through the pantry. When the housekeeper comes on Wednesday EVERYTHING should be out of the house and I don't want to come back in after tomorrow.

We have changed all our direct deposits to our bank in Lakeland - we have our address ready to change - when we leave here we are going to have to make a trip to Pensacola - this will be our new home base address and we discovered that Dan's drivers license will expire on his birthday in August so we will have to make a little detour and have his license renewed (mine also probably) renew our tags and change our regristration for voting to the new address. Just a few of the little things that you may not think about having to do. We have also taken care of all the insurance needs on the truck and 5th wheel, notified our credit card company that we will be traveling so they don't put a hold on our account (which they have done in the past because of the charges in different cities). I've also gotten an air card for my computer - but I'm using the internet at the house right now - I mean I'm paying for it until the 15th I might as well save my time on the air card until we leave.

I'll sign off for now - just know that this is not the part of this transition that I have not been looking forward to - I've read that most people take a year or more to make this transition - we are doing it in 6 weeks and believe me - it's HARD work and many decisions have had to be made quickly. Maybe for us it's better to do it quickly and not drag it out, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone! Let me go see if there is something I need to pack - Oh! Dan is calling me, he's hungry - why am I not surprised!