Our life on the road has been a fantastic way to see the USA. We've been fortunate, over the last five years, to have seen so many jaw-dropping sights. It has been anything but hectic. Our 15 years aboard a sailboat conditioned us to a pace of life that leads to leisurely travel. 60,000 miles really isn't like we've been tearing around the country - some people cover that in a few years of frenetic vacations. But with two exceptions, we have never been longer than three weeks in the same place. In the winter of '07-'08 we stayed in central Arizona for four months while we sampled winter conditions in Sedona. (What a great experience.) Then in the winter of '08-'09 we stayed in the Rio Grande Valley for three months, the departure from which was the start of this blog.
While we were enjoying our travels, there has been a background activity at work. We are certain this RVing thing is the way we want to live out our days, but we knew from the start that we would eventually need a permanent site or piece of property to call our own - where we could go "home" to whenever we wanted to take a break from seeing the country.
There were many choices.
We could opt for a small plot of land out in the country somewhere (one that we could afford) and then build an RV port (or two - one for visiting friends, of course) that had built-in connections to water and sewer and electric with perhaps a covered area for the RV and a patio. Maybe even a living area attached to the port, so we could choose to move into apartment-sized living quarters when living off-the-road. This is sounding more and more like a house, small though it may be, but with all the accoutrements of home ownership, like taxes and insurance and maintenance and repair and upkeep - WAIT A MINUTE - this is what we went boating and RVing to get away from. Besides, we're talking $50-$60,000 in areas that we weren't particularly longing to spend the rest of our life in. (oops - ending a sentence with a preposition - God, I hate that!) There are many folks, some of whom we count among our good friends, who have opted for this lifestyle. Well, God bless you. But it's not for us. And unfortunate as it may be, bailing out on the rat race 15 years before we were "allowed" didn't lead to a large nest egg to draw from in our twilight years (oh, puleease!) So even though we visited a few of these candidates, I guess it was really just for show, because we knew in our heart of hearts that this wasn't for us.
We could opt for leasing a site in an established RV park. There are hundreds of these, depending on how much you are willing to spend each year for the lease payment, typically between $1800 for small sites and few amenities (check out the pic at the right) to $6000 or more for larger sites and greater amenities. (Real resorts with golf courses and expansive sites are normally buy-in situations in the $60-90,000 range, again well beyond our means.) Working it this way, you can adjust your surroundings to match the reality of your financial situation. Another upside is that you can establish a real sense of belonging to a community of a hundred or more neighbors with whom you share a common bond of lifestyle and more. The downside is that you have to accept living under the control of corporations who have their bottom line at heart, and not your continued enjoyment of the status quo. (Rules are rules, you know. If you don't like the new ones, well, you can just move on.)
Soo what we need, thank you very much, is a roomy lot in a park with resort amenities, where we're the boss, with a manageable buy-in, and an affordable annual maintenance, where we don't really have an ownership stake so there's no insurance or tax problems. Whew! Then, on top of everything else, the weather plays a big roll in our decision process. Can't have the winters too cold, or the summers too hot. Plenty of sunny days, but enough rain to keep the countryside green. When you have a permanent lot/site, you can expect to have to pay your own electric bill, so let's have low rates on power and LP. And, oh yeah, please, Santa, can we have a strong cell phone and internet connection.
Our travels and experiences have revealed such an option. We belong to an RV club called Escapees, a self-described "Total support network for RVers." We joined originally to establish a "residence" to use for insurance, vehicle registration, voting, mailing address, and mail forwarding services. It turns out the club is so much more than that, from club functions and activities, to campgrounds, to advocacy in D.C. When we see the SKP sticker on another RV, we know we have a close friend, even though we may not have been formally introduced. If you are RVing or thinking about it, Jan and I heartily recommend joining, even if it's only for part of the services and perks that membership brings. It's well worth the $65 per year.
The club has three classifications of campgrounds. The one that fits our longterm needs is called the SKP parks. There are eleven of these located across the country, and what makes them different from the other parks in the system is that they are owned by the members of each of the individual parks. The membership buy-in (which is returned to you if you should choose to move on at some later date) provides an RV site and access to all amenities and full voting rights. Over the past five years we have visited many of the eleven locations, but declined to get on the waiting list (sometimes 300 - 400 names long) for any of them. Then last February, after a year or more of my health issues with no end in sight, we visited the Jojoba Hills SKP Park about 20 miles outside Temecula, CA. For us, it seemed like the perfect match, and we would be 102 on the waiting list, estimated to be less than two years. Once each month, we would call to see how far up the list we were moving, and by December, we were all the way up to 20. Whoopee! Maybe this spring!
Imagine our shock when we got a call on January 19th telling us that a site was available for us NOW! We happened to be staying at a park nearby (35 miles,) so after quickly transfering some savings around, we drove up on the 24th, checked out the lot, signed the papers, and moved in the next day.
Jojoba Hills feels like home. There are 283 sites layed out among the hilly terrrain, and we think we have one of the best. We've met many of the members already. The annual membership meeting, including the election of the resort board of directors, happened to be Feb 4th.
And the beauty is that my health is great and Jan and I can really enjoy it all right now. We've bought some of our patio furniture and a gas grill, and the hummingbirds and gold finches and scrub jays and quail have discovered our feeders. Sonny loves it too. It's hard to imagine our lives being much better.
More about life at site 304 soon.
One benefit for us has been the "yard" - I know...all you readers who have real yards to tend are saying "Are you crazy???" but we have been without a piece of ground where we could dig in the soil or plant a flower or a tree for nearly 25 years. That's a long time for a guy who used to love to pull weeds - yes, I used to be mentally ill. Now we have a space where we can actually do some landscaping and cultivating - go to Lowes and Home Depot and pick out flowers and plants - visit a rose ranch up in the mountains to select the "right" variety of rose bushes to try - shop local nurseries to get the right kind of fruit tree that will thrive in the area. All this and I don't need a lawnmower, because there's no lawn. You can see from these "before and after" pictures, we've taken advantage of all the place has to offer. New outdoor furniture. New places for decor. New ways to make this little piece of heaven even more enjoyable. 
You quickly get to know your fellow Jojobians, because volunteering for things is at the heart of the success of this place. It was built on 145 acres of virgin high desert by a group of 30 or so RVers (median age 67) from the local area starting back in 1989. The whole place is beautifully run/maintained by a manager, a fulltime staff of only three office and five maintenance people. So it's obvious that there is much work to be performed by membership volunteering. We can do as much or as little as we want of the day-to-day things as well as special projects like contruction of new storage sheds or restoration of a pond, and committee duty on the various boards which keep the resort running. That may seem like fulltime work, but Jan and I total around 10-15 hours per week - just enough to keep you off your backside.
