Resurfacing in Tampa & A Happy and Sad Day

All -

Apologies for leaving you hanging for so long. I just re-read my last post from late September and realized just how much time has passed since I last shared information about our journey. As you might glean from the title, we are back in Tampa, Florida. We arrived back here in our winter home in mid-October after an eventful couple of months making our way slowly (and in quite a round-a-bout fashion) back east from Yellowstone, visiting friends and family in a variety of places before turning south once more to make our way to Florida.

Along the way, we made some big decisions for the next steps on our journey. The first and biggest being that we are going to get off the road for a while. Over the summer in Yellowstone, we realized that our "van" days were likely coming to an end. We knew when we hatched this plan initially, that there would likely come a time when we tired of travel in such a small vehicle and would start to think about a bigger RV that would be more like a home, and that would allow us to do some types of volunteer work and travel that we couldn't do now in the van.

And so emerged a new plan. We would settle back into a more traditional life for a bit, enjoy hanging out in one place, living with some luxuries that we went without for much of the time we were living "small" on the road (like showers, an oven, reliable internet...). And we would spend some time enjoying the aspects of professional life, we figured out along the way that we  missed just a little bit.  All the while beefing up our savings of course for the eventual purchase of a new pick-up truck and travel trailer for the adventures that still await us down the road.

Fast-forward to last Friday, when the van drove away from the condo for the last time - in someone else's loving hands. In the end it took only 5 days to sell and it sold to the first people who came to see it. Andre showed it to an older couple while I was at work and it was gone by the time I got home! Although I was a bit sad that I didn't even get to say goodbye, we have layers upon layers of van memories to soften the blow.

As it happens. Today is the three year anniversary of the day we drove the van away from Rhode Island, on course for our big adventure. And an adventure it surely has been!  Goodbye sweet van...