Yesterday we made a trip to Bass Lake Christian Retirement Community to look at a couple of RV port homes. This is a member owned, RV community, rather like a condominium. We have been looking about for possible future home base locations now for a year or so, but while we had seen several that interested us, all seemed to have some negative to prevent us from making the move to home ownership again. It does seem that we have now found our new home.

We have agreed upon a price and now all that remains is to work out the final details and to arrange for payment. This morning has been spent in making phone calls to various locations and to figuring out the best way to do things for tax purposes. The process has not been set into motion and we expect to be home owners once more, before Christmas.  As wonderful as the past ten plus years have been, living totally in our RV, we are begining to get excited about this new phase in our lives as well. I suppose we will have to relinquish the title of "fulltimers" and step back to "part-timers" soon, but we feel that we will probably still be on the road more of the time than not, at least for the next couple of years. We still have some things to do and places to see on our "bucket list" and so do not expect to spend a great deal of time there at first. The plan is to coast down to a less traveling life.

We have now been at our kids house for two nights as the shop did want to keep the motorhome over. While they will let you stay in it, the place I prefer is a long way from our kids and most of our activities so we just packed a bag and will mooch a few days. In the mean time we have been able to help some for themas well since our daughter-in-law doesn't drive, we have been able to help to get her and the kids to some places that can be difficult.

Now if we could just find Jenny a new guide-dog that was fast enough to keep up with traffic, then maybe we could teach her to drive? As amazing as our blind gal is, she still has not figured out a way to manage to drive a car! Even so, we kind of enjoy being able to help out some and we so enjoy both her and the kids. We feel very fortunate in that two of our son's have wives that have become "our girls" since we had no daughters in the family.

Last night we had the opportunity to vist with Maury & Margret Zuber, fellow Escapees who are currently staying at Lavon Lake. It was great to see them again as it always is to reconnect with our friends from the RV world.

We arrived back in Ft. Worth at 4pm on Thursday afternoon. It was a long two days to travel from Nashville here but the weatherman sure did give us a big welcome. The temperautre when we arrived was 67 and the sun was shining! It did make us very happy to be back. We are in the very RV park where our "Great Adventure" began, and for the very first time since we hit the road.

When we put the house up for sale, it sold very quickly and so we lived in the RV at this park for the last two months that I was working. At the time, the park was called the RV Ranch and it had been open less than one month. They had about 50 sites, the office was in a temporary trailer and the swimming pool was nearing completion. But we felt that they were reasonably priced and handy to work and they supplied a phone line (no extra charge) at every site. Today, things have changed a little! There are now 250 RV sites with 70 of those "premium" sites, 45 very nice cabins that are very some with spas, cable TV, phones and Wi-Fi at each RV site, four activity/shower/laundry buildings, three pools, a large playground with volleyball court, a park area, a pet area and several other features. The name is now Rustic Creek Ranch and while the rates are somewhat higher than lesser parks, at $37/night before a 15% Escapee discount, we thought that it is one of the nicest parks that we have ever stayed in. It is good to see a business that began with high hopes and big plans, now succeeding and meeting the dreams of the founder! They do have weekly and monthly rates.  And early construction has begun on a water park to open next summer.

We had a window over out couch leak a bit while we were in Nashville so we are dropping the motorhome at an RV shop to have the window removed and resealed, which is the reason for our return to Ft. Worth as we know and trust the dealer here that we used to do business with. Since we are near our kids we plan to just drop the RV by and let them keep it for a few days to take care of this problem for us. Vogt RV is where we did business pretty regularly back when we lived in Ft. Worth and the lead RV tech there has become a friend, as is the now retired service manager. We will probably leave the RV overnight, or at least this will mean that we can if the shop needs it that long. Also, our two grandchildren have been after us to do a "sleep-over" at their house when we got back so perhaps this will take care of two prioities at one time!

We spent the day traveling. This was a long travel day for us at 370 miles from Nashville, TN to just past Little Rock, or Benton, AK. We usually limit our travels to 200 miles per day or less, but since our kids got us tickets to that great show in Nashville and we have an appointment in Ft. Worth on Friday, it means two long days, back to back this trip. It looks like about 350 more miles today!

But the weather is good and the roads are dry so it should not be all that bad. I remember when we used to consider 400 miles to be an easy day! Now we think that anything more than 200 miles is hard day of travel! How the times do change.