Day 31 - Final Thoughts

This showed up my Facebook feed a few days back and I thought it was such a fitting thought for me during this stage...especially on those days when I wonder, "are we crazy for doing what we are doing?" I AM, oh trust me, I AM enjoying our carefree lifestyle! However, I have to be honest and tell you that I do have days I wonder if we shouldn't be working at real jobs and being responsible adults. It's thankfully, not a daily struggle, just little fleeting thoughts every now and again, here and there. And, again, being honest, at some point we probably will go back to the real world and have day jobs. Only time will tell; so stay tuned while we continue Living the dream... it may not always be this way! So we plan to enjoy it while we can. 

Hope you have enjoyed the 31 days this year, I know I did, in fact I think it's my favorite one so far!

Day 30 - Wednesday Words - C.S. Lewis

Short and sweet today...

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963); Writer, Theologian, Scholar

And because the sunsets have been sooooo absolutely lovely I want to share a few more photos with you. They make me take pause and thank God for the beauty he surrounds us with day in and day out. It's amazing in my opinion!

Absolutely stunning beauty...

Tomorrow is the last day of the 31 Day challenge, if you missed out, you really did miss out, it's a great challenge to take on, check it out here and start making your plan to participate next year!

Day 29 - Doing life or what we like to call "Living the dream..."

So what does one do with one's time while living in an RV you might wonder...well, we just do life. For us that's finding a local church among other things! We have been fortunate to be in areas that we already have a connection for the most part. However, we will venture out and just find a place when we aren't. That's what we did here in Destin when we found this church just down the street from where we are parked!

We also hang out with friends. Help friends out when we can. Make new friends. Looking up friends from days passed is really great; in fact it's pretty cool and we love to reconnect with those from our earlier days!!!

 Spent the day with this friend recently; we had lunch as well as hit up a used bookshop!

Lunch w/ AL friends was awesome!

I also read! I love to just be able to sit outside preferably with a slight breeze and read. It's just been awesome to sit by the bay or pool and read here in Destin but reading in Sunny or out under the awning it awesome as well and I have been able to enjoy it everywhere we have stopped!

MiRV keeps occupied in many ways... and thankfully he tackles little jobs around the RV or just little putters to make life smoother for us!

Puttering on a surfboard carrier...

or he's scouting out spots to get on the water when he can.

 MiRV in the bay

 

 MiRV in the Gulf

He is sooooooo looking forward to getting back to the Atlantic side of FL so he can surf again! There have been waves here but not far enough out and organized enough to surf. He is really excited to be able to return to Cocoa Beach and get his board in the ocean again!

Recently, I even joined him on the water, the OPEN water. Up to this point I had only navigated the pool!! I really did like it. Course it helped a lot that the water was very calm!!!

Me SUPing in the Gulf

But honestly you can usually find me on the shore with a book in a beach chair ...

He's also taken to blogging again, since he is no long MiB (Man in Blue), he chose to go with MiRV for his  new blog title.

We also like to go on walks, runs and bike rides to enjoy our surroundings...we happen across a lot of neat things while we are out and about exploring!

 

Saw this neat sand art on our recent beach walk! Love manatees!

 

Spotted an orange tree on one of our neighborhood rides!

We definitely don't just sit around inside the coach and watch the TV all day long, we get out and enjoy life. I am amazed at the folks who do not do the same. We were visiting with a couple the other evening and chatted about the different types of RVers and we definitely don't fit the mold he told us for Class A folks...he stated in his experience they (Class A folks) are usually NOT the mix and mingle type. Since I don't think we have ever fit the mold (ever) then it's seems to reason we wouldn't in this  instance either. I am happy to see/know that we continue to bust the mold as we get our feet wet in the RV world and haven't become the norm!!

Oh and just hanging out is good for us too! In fact we feel we do that really well!

Hanging out and waiting for the sun to set over the bay a few nights back!

It is our opinion that we are Living the dream...

The scoop on the 31 day challenge it here.

Day 28 - LAUNDRY

You never know what you're gonna get with the laundry facilities! Tinker AFB famcamp definitely has the cleanest we have used. It even had a great informational board with the hours of the commissary, BX, thrift shop, a TV, ice machine :), iron and ironing board. The ones below are probably not the cleanest I've used. They aren't bad just notso clean!
 

 Average laundry facility.

This one even has an ice machine which always makes me happy!

Price varies. Some places are even free, we like free but haven't been to a location yet that is free! For our experience it's been anywhere from 50c to $1.50 to wash and 50c to $1.00 to dry. Some give more drying time then others and we often will not run the dryer more then once, we just take it on back to the RV and hang up/drape things til they dry. It works for us. I have also washed out a few things in the sink or shower (think work out clothes, like my sports bra).

Current facilities

Where we are now is 75c to wash and 75c to dry in the regular machines which is lower then average. Interesting that they have industrial size machines here that cost $2.50 per load to wash or dry. They are HUGE! I don't think I will ever have loads that big so I won't be using those! Our bedspread would even be dwarfed in these!

Factoid: We have spent $131.75 (in quarters no less!) to do our laundry since we started full-timing 9 months ago! That may not be quite truly accurate, okay it's NOT...since we did snag few free loads once in awhile when we were visiting family at different locations. Nonetheless it is the total we have spent thus far on laundry. If we ever upgrade Sunny we might try to have a washer/dryer in our rig, lots of the bigger coaches do. I'm sure it would be really nice but so far it's not been a big deal to do laundry where we've been.

Day+# challenge info found here!

Day 27 - Eats

I will direct you to my post about cooking in the RV here.

But I will add some specifics such as our grocery budget is $250 and if you read my Money Matters post on day 22 you know we went over last month and so far this month we are going over as well. May have to adjust the budget for that line item! I also shared in that post that the commissary is a huge benefit that we are grateful for. The prices in my opinion are the best around but that is only if there is no ALDI nearby. Which is one of my favorite stores for many reasons but mostly because it saves on our grocery spending. And for the record I do shop the local grocery stores to get the sales as another way to stretch our grocery dollars. Some locations have better sales then others. 

My upper and lower pantry cabinets. 

This is where the majority of our food gets stored. It's hard to "stock up" but then again when you are trying to stretch your grocery dollars it's hard NOT to. I also stash things under the dinette when I need to! Otherwise these two cabinets do the job. And the lower shelf of the lower cabinet holds my storage containers and bowls so it's not even ALL food in that one!

If you think that my cabinet space is lacking you will really gasp when you see the fridge. It's not tiny but it's NOT full size and the freezer is not very big either. I do tend to grocery shop more often since our fridge space is limited but it's doable and it IS working so no complaints! I just have to make sure I don't buy more cold or frozen items then I have room for! Recently Eggo waffles were on sale AND I had a coupon and MiRV was really wanting some so I bought three boxes; that pretty much took up any extra freezer space we have so I knew not to buy any frozens until that area was cleared a bit!

 Fridge

 Freezer

In Shreveport the sales were great!!! Especially on things we use and that I will only buy on sale such as soda! MiRV enjoys his soft drinks but unless I can get them on sale they are a no-go! Shreveport groceries also ran great produce sales which we enjoyed a lot since the Barksdale commissary produce section lacked. We also enjoy hitting farmer's markets for great fresh produce and again Shreveport had the BEST farmer's market! Montgomery local ads were not so great, in fact probably the worst to date, so it was the commissary for nearly everything. And commissary prices were higher in this area too which was a bummer. Commissary prices seemed to be the best at Offutt and the local stores in Omaha ran great sale ads there too! Florida has been hit and miss. Mostly miss!!! Oklahoma City was not so great as they didn't really have many grocery stores where we were but the Tinker commissary was really good on their prices so no worries. And when we get further south there will be ALDI so I will be very happy about that indeed! And hopefully get back within my orignal budget amount!!

Read more about the 31 day challenge HERE.

Day 26 - TV

Yep, we have TV. In fact, we actually have two sets in Sunny. If MiRV had his way we would have three! One for the out of doors, too, maybe eventually but right now, no. However, he does take his laptop out and sets it in one of the basement compartments and watches PC TV.

 The front TV which is up above the driver/passenger area

We are pretty basic folks, have only ever had cable one time way back in 1996 when we lived so close to the mountains in Colorado that we were unable to receive an over the air signal so we subscribed. Normally, we are just antenna people, so you can read that as notsomuch TV people. That's really true in my case, however, there ARE a few shows I do enjoy! In the RV with our over the air and we have gotten decent reception everywhere we have been. Usually we get an average of 10 channels, but some areas we get more, way more! Like when we were in OKC we got nearly 30, lots of PBS, Christian and independent offerings. We have always been able to get the BIG 3 so it works for us and best of all it's F.R.E.E. We love the that and it's really more then enough TV for me!

The bedroom TV

At some point in the future when and if there is a terrific sale (hoping for black Friday) we plan to upgrade the main TV and then switch that one to the bedroom and then potentially make that one the outdoor TV. But there will need to be a terrific sale! 

For the first time ever we have cable included with our slot space, that has been a real treat for MiRV who IS the TV watcher in our family. But not to misrepresent, I do have my favorites...Person of Interest. And I do love me some NFL, college football and basketball as well as a little NBA, gooooo Thunder and MLB, go Cardinals!!!! But I can go without it all if it's not there and available but I will tune in if we are in the RV and it's on!

And today you WILL find us watching some football! Go Chiefs!

Check out the whole Day+# thing right HERE!

Day 25 - Lather Up!

The bath house is important to us! Why you asked when you have a shower in your RV? Well, we don't shower in our RV at the present time. I know almost crazier then crazy!

Our unused shower...

Not to say that we won't, we just don't right now. Our shower is pretty good size IMO and I think I could get everything taken care of that I need to before the 6 gallon tank runs out but I don't. For one thing the pressure isn't all that great. There is a shower head that you can purchase to the tune of about $50 bucks or less to help with that and we plan to eventually get one but right now we just schlep to the bath house and use the facilities provides.

 Bath house in AL which has individual non-desiginated units with shower, sink, toilet.

Speaking of facilities they are all different and I do mean different. Some are unisex, others are Male/Female separated. Some are little rooms with one shower and one toilet others are a shower area and a toilet area. Some have little cubbies of a shower others have the shower stall and then a common area with it. Some have places to hang your bag or a benches to place your bag on; others have hooks for your towels which is REALLY nice. Some even have hairdryers in them! And as you can imagine some are cleaner then others and thankfully none have been totally gross so it works!

My shower bag :)

I carry a bag to the bath house while MiRv is a backpack kind of guy. I have all my essentials in there, shampoo, soap, razor, pick, q-tips, towel, etc. We also wear shower shoes. It's very easy and has become just part of our routine and I take it in stride. We have never had to bother with worrying about theft of our things while in the stall that makes me happy!

MiRV with his backpack on the way to the bath house

The Destin bathhouse is very clean and spacious. I like the individual stalls; they are nice with a built in bench for your shower bag.

 Destin bathhouse

 Destin shower area

Info about the 31 day challenge I am participating in is right HERE!