For the past year, Connie and I have been making plans to take our full time RV travel plans to the next level. As Johnny Cash sings, "I've been Everywhere Man". Reading the words in Johnny's song, there's only 5 or 6 places mentioned that we haven't been to (we think).
Since we've seen most of the USA, we thought it was time to take our travels to Europe. We have several friends who have or still are traveling around Europe in a motorhome. Our plan was to purchase a small 7 meter motorhome (about 23 feet) in Europe and travel about 9 months out of the year there. We'd return to the USA for the winter months and visit family and friends. Then return back to Europe and continue our travels there.
We had a flight and Air BnB booked for Paris, France for this coming September. We were going for 10 days to attend a motorhome show, look at used motorhomes, and visit with the company that helps "foreigners" purchase and register vehicles in France. By the way - they don't call them RV's in Europe., they can be a caravan (trailer), motorhome, camping car, camping van, or called by many other names depending on what country you're in.
A lot of research went into planning for this new adventure. There were (are) many obstacles we had to learn how to deal with. A couple of the biggest obstacles are: 1) Non European Union citizens can't register a vehicle in Europe. We couldn't just buy a motorhome and register it. Luckily, there's a couple legal ways to still do it. 2) The "Schengen Agreement" covers a zone of 26 countries. In this Schengen Zone, US citizens are only allowed to visit these 26 countries for 90 days out of the past 180 days. Although a bit inconvenient, it's possible to leave the Schengen Zone for 90 days to a country not part of the zone (England, Ireland, Morocco, and more), then return back to the Schengen zone. Other obstacles that had to be researched and planned for included storage of the motorhome when we came back to the USA, banking, phones, Internet access, etc.
In addition to our short trip to Paris this September, we were going to start our 9-month European travel in May 2021. Unfortunately, our BIG travel plans got infected by the COVID-19 virus. With International travel greatly restricted (or prevented), we've cancelled our September trip and have placed our European motorhome plans on hold. For now, if (when) traveling is allowed again, we'll make shorter week or month long trips to various destinations.
For present times, we've moved into my 92 year-old Dad's house in Arizona. Medical issues had him moving to Washington state to live with my sister. Since Connie and I aren't tied down to a home base or regular jobs, we were free to come take care of his property. For the past month, we've been cleaning up the place, sorting his possessions, and dealing with some home repairs. We've made a lot of progress, but our bodies are feeling the pain. There's still plenty to do, but most of the physical work has been completed.
After living in a motorhome for the past 16 years, we were looking forward to the luxuries of house sitting. Having the use of a washer and dryer whenever we needed it, not washing dishes by hand, and taking long hot showers and a bathtub. We've been getting estimates for various home repairs. The highest priority repair was to clear out the extreme brush and trees around the house. We recently had a crew of 4 landscapers out, working for a couple days. They did a fantastic job! We can now freely move around the property and access the shed in the backyard.
We're enjoying our time here in Prescott and slowly getting to know our way around the back roads. Cindy and Matt have come up to visit us a couple of times from their home in San Tan Valley, about 2 hours south of us in Phoenix's east valley. Though we are not strangers to Arizona summers, it's certainly a change from when we lived in Chandler, Prescott is a little cooler, and we like that!
