Ready, Set… WAIT!
Home for the Holidays
We are full-time RV’ing, and when it comes to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, we plan to spend most of them in the Sacramento area. So just as soon as we returned from “Spectacular Mendocino in November”, we rolled right into the holiday season. I’ll spare you the details, but what a time we had! Because the RV is our home, we do need (of course) a place to set-up camp. Fortunately for us, we discovered the Auburn Gold Country RV Park. It works perfectly for us - only 20 minutes from our home town of Rocklin, and 30-40 minutes away from friends and family in the Sacramento area. And in the opposite direction, deep inside the Sierra foothills, we can shop and dine in the charming and festive 49er gold rush towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City. It’s such a relief to have found a great place to return to year after year.
House is Still for Sale
When we put our house on the market at the end of October, little did we know it would still be for sale when the new year rolled around. High interest rates, bad weather and the holiday season ganged-up against us. By the beginning of January, we had completed nearly 20 showings without even a hint of an offer. Feeling very discouraged, mid-month we and Peggy, our realtor, called a time-out to assess the feedback from prospective buyers. Top of the list - living across the street from an elementary school is a perceived deal breaker due to neighborhood noise and congestion. And after sharing the photos of our house with a designer friend, Peggy suggested we repaint two bedrooms and the front door with muted colors, matching what we did in other rooms last summer. Moreover, she generously offered to stage our empty house to give it a clean, contemporary, lived in feeling. For one week the house was temporarily taken off the market to accommodate the changes, and by the third week in January we were back in business.
Did the house sale? Not yet. Showings are steadily increasing as we sneak up on spring. Even so, at the end of January we dropped the asking price another $25,000. Guess what? A few days later — boom — our first offer! We countered with a small amount of pushback. The buyers said they were “looking forward to making new memories for many years to come”, and their parents were reportedly on their way to see the new place. Done deal? Nope. The next day came and went without a response to our counter, only to eventually discover the buyers fell in love with a bigger house. Offer withdrawn… bummer!
Nonetheless, at the lower price activity has definitely picked-up. A crazy low-ball offer was made last weekend. We countered with a small price decrease — no deal. A third offer is lurking out there pending financing. And so we wait…
Tying-up (Too) Many Loose-ends
Realizing a dream doesn’t come cheap. There have been seemingly endless tasks to complete in the way of someday setting sail and starting our cross-country adventures.. The day after New Year’s, Lois and I took stock of where things stood. Honestly, there was much to celebrate — repairs, renovations, finding the RV, taking the house to market — 95% of the work was behind us! Not wanting to make a career out of talking about full-time RV’ing — but never actually doing it — we drew a line in the sand and committed ourselves to saying final good-byes and being on our way by February 1.
So what about the house? That can be closed on the road as long as it is empty and ready to transfer to a new owner. But this certainly wasn’t the case as we entered into January. We still had tons of stuff in the garage.
Plus, there were other big things to get done like sell two cars, replace them with a towable vehicle, and outfit it to be flat-towed behind the RV. Frankly, once we listed out the final list of tasks to be completed, it was very discouraging. We had done so much heavy lifting already, it was hard to find the strength and motivation to finish that final 5% of work. When do we get to play?
But thanks be to God, when our tanks were empty He provided the hope and help we needed to cross the finish line. On Saturday, February 1, we were all done but for two things — hooking-up the car to the RV and saying a few more good-byes.
Ready, Set… WAIT!
Today is Valentine’s Day. Are we criss-crossing the country? Is it everything we hoped for? No, and no. Here’s what has happened since:
The RV-car hook-up took 4 days to complete due to awful torrential rainfall in California.
While waiting for the work to be completed, I contracted the flu.
When we finally got the RV and car back from the shop, we discovered the mechanic accidentally broke our power steering… back to the shop.
After picking-up our newly repaired car, we actually set sail — first stop to say good-bye to my family in the Bay Area. But no sooner did we arrive, a secondary infection set me back.
After sequestering myself to the RV in front of my sister’s house, with a newly started Z-pack of antibiotics coursing through my system, I’m finally feeling better. Wow, what a ride!
Hard to believe, but Lois and I may actually be on the brink of setting sail tomorrow! Where to? Palm Springs, Grand Canyon, and Sedona, AZ, then dropping south to the I10 and heading east to Florida. Stay tuned!
