We traveled over 5,200 miles in the past 5 weeks from Cottonwood, AZ to Columbus, OH where we picked up RVilla then on to Kalispell, MT where we established residency and back to Cottonwood to do a final gear and bike pack. Wow, what a whirlwind trip. Now we can finally slow down and enjoy the fruits of our labor even though we had a laundry list of things to do here in Cottonwood. We're staying at Dead Horse Ranch State Park, a very nice State Park with trails, great scenery and the Verde River flowing through it. There are many bird species here because of the riparian corridor provided by the river. We even had dueling owls outside the other night.
It's also been great reconnecting with friends and although everyone thinks RVilla is lovely, their reactions have ranged from, "Beautiful, but there's no way I could live in something this small." to a nostalgic remembrance of many happy years of RV'ing.
One of the most important decisions has been which bikes we take with us and the amount of associated gear, and thus weight, in the truck. Remember, we were a family with one car and four bicycles. We pretty much have a bike for almost any type of terrain. My husband's personal favorite is his touring bike and it was with a heavy heart that he made the decision to return it to storage and focus instead on his mountain bike and road bike. I am so proud of him, this decision did not come easily. My bike will stay in storage as well for now to give my hip more time to heal. We'll be back in January and will reassess at that time.
We also purchased our Honda generators which will allow us to boondock (go off grid) for extended periods. We'll be able to go to more remote places and not have to spend money on camping as we'll have a way to power the RV. We'll also have an extra 14 gallons of water. Our biggest tie to civilization will be having to find a dump station as our grey and black tanks will fill up. Oh well....on to our next adventure. Looks like we're heading to California shortly so more on that later.
It's also been great reconnecting with friends and although everyone thinks RVilla is lovely, their reactions have ranged from, "Beautiful, but there's no way I could live in something this small." to a nostalgic remembrance of many happy years of RV'ing.
One of the most important decisions has been which bikes we take with us and the amount of associated gear, and thus weight, in the truck. Remember, we were a family with one car and four bicycles. We pretty much have a bike for almost any type of terrain. My husband's personal favorite is his touring bike and it was with a heavy heart that he made the decision to return it to storage and focus instead on his mountain bike and road bike. I am so proud of him, this decision did not come easily. My bike will stay in storage as well for now to give my hip more time to heal. We'll be back in January and will reassess at that time.
We also purchased our Honda generators which will allow us to boondock (go off grid) for extended periods. We'll be able to go to more remote places and not have to spend money on camping as we'll have a way to power the RV. We'll also have an extra 14 gallons of water. Our biggest tie to civilization will be having to find a dump station as our grey and black tanks will fill up. Oh well....on to our next adventure. Looks like we're heading to California shortly so more on that later.