March 24th, 2019 T minus 68
Well Monday the 25th marks 10 weeks till retirement. Final day will be May 31st, 2019. The company I have been working for the last 13 years after we came off the road for a year has been the most exceptional company one can imagine. Generous beyond belief in sharing their success with employees, although I am sad to leave I may do some occasional work for them in maintenance items, but in general retirement will be our life :) . Social Security has been filed and determined and will begin this summer, this is a whole new chapter in life. When we attempted retirement in 2005 we had many struggles in that we owned and owed on an industrial building, had to supply our own insurance, and had no notable income. What is different now is building is paid for and rented, we have retirement income from IRA's and of course Social Security Retirement income to rely on.
Getting back on the road is something we have been longing for, Deanna has had a neck and a back operation since I returned to work in 2006 and in the past year has been diagnosed with Lupus. Fortunately it was caught early and is a mild case and not expected to ramp up now that she is on medication to help control the flares and issues associated with this horrible disease, it is the great imitator they call it as it is almost identical to Rheumatoid Arthritis but left untreated can involve organs. We caught hers in time and no such thing is happening to her fortunately. Her new normal is pains unexplained and sometimes show up for just a few minutes or hours and then gone. On the unfortunate days it may last longer. Joint pain and swelling is a major factor and makes the decision on what she will do during the day.
Fortunately for me I have remained pretty healthy.
We have so many things on our bucket list to start on but the first major trip of our retirement is heading to Utah to visit the 5 National Parks, Arches, Canyon Lands, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Park. Along with those are several State parks and one in particular is Goosenecks State Park where you can camp along the edge of a 1000' Canyon! Wide open vastness of beauty seeing as far away as Arizona, named because of the way the San Juan river snakes through the canyon. The San Juan river begins in the mountains of Colorado and works it way to meet up with the Colorado River at Lake Powell. The Canyon formed from millions of years of erosion. Our journey west to Utah will be early fall and the plan is to see as much of Utah as we can before the weather chases us out and we then head south past the Grand Canyon into southern Arizona to the Quartzsite area where we will hopefully escape the winters wrath in Ohio. From Quartzite we will travel around the area and explore probably the Salton Sea, Joshua Tree and other numerous destinations. A lot of this is public land where we can camp for free but obviously must provide our own power which will be supplied by the sun through our solar panels. We hope many will travel along with us as we explore and post pictures and videos of our experiences.
Prior to leaving for Utah we will do a lot of the State Parks in Ohio, some we have never been too and who knows where else we will end up at :) After all, we don't have to be any place at all.
Of course our mascot Jessie Dog will be with us the entire time, our motto is if Jessie can't go then we don't go! This will be her first visit to desert area and will be interesting to see how she adapts to not having green grass all the time to do her business! Major had adapted to it but wasn't crazy about it.
Well, this was just a quick update since I haven't posted lately. More to come, hope you can come along!
