This is our first RV home – Albion #3, Riverside RV Park along the Greenbelt in Boise.

May 19 – After a long night of packing and purging we made it to the RV park after dark to find we couldn’t fit in our designated spot! We had to get creative, going in backwards and sitting mostly in the empty spot next to “ours”. We ended up at McDonalds at 11:00 pm to finally eat dinner. It wasn’t a great beginning!

May 20 – The bad news was we weren’t going to close on the house after all due to a paperwork snafu. The good news was the RV park management moved us to a much nicer spot and things felt much better.

For the next few days we settled into a routine of me finishing my school year and Randy working on projects for us and Natasha’s family.

May 23 – We still hadn’t closed on the house but we left for Memorial day weekend at our favorite site on Lake Cascade with Darrell and Cindy. We have spent many nice weekends with them in that campground in those two sites. Darrell and I book MONTHS ahead to get them. Labor Day weekend is already ours.

May 26 – I woke up Monday morning to wet carpet – that isn’t good! Our toilet foot pedal had not retracted fully and fresh water had flooded the immediate area around our bathroom and fully into our “basement” storage area. Fortunately, most items in the basement were in storage tubs so it was just a mess, and because it wasn’t black water, not a catastrophe.

It was, however, one more opportunity to reorganize and purge. We had thought we had done really well getting down to a manageable amount of stuff to come into the trailer but a small amount in a big house does not equate to a manageable amount in a big trailer. We got rid of quite a bit more.

By Monday afternoon we were headed back to Boise. On the way back, there is a truck weigh station. We were both half afraid to stop and see what we weighed. The trailer came in just over 15000 pounds. That sounds like a lot, but what it means is that we have a little less than 3000 pounds of “stuff” in our trailer, and we are within recommended limits. We think we will eventually weigh even less as we get rid of some stores that remain.

We did FINALLY close on the house on Tuesday, a week late. Randy spent some time with the new owners that afternoon to acquaint them with the house we had called home for 21 years. We are very happy that they are very happy with their new home.

As I write this on Friday evening, we have one week left in Boise. We leave town Friday after Randy golfs in one more Brian Olson Memorial Golf Tournament with his golfing buddies. Between now and then I will finish with my last two kindergarten classes and Randy will complete a few more projects. We will take a few more walks along the greenbelt and see a couple more horseraces from the other side of the track. I will have one more Book Club dinner with my reading ladies and Randy will finish his golf league with his longtime partner Ralph. We will go to our church for one last Sunday and enjoy time with a few more friends that we won’t see for a while, and then we will embark.

It is exciting to be so close to actually doing this! Our first stop will be a family gathering with Natasha, Seth and Archer, my parents, and my aunt and cousins near Sumpter, Oregon. We have camping reservations through the end of July in northern Idaho and Washington. We also have an Alaskan Cruise and time with my parents in Vancouver. It makes it a little easier to leave knowing we will be back in Boise in August to see everyone again. And then there is Archer’s birthday in December….