The Story of our Retirement
Entering retirement the beginning of 2017, my husband and I knew that we wanted to stay active and to travel as much as possible. Traveling, as we have done it in the past, was quite expensive. However, traveling in a small camper is relatively inexpensive. For this reason, among others, we initially embraced teardrop camping as a primary activity in retirement. We camped for five years in two teardrops and then moved to a 25 ft trailer after we got Sophie, our sweet goldendoodle.
Our First Camper
Because we were new to camping, we began with a NuCamp T@G MAX XL teardrop trailer. The trailer is tiny, but my 6’3” husband is not. Despite his size and our inexperience, we really loved camping in our teardrop!
You might ask why we would want to purchase such an item. To understand a little more about how we chose a teardrop, you might want to check out our post: Teardrop Camping Adventures: The Decision to Buy a Teardrop.
There is so much to learn about camping and this particular method of travel. We have shared what we learned as we went along on our teardrop camping adventures.
Our Retirement Travels
In our retirement, we hope to camp in all fifty states and are posting details of our trips on States Visited, a Campsite Resource. Check it out if interested in reading about our travel experiences. It has the cities and campgrounds we have visited listed with links to blog posts.
The map below represents our travels over seven years in three travel trailers that we have owned and one rental RV in Alaska.
Our Second Teardrop
The T@G was a wonderful camper for us and we traveled extensively in it for two and a half years. We were then ready to increase our commitment to camping with a larger model. Still wanting to limit the size, we choose the nüCamp 400. My post, Replacing Our Tiny Camper, A Big Step, explains how we came to this decision.
The Lance 2075
So, now we have a goldendoodle puppy and have discovered that the extra space acquired with the second camper is no longer ours. We really love the pup, so we now have a third camper. New Puppy and Her First Camping Trip describes how our camping changed with this new family member. So, we bought a 2021 Lance 2075. It is still relatively small— twenty-five feet and no slide out. Sadly, though, it is not a teardrop. It is not as cute as the teardrops, but we are happy with it because is so comfortable! That can be a big thing as you get older.
Retirement is Our Second Topic
Most of my posts are about our camping experiences, but I will also be writing about retirement. For more than thirty years, I worked full-time and really loved it. But, I had some concerns about boredom and my world getting smaller in retirement. However, we are determined to not let that happen and have great expectations for this wonderful time we are fortunate to have. There will undoubtably also be challenges and I plan to write about those as well.
Please follow along as we strive to figure out retirement and our particular brand of camping in a teardrop!