My journey west completed and we closed on my house in Arizona last Friday. We've been vacationing in Arizona for almost 20 years with plans to retire here and here we are!
As I stated in a thread before we left, we had 6 cats to get across the country and rented an RV to make the journey. It was a miserable experience all in all. The cats were great, kept them in carriers days and let them out nights to roam around the RV. Vet had given me sedatives for them, but by the third day we decided that they did better without them and it worked out great. They spent upwards of 10 hours a day in the carriers with no problem.
The problems were with the RV. Picked it up in New Hampshire, smelled like an outhouse and was pretty much filthy, drove it back to Maine, cleaned it up tried everything we could to get the smell out but nothing worked. We left on a Thursday, closed on our house in Maine on the way out of town and spent the first night in New Hampshire. This is when we found that the refrigerator didn't work. Spent 45 minutes on the phone with the rental company and found that the fridge was unhooked. Got that going, and then we found that the hot water didn't work. When you turned the heater on you could hear the heater running, but no hot water out of the tap. Didn't even bother to call them about that. We had campgrounds booked all across the country and didn't use the bathroom because we didn't want to increase the stink so we really didn't need hot water. Just stopped in rest stops during the day.
When we started out we were getting about 10 mpg, by the time we hit Arkansas we were down to about 6!
Going through Oklahoma west on I40, there were gusty south winds, I was running in the right hand lane with the cruise set, 18 wheeler was passing, gust of wind blew him right into my lane, and right into the part of the camper that hangs over the cab. Crumpled the left front of the camper up bigtime! Trucker didn't stop, but in all honesty he probably didn't even realize he hit me. I did buy the zero fault insurance when I picked the RV up, thank goodness! Good thing is we were delayed 1 day leaving Maine and Oklahoma had tornados the day before and the day after we went through.
Arrived in Arizona on Wednesday morning with plans to hole up in an RV park until we closed on Friday. Found the the surveyor messed up the survey. Check out time at the RV park was 11 am that Friday and the movers were coming Saturday morning so we sat in a hot RV with 6 cats all day Friday and finally closed at 4:54pm. Just a little stressful!
I know nothing worthwhile comes easy, and we are happy to be here. Everyone we have talked to here in Arizona has been super friendly and made us feel welcome so we know we made the right decision. The last week has been spent settling in and getting supplies and furniture. We still have a long ways to go before we can kick back and enjoy retirement but every day we get a little closer realizing that dream!
We got a nice house on 2 acres and couldn't be happier.
As I stated in a thread before we left, we had 6 cats to get across the country and rented an RV to make the journey. It was a miserable experience all in all. The cats were great, kept them in carriers days and let them out nights to roam around the RV. Vet had given me sedatives for them, but by the third day we decided that they did better without them and it worked out great. They spent upwards of 10 hours a day in the carriers with no problem.
The problems were with the RV. Picked it up in New Hampshire, smelled like an outhouse and was pretty much filthy, drove it back to Maine, cleaned it up tried everything we could to get the smell out but nothing worked. We left on a Thursday, closed on our house in Maine on the way out of town and spent the first night in New Hampshire. This is when we found that the refrigerator didn't work. Spent 45 minutes on the phone with the rental company and found that the fridge was unhooked. Got that going, and then we found that the hot water didn't work. When you turned the heater on you could hear the heater running, but no hot water out of the tap. Didn't even bother to call them about that. We had campgrounds booked all across the country and didn't use the bathroom because we didn't want to increase the stink so we really didn't need hot water. Just stopped in rest stops during the day.
When we started out we were getting about 10 mpg, by the time we hit Arkansas we were down to about 6!
Going through Oklahoma west on I40, there were gusty south winds, I was running in the right hand lane with the cruise set, 18 wheeler was passing, gust of wind blew him right into my lane, and right into the part of the camper that hangs over the cab. Crumpled the left front of the camper up bigtime! Trucker didn't stop, but in all honesty he probably didn't even realize he hit me. I did buy the zero fault insurance when I picked the RV up, thank goodness! Good thing is we were delayed 1 day leaving Maine and Oklahoma had tornados the day before and the day after we went through.
Arrived in Arizona on Wednesday morning with plans to hole up in an RV park until we closed on Friday. Found the the surveyor messed up the survey. Check out time at the RV park was 11 am that Friday and the movers were coming Saturday morning so we sat in a hot RV with 6 cats all day Friday and finally closed at 4:54pm. Just a little stressful!
I know nothing worthwhile comes easy, and we are happy to be here. Everyone we have talked to here in Arizona has been super friendly and made us feel welcome so we know we made the right decision. The last week has been spent settling in and getting supplies and furniture. We still have a long ways to go before we can kick back and enjoy retirement but every day we get a little closer realizing that dream!
We got a nice house on 2 acres and couldn't be happier.
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