hooda-thunkit: Freedom and the Open Road -- Mon., June 18

Cotulla, Texas:

"To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else."
~Bernadette Devlin

This is so true. Both of us lost our jobs in Hawaii in June 2011. In order to go on the road and travel we gave up (sold) our "sticks and bricks" house and almost all our possessions.

Did we have fear? You bet!! Could we find work on the road to support ourselves? How would we pay for everything?

Fast forward one year...We've been "on the road" in our 5th wheel trailer for eight months and have worked six months. We've been from Hawaii (where we lived, owned a house and worked) to Oregon (our home state for over 30 years), bought our 5th wheel and trailer in Oregon, drove to Fallon, Nevada and worked for Amazon.com in Fernley for two months during the holiday season.

Bob got a job as a commercial roofing service manager in Sparks, Nevada for three months. We took off in April to travel to Texas with stops in Las Vegas and Phoenix to see family and friends.

We spent two days hiking in Big Bend National Park and a few days exploring the Texas Hill Country before landing in Kerrville, Texas to attend the RV-Dreams Rally.

For the past six weeks we have been working as security gate guards at an oil field in south Texas. In July, we will take two weeks to drive to Yellowstone N.P., spend two weeks camping and hiking; go to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore in Sept. We will then head over to the North Dakota/Minnesota border where Bob will work the sugar beet harvest for three weeks.

From there, we will drive back to Oregon, park our rig, and board our cats to take a month-long trip to Australia. It was not possible to do all these things when we were tied to high-stress, low-vacation-time jobs, our house and all our belongings.

So while we lost our house and most of our possessions, we gained freedom to go where we want, when we want. Make no mistake about it, though, we also need to work!

Gate guarding update:

We received our Security pocket ID cards and name badges today. Thank you, LOMA Gate Guard Services!

Our gate has slowed to a crawl so Bob asked our supervisor today if we'll be moved. The supervisor said as long as the oil company wants us here, we will be on this job site. So, it looks like we'll be here for a while and it's going to be slow. Gives me more time to write and do photography.

After the cats' bag trashing incident last night, we moved all the plastic bags into a nice cloth bag. No more shredding the paper bags. Bowie came to terms with the new arrangement right away.

"Oh, look, Mom and Dad gave us a new, cushy bed!"