Robin and I had, for two or three years before she died, been talking about getting a travel trailer once we retired, primarily because daughter LJ in Cincinnati has no room to put us up; we thought it would be fun to be able to drive it to Ohio, visit Robin’s family near Lake Erie, and then stay a month with LJ and her family without putting anybody out for lodgings or spending a fortune on hotels.  We continued to fantasize in this direction with discussions about maybe (again, once we retired) taking the trailer to Ohio in October, staying a month and then heading south to visit Robin’s parents in Florida once Ohio got too cold.  From there, we imagined snowbirding in the trailer through the winter months, heading west along the Gulf of Mexico to arrive in Big Bend National Park in March, when the migrating birds pass through it on their way back north for the summer (Robin always loved birds!).  Then, we could head back to Ohio for another month before returning home to Maine for the summer.  That was the retirement that we imagined for ourselves.

Well, life (as the old saying goes) is what happens while you’re making other plans.  Robin has been gone over a year-and-a-half now, her parents have both joined her, and now it’s just me.  But LJ and her family are still in Cincinnati, and my now three-year-old granddaughter only knows me as face on the iPhone — so I began thinking about our retirement plans and decided, why wait to retire to do it?

So I returned to my online researches of travel trailers and motor homes, and after a lot of consideration almost decided that it was too much money to spend right now.  But then I thought, why wait?  I cautiously broached the possibility of buying a trailer to trusted family and friends, and everyone said pretty much the same thing: do it while you’re young enough to enjoy it, there are no guarantees that you’ll be able to do it “someday”.  So, with growing excitement but still daunted by the expense, I decided to do a web search for “cheap travel trailers”.

This generated a list of about ten or so possibilities, most of which I could immediately discard for one reason or another.  But then I stumbled upon this:

This is a Little Guy Max.  Built in Pennsylvania, 21 feet long with a queen bed, a fully-equipped kitchen and a wetbath, this trailer sleeps three.  It seemed like an attractive option (although definitely not a “cheap travel trailer”!), so I visited the Little Guy website (amusingly titled “golittleguy.com”!) and was impressed enough that I used its dealer locator feature to find a dealer within thirty miles of me.

When I went to the dealer website I discovered that they had one of these for sale, which they listed as a “used 2020 model”.  How could this be, a used 2020?  I had to go see it!

I liked it even better in person — tons of windows making you feel like you’re outside, and solid maple, Amish-crafted, dovetailed-jointed cabinetry.  And this particular trailer had been used only a couple times last year, after which the original owner decided to buy a motor home and sell this one on consignment.  Long story short, it was too good a deal to pass up and I got it for a song.  So now I guess I’m an RV-er!

The blanket shown above, by the way, is something I have wanted my entire life; in keeping with my new attitude of “why wait?!”, I went ahead and splurged on it for the trailer, to be moved inside come winter.  Made by the Faribault woolen mill in Minnesota, it is absolutely the softest, warmest wool blanket you will ever see — highly recommended (if astronomically expensive)!

I’m excited about this.  Not only will I see more of LJ and her family, but daughter Allison has a four-year-old son living locally, and I hope to spend several summer weekends camping with them in the Little Guy as well.

Add in the possibility of golf trips and winter Nordic skiing getaways, and I hope to put a lot of miles on this thing with family and friends.

So, anyway, all of the above is to explain why you may in coming months see RV-related blog posts here in place of the scooter-related content you have come to expect.  If you have followed this sporadic blog from the beginning, you will recall that its original intent was to share our travel experiences with family and friends so that they would not worry about us on our scooter trips, and so that they could see where we had been and what we had done each day on the road.  Well, that continues to be the primary intent here, even if the blog has become something (I hope) of a reference for motorbikers riding in Maine.  So I intend to use this blog to document my RV trips, too.

I still have scooter plans, although they are on hold until the coronavirus lets up enough for the hotels to open.  That’s one great advantage of an RV — it’s the ultimate in social distancing!  I hope you and yours are well in these parlous times and I hope to be creating more content here in the very near future.  Thanks as always for your interest and support.