July 4, 2019 (Happy July 4th!)

We’re almost ready to leave on our next great adventure. Our 2019 road trip in “Alice” (our fifth wheel RV) will take us to the northeastern US and the eastern Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and maybe Newfoundland. The trip will last from July – October, with a planned arrival back at Treasure Coast RV Resort in Ft. Pierce, FL, on November 1, 2019.  We expected to leave today but we had a last minute issue with one of the air conditioners that we want to get fixed before we leave.  Here is a little on what we have been doing since returning to Ohio on May 1st, including a big life-changing decision.

Our last stop returning home from Florida in April was the Carolina Beach State Park just outside Wilmington, NC. Nancy’s sister Marianne lives close by and when we have visited her in the past, we really liked the area. We decided to look at some real estate while in the area, We explored several different communities and eventually found a development called Motts Landing. The community is about 10 min from Carolina Beach, and a short distance to many other NC beaches. We were really impressed with this development…….so impressed that before we left, we signed a contract to build a new home there!  Seriously, we did! This left us a couple months to get our Springboro, OH, home ready for sale, sell it, close on the new house, and prepare for our 2019 road trip. Believe me, its been a seriously hectic and stressful two months…..here are a few highlights:

Our neighbors knew 3 couples that were interested in looking at our house. So before we contacted a realtor, we arranged for them to look at the house the first weekend we were back.  The market is really hot here so we priced the house on the high end of the expected range……and had a full price offer ONE DAY after we showed the house! And no realtor fees!  We completed the deal using a standard Ohio real estate contract.

We closed on our Ohio house in Springboro on June 21  and flew to Wilmington to close on that land/house June 26. While in Wilmington, we also had to meet with the builders designer to pick out the flooring, paint, counter tops, lighting, appliances, etc. for our new home. I fully expected that by the end of the first day with the designer, Nancy and I would not be speaking to each other!  Thankfully, it was not quite as hard as I thought. In those cases where we did not agree, we found good compromises. Kudos to Nancy for being patient with me!  It was fun to be a part of building a new house. Neither of us had ever done this in the past. We will spend the winter in Florida and move into our new house next April, 2020.

Shortly after we returned from Wilmington, we moved Nancy’s daughter Mallory to Charlotte, NC. She’s a mechanical engineer and has been working at a Dayton-based medical device manufacturer. However, she wanted to experience “being on her own” and living in a new city with a good job market……so she and 2 of her friends decided to move to Charlotte. They rented a nice townhouse in early June and are in the process of getting new jobs. All are well educated so they shouldn’t have trouble finding employment.

Two days ago, all of our household belongings were packed by movers and taken to a storage facility. The next morning, we moved Alice to the Wright Patterson AFB RV Park.

Now we are just waiting to get our AC fixed.  Stay tuned……