Early in our marriage, we wanted to buy a sailboat and sail around the world. We had grand plans to stop in port towns, work a while to get money for groceries and then move on. We bought dozens of magazines about sailing, looked at lots of floor plans for sailboats and daydreamed a great deal. At the time, we didn’t have much money and even less experience with sailing. We talked about learning to navigate and generally spent a lot of time planning a grand adventure. Rational family members pointed out that it wasn’t in our best interests to leave behind all our debts and go off gallivanting so we decided to put off “The First Great Dream” until we had no debts or other responsibilities. But-it was ok. We knew we would go back to it.

Five years later, we moved to New York when I transferred with the company I was working for. We thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get near the ocean and maybe revive “The First Great Dream”. What we discovered was that in New Rochelle you don’t live by the ocean. Even though we lived about a block from the water, it was Long Island Sound. A far cry from the ocean. Sure, it was fun to walk over to the park and watch the swans and seagulls, but to see real ocean, we had to go to Jones Beach. Since we aren't much interested in sun worship, or sharing beach space with thousands of other folks, we waited until it was snowing to go to the beach. We’d make a thermos full of hot chocolate and then head to the beach wearing our warmest clothes. There is nothing like hot chocolate after a couple hours picking up seashells, listening to the sound of the waves rolling in and chasing seagulls on a snowy beach. Then after we warmed up with the hot chocolate, we would go to the nearest Friendly’s restaurant and have just about the best-tasting, greasy, overflowing with onions, patty melts you ever ate.

While we were living in NY, we found a Reader’s Digest book called “Back to Basics” that has all kinds of information about what most people might consider “country living”. There are recipes for soap making and dye making, instructions for building some small pieces of furniture, basket weaving, leather and wood working, how to raise and butcher farm animals, general gardening tips and just a lot of great information. After reading the book, we started thinking about how much fun it would be to live on a farm. We found a real estate company that specialized in rural properties all over the country. Most of our potential farms seemed to be in Pennsylvania. During these trips, we got a lot of experience with what we call “The Pennsylvania Road Torture”. If you have ever driven on some of the old concrete roads back East, you probably know what I’m talking about. It seems like they laid concrete slabs from one end of the state to the other and as you drive along, it feels like you are riding down stairs—ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump and on and on and on.... Anyway, we did not find a farm that we liked enough to buy (and could afford).

After a year and a half, we decided that we weren’t too happy living in New York so we went back to a northwest suburb of Chicago to regroup and figure out what we really wanted. It took a few years, but we realized that high humidity in the summer and snow in the winter were not what we wanted any longer. It seemed that somewhere in the Southwest (ie. desert) would be the solution. We decided that our best plan would be to buy an RV and travel the Southwest looking for the right place to live.