Thinking about the
devastation in south Texas, I remembered a retirement blog Dennis wrote in
2015:
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| Leaving Pequot Lakes, MN |
"When
I retired and began to explore what I needed to be happy in retirement I began
to look differently at all the stuff I had accumulated during my “career”
life. All of a sudden I was no longer in a collecting mode, but in a
utilizing mode. And I realized that to be happy I really did not need to
utilize nearly all I had collected.
But when we are on the road in our RV, it has
pleasantly surprised me how happy we are in the approximately 300 square feet
of space we have in our fifth wheel RV. And I am not talking about being
in the 300 square feet just for a weekend. Sometime we travel for weeks
at a time. If it doesn't fit in that space we really do not seem to need
it to be happy. But what about all the other stuff we have collected in
the other forty many years (actually we are closer to fifty years than to
forty) of our marriage? It turns out it is just stuff.
All
of that stuff seemed like essential stuff at one time, and it may have been,
but it is certainly no longer essential for our day to day happiness. We
are not ready to get rid of it, but we don't have to have it to be happy."
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| Our fellow work campers. Our single guy did not make the pic |
We are leaving
Minnesota with a half heavy heart. We are ready to start home, but as Hurricane
Harvey hit Houston we decided to leave 2 weeks early in order to be nearer home
when we were able to get home. At this writing our home has not flooded. We are
thankful for that, but lots of friends and unknown to us people are not so
lucky. We have dear friends under mandatory evacuation who are riding out the
storm near Austin, as is Tim (our son). On a map it is disconcerting to see our
little area dry, but surrounded by water on all sides. We live fairly close to
the Brazos. The levee is holding, but roads all around are under water.
We have enjoyed a
nice summer - the purpose was to get out of the heat, which we did. Sometimes I have complained about it being a
little too cool, but then see the weather at home and get happier.
We are leaving some
wonderful new friends. It was a joy to
work with them, eat with them, and just being with them.
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| Our new friends "seasonal". Our next door neighbors |
I gave my tomatoes,
basil plant, and hummingbird feeder to one of the "seasonals." She was happy to have them. I hope my hummer
can find it across the road!
Sometimes you have
to go out of your comfort zone to try new things and learn new things about
yourself. We learned to truly like people that are very different from us. We
learned we still love staying in our RV and seeing sights. We learned we have
to be careful where we work camp not to have too many duties - we are pushing
70. Well Dennis IS 70.
We do look forward
to getting home and helping with cleanup and doing whatever we can to help our
community.
Happy Trails to you
till we meet again…
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