Our doubts about being tied down.

On Thursday morning, after spending the night in the casino parking lot, we were ready to sign a lease for the lot.  We signed the lease and proceeded to get utilities set up and this is where it all fell apart.  The lot has been without electricity for over a year and requires an inspection before service can be initiated.  I will spare you all the details.  I was a long day full of phone calls and frustration.  However, we have decided to put the move on hold until March 17th.  By the way, we are at my parents house, again.

This frustration has reinforced a thought that has been festering inside both my wife and I for a few months.  We are itching to be free from so many things in this life.  We feel so bound by life and constrained in various ways that we want to find a way to escape.  The internet has proven a wonderful research tool in finding others with our thoughts.  Others who have broken free and are just living life.  Many of them have adopted a lifestyle of being on the road, traveling, nomadic.  When?   How?  Where?  These are all good questions…and that is what we have to figure out.

We feel like we waste so much in this life and we want to live better.  I am not just referring to the waste of money on commercialized “stuff.”  I am not just referring to the waste of time in hated jobs with too little compensation.  I am not just referring to wasted ministry opportunities because someone is too busy to notice the wounded in arms reach.  I am not just referring to wasted life waiting for the right time to live your dream.  I am not just referring to wasted opportunities to teach my children to appreciate other perspectives on life.  Slowly but surely, we are transitioning to this life.  We will begin watching our possessions, time and energy.  Here goes nothing!

Home is where you park it!

“We are home!” said my oldest son in a very dorky tone.  This was just moments after we pulled into the parking lot of a local resort and casino.  As I said, we had to find a place to park our trailer last night and www.freecampgrounds.com listed several of our local casinos as great places to stay overnight. They were very welcoming to us and invited us inside to “have fun”. 

The campground we were staying in had said we had to be out by March 3.  When asked if there was any grace period and would they be so kind to let us stay one more night as we were trying to leave, they gave a flat “no.”  That was fair enough, but now we were in a hurry.  I had to pack up the kids toys and bikes, change our flat on the trailer, and get the keys out which I had just locked in the truck with no spare (thank you AAA).

When we left, we were on our way to church services and my wife did not feel comfortable taking our home to the church building.  So, we parked at Wal-Mart.  After church, we picked up the trailer and headed to our home for the night.  Several other RV’s were there making us feel quite comfortable to stay.  We settled in to our first night of dry camping in an RV.  It would have been alright if we had water pressure, bright lights and heat.  When we woke up the next morning the thermometer read 49 in the trailer (boy was I freezing).

This camping adventure was quite fun and has reinforced the ideas of traveling much more heavily on a minimal budget.  But today we ignored the budget! I came home for lunch and we enjoyed the buffet.  All six of us ate for $25 with tax and tip.  It was wonderful…, but now, where do we park tonight?

Where do you go when your home is homeless?

That is our question today!  Where are we going to live?

Several weeks ago we got the idea to look into other places we could live to save a little bit more on our costs.  We looked on Craigslist and found a spot for 385, two-hundred less than we currently spend (we would have to pay for electricity, but totally worth it). Well, we looked at this and it was…scary.  We tried to consider if it was just prejudice, but, no it was very scary!

A week or two later, my wife and her cousin, who lives four spaces down at the campground, found two trailer spots in a mobile home park right next to each other.  That would be perfect, but her husband would not go for it. So the search went on…where should we live?

Finally we found it.  A small lot in a mobile home park (not so much a park as it is a collection of mobile homes), nevertheless, it is nice.  It is only 280 per month and includes water, sewage and trash.  We have paid, at our current campground, through March 3rd and must be out by then.  So, last week, I submitted an application and had hopes to move our home Monday, March 1st…as of the end of the day on March 2nd, we still have no word.

Tomorrow, we will have no place to put our home.  We are not technically homeless, our home is homeless!

We have considered going to my parents, a relative’s ranch forty miles out of town, or any of a number of casino’s around the area (they will let you stay without hookups in the parking lot, and boy is the food good!).  But seriously, where do we go?  It is 12:30 in the morning on March 3rd and we have given up our search…!?!

It actually is not scary. We can go wherever we want. We can do what we want.  It is our little adventure, but honestly, I do not know where we will park our home tomorrow.