These first Dogpark and Brewpubs entries are from Sharon’s handwritten journals that she kept to document our adventures. This is how our life on the road began…
SHARON’S JOURNALS
It all started when we lost our house to Hurricane Ivan on September 15, 2004. We decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to travel and take advantage of bad situation of losing all that we have. Randy and I were very much in love and we thought this decision would fulfill all of our dreams. But to be honest, it was really more of Randy’s dream then it was mine.
Randy is very much an independent soul and does not like to be tied down to a regular 9-5 job. Me on the other hand, am an independent soul as well. But I do like to have a regular paycheck and for the most part, a regular job. When Randy started to talk about the idea of buying an RV and traveling around the country, I was skeptical, but excited about the idea of getting out of this now, disaster area.
Purchasing an RV was a long and tedious process. We were foolish and naive of the whole process of buying an RV. We just thought we could walk right into the dealership and tell them what we wanted and bam! Walk out with our brand new RV. WOW! Were we stupid or what? This process, as we came to find out, is worse than buying a house. And Neither Randy nor I have ever purchased a anything over $25,000, so this meant there would be no way we were going to be approved for a $100,000 motor home.
After a few disappointing disapprovals, we went to Paw-Paw’s camper city, where they we so very excited to help us on our way to getting into the RV we wanted. Just as we picked out the one we wanted and got approved for, they go and pull the o’l bait and switch on us.
That was not fun. We showed up and find that the RV we wanted we could no longer have, but here is this beautiful 1998 Cruise Master with blue interior, blue carpet, blue walls, blue, blue, blue…So needless to say, we weren’t exactly excited about starting our new life in this blue monstrosity. It took some convincing by the sales person and some time to look at the bigger picture of new carpet, new furniture and some of our own things to make us decide that this could be our home for at least a year or so. Well, thirty some $30,000 later along with $5,000, we were on our way to the traveling lifestyle. Here we go, or so we thought!!
It was going to be our first adventure out in our new RV. All we had to do is pick up our RV and from the dealership and hit the road. That was mistake number one. We had taken our RV to get our new (not blue) carpet put in and leave it for a few days only to find out that we were fools to believe it would be ready to pick up. See, we were on our way to a wedding in VA that was on a Saturday, well this was Friday morning and to our stupid foolishness, we thought our RV would be ready to go and we would be off. We go there and they tell us it’s just going to be a few more hours, well this is when my head started to spin and my face starts to turn red. Thank god for Randy and his sweet words of encouragement of, “baby it’s ok, we can still make it with plenty of time to spare.” I started to feel better and so we thought we would go eat and when we come back it will be all done.
Yeah right! Every time we went back to check, they kept telling us two more hours we promise, two more hours. Well, six hours later I’m headed down the road, by my self, to meet my sister to give her our jeep Cherokee to keep for us while we our living our free wheeling lifestyle while Randy is still hours behind me waiting for our home to be ready. It’s now 11:00 pm Friday night and the wedding is the next day at 6:00 pm. Randy is just now meeting me in the middle of nowhere, so he can pick me up and we can start our first adventure. Randy is still sweet and trying to calm me down, because now I have passed that point of hysteria, now I’m just frantic that we are not going to make this damn wedding that I so wanted to attend. Randy just kept telling me, we will make it don’t worry, I will get you there if it’s the last thing I do.
Poor Randy he drove all through the night with only three hours of sleep and with no help from me. He drove through back roads and with max speeds of 45mph, but he got me there and with 15 min to spare for me to get ready. God do I love this man, he drove through the night, listened to me bitch and panic, rushed to get ready and still he put on a wonderful face with all of my old friends at this wedding. I don’t know any other man that would do this and not have pushed me out the door on hwy 95 only to be thumped by 100 cars going 90mph. I think I am the luckiest girl in the world. Now, I know this is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with and to travel with in our new home with its new carpet.
By the way, we did all this with our 12-year-old bulldog riding right beside us all the way. What a trooper he is. I don’t think a girl could be any luckier. Well, the wedding was great. They all loved our new home and we were able to take our time coming back to Pensacola and see some of what flew by us on our way up to Virginia. Yea! (sarcastically) Back to Pensacola, I can’t wait, you know the place I love with all the beautiful hurricane damage. The place I now do not consider to be my home anymore. I now consider my home to be a 36-foot space with the man of my dreams and my 12-year-old bulldog. Now that’s what I call a home!