plans change!

We’ve been full-timing in our RV for TWO years (as of Aug 19).

As a way to celebrate our two-year FT anniversary, we will walk through our new home in East Helena, Montana!

COVID-19 has changed our world. We’ve been vigilant with our social-distancing and mask-wearing since March and of course, will continue to do so. Our decision to remain in Quartzsite, Arizona through the summer was in direct response to the pandemic.

We’ve made the occasional trip to Phoenix for follow-up visits with my glaucoma specialist. And we’ve even ventured twice to Yuma to do a few errands.

Many of you have checked in on us because of the high COVID-19 rates in Arizona; thank you. We’ve seen a bit more compliance with mask-wearing and social distancing in Phoenix and Yuma. There have been relatively few cases here in La Paz County where we are, but quite a few folks seem to not give a fig about wearing a mask (at least not in a way that it serves any purpose—don’t get me started on those who wear their masks only on their chin!).

So my anxiety rate has gone through the roof when we HAVE gone out.

We’ve been quite content to stay put in the RV park we’re in (there are only TWO Rv’s here—in a park with 160 slots!). But the extreme heat has made it extremely difficult to be outside for anything other than our one mile walk at 5:30 AM (when it’s already 94F!!!). We’re in another “excessive heat” stretch now with temps going up as high as 118 for at least the next ten days. Yeah, it’s a dry heat but so is your oven; I doubt you’d choose to relax inside of it.

Thank God we love each other but we’ve pretty much found that 375 sq ft for months at a time (SWELTERING-in-place!) can be a bit monotonous. We’ve been bingeing on many terrific shows on Netflix, Amazon, Britbox, etc. but it sure would be nice to get outside!

SO…we’ve come to realize that if we HADN’T sold our home in Maine back in February and we could have looked into the future, maybe we would have taken it off the market. We have come to the conclusion that we need a ‘sticks-n-bricks’ to have as a home base. We fell in love with the Northwest last year and specifically, LOVED what we were able to see of Montana. Hence, a house search ensued!

Searching for a house while in a pandemic can be a challenge. We are VERY fortunate that we connected with a real estate agent, checked out dozens of homes (Montana is a VERY hot real estate market right now!), and found one that ticks ALL the boxes for us! We took a webcam tour of the property this past week and made an offer. We are under contract!

So this week, to mark our two-year full-timing anniversary, we’ll be doing a walk-through of our new house! It’s been amazing to us how quickly this has all come together (I’m sure some of you have whiplash just reading about it) and we’re so excited, we could burst!

East Helena is just three hours north of Yellowstone National Park, and 3+ hours south of Glacier National Park. We’ll be about 600 miles from our daughter Beth and her family (in Vancouver, BC—yeah, we know…CAN/US border is still closed!). Montana boasts 21 National Wildlife Refuges and 30% of the state is public lands—lots of space for riding our side-by-side! Our home is surrounded by the beautiful Elkhorn Mountains and you can certainly understand why Montana is called BIG SKY country!

If all goes well, our soon-to-be “Home Sweet Home!”

But this isn’t the end of the adventure—the “loose” part of Lobsters on the Loose will continue.

Our plan is to continue to travel much of the time, coming south to Arizona in the winter, and exploring other parts of our beautiful countries—US and Canada—(when it’s safe!) during the rest of the year. Having a (larger) safe space to call home whenever we need it sounds good to us!