Minnesota – Family time and Maintenance

What do we do every day?

According to Rocky and Max, we should just spend time on the couch with them giving them pets and playing with them, all day, every day. As nice as that sounds for them, that’s not how we spend each day. I am amazed at the number of people that have asked us the question – What do you do every day? Our response is usually, what do you do every day? It really isn’t any different living full time in a RV, than having a sticks and bricks home. Most of our time is just doing all those daily tasks everyone else has to do. Shopping, dishes, laundry, cooking, etc. Where it’s different, is living full time in a RV allows us to have a different view out our window, explore new areas, learn about new places, and meet new people on a daily basis. We did this for years in different areas of Minnesota and now we get to do it all over the US. That is definitely the best part of this lifestyle and where we focus our blog, usually……

This year is a little different. Life still happens no matter your location and so we are spending more time in Minnesota than we normally would, or thought we would, this year. We’ve been back for almost 2 months and rather than being able to explore new areas – most of which we’ve seen in this state – we have been focused on family and getting our yearly maintenance done on Homer. Just like a sticks and bricks home, maintaining our Homer requires the same amount of energy and time. Where we are fortunate in being back in Minnesota, is in having a place we can stay in the event Homer requires some additional work. It took us 6 weeks for an appointment just to have our wheel bearing maintenance performed. (We are definitely DYI people, but there are some items we do leave to the professionals and are outside a u-tube video and us doing the work ourselves).

After living in Homer full time for this first year and dragging him 6,000+ miles, he definitely needs a little TLC. Inside and out! We have focused on getting him back in tip top shape before heading back south in August. From touching up paint, re-attaching ceiling trim, caulking, caulking, and caulking everything inside and out, we have actually stayed fairly busy. (You can check out our RV maintenance tips on the Homer page).

Homer – Traveling With The Sarffs (travelingsarffs.com)

Then there’s the family cabin which is just 20 minutes from us. As we completed our downsizing process and move to Florida, we relinquished our part ownership in the family cabin. We’ve passed it on to our two sons and we know it’s in good hands for the future. Where we still have a little struggle is in completely disengaging ourselves in its maintenance and repair and making it the best place to have fun in this state with our family and friends. Rather than start a bunch of new projects, we have figured out that there is quite a bit of knowledge in our heads that needs to be transitioned to our sons and the rest of the family. We have started creating videos of all that information that primarily resides in Dave’s head. He is our primary plumber and the last thing we want to do is leave the family with a bunch of questions, or God forbid, a leak. We probably are there twice weekly and given all the storms that have occurred up here these past two months, it’s been a blessing that we are close enough to clear up the downed trees and save our condiments when the power was out for 3 days.

Finally, I decided our blogs could be soooooo much better if we could add pictures from a higher viewpoint – a drone – and videos of the areas we visit. Doesn’t that sound cool? Well, it appears it is not as easy as all the younger generation makes it seem and so Dave has been practicing and learning how to fly it. This make take some time…… (To be honest, it’s already been in a few trees – lol!)

So, our answer to the question of what we do each day, is what do you do with your day? It really isn’t any different. The daily activities are mostly the same, the yearly maintenance is mostly the same, spending time with family and meeting new people is mostly the same. The biggest difference is spending all that same amount of energy and time in different states. Dave just told me the other day it was too easy to be here for a couple of months and fall into this routine. He’s ready to hit the road and try something new, see something new, and meet some more new people. I’d say I have to agree 1000%. Of course we’ll miss spending time with the family, but we are ready to hit the road and can’t wait for that first week of August when we load up and head to our next destination.

See ya on the road,

Dave and Theresa