RVing, for us

Last week we were parked on a site that backed up to the Colorado River in an area near tribal land so the far side of the river was undeveloped. That allowed us to watch the river otter fishing for his meals, grackles bathing en masse on the sand bar in the late afternoon, blue herons stalking their meal in the mornings and the peaceful passing of canoists. This week we're backed up to the same river just 50 miles to the north where the banks are full of homes and campgrounds and businesses and the river itself runs wider and deeper making it a recreational area heavily used by folks with power boats and Sea Doos. These differences are part of the reason we travel, as well as:

1. Meeting new people, whether it's our neighbors or the store clerk we talk to several times in the course of our stay. If you sit outside in your lounge chair or start working on the outside of your rig you're pretty assured that someone will stop by to chat.
2. Educating ourselves, which comes in the form of learning the history of an area, discovering the differences in topography of various parts of the country, seeing the natural wonders along with those mad-made, exploring local museums, following that back road to who knows where, the chance to learn new activities such as pickleball, line dancing, beading and other crafts and much more at many of the campgrounds during the slower winter months.
3. Being able to "control" our climate. We move north during the summer and south during the winter, trying to avoid temperature extremes and to stay out of snow.
4. The lack of responsibilities of home ownership; no mowing the lawn, maintaining the garden, shoveling the driveway (that's a biggie for Denny), painting and related upkeep, etc.
5. The expectation of going to a new area, traveling new roads and seeing new sights. We've destroyed a lot of our pre-conceived notions about several states and have discovered beauty in all of them. There is so much more out there yet to see.

Now, what do I, personally, miss about home?
1. Family, friends and neighbors-the biggie.
2. Libraries. When you travel, most local libraries won't issue you a library card, even a temporary one. Guess they figure we're gypsies, therefore unreliable.
3. Convenient shopping. Back home, we had tons of competing grocery stores which made for great low prices as well as every imaginable store we could want within a fifteen minute drive.
4. Our fireplace on a cold winter night, our deck for the milder weather.
5. Decorating the house and the tree for Christmas. Now I have a two foot tree for my table as storage space constraints means little decorating. However, last year my mom turned her tree decorating over to me once we flew home and I assume she'll do so this year, so that helps create the Christmas feeling again.

A strange list, isn't it? Other than family, neither one of us really misses "home" or having a home. And considering I never moved farther than 10 miles from the place I was born for the first 46 years of my life, that's kind of surprising. But life on the road continues to enthrall us and so we'll follow those red lines on the map for a while longer with the understanding that family may call us home at any given point, but the road not taken will call us back.