Fair Play

Once upon a time, we were going to live here or rather, close by. Before we even married, Denny and I purchased 14 acres of land on a small lake--we had ourselves prime waterfront property (okay, it was prime to us). Our intent was to build a house there after Darby graduated from high school so he could attend Clemson University. Darb had no input into this decision since he was only seven at the time.

After we purchased the property, I stood on the hillside where we figured we'd build the house and took a picture of the view of the lake which I later had enlarged and framed. The picture was a reminder of our dreams. We bought mini-blue prints of homes from our local newspaper and catalogs from builders of log and cedar homes, finally deciding on a glass-fronted Lindal Cedar Home. We were set.

But a decade later we walked into a RV show, bought our first motorhome and on our first trip out met two full-timing couples who talked about living on the road and our plans were no longer cast in stone. The property was there, just sitting undeveloped while we waffled over our future. Darb decided he wanted to attend Miami University and then married after his freshman year so one part of our life-plan changed. Weekends and vacations in the motorhome showed us how enjoyable it was to travel and that Denny and I could live in a small space without killing each other. Settling down in South Carolina no longer had the attraction that it did before.

A trip to a RV dealer in Savannah, GA turned the tide for us. We sat inside an Alpha Gold fifth wheel with triple slides that day and gaped at the eight foot ceilings and the roominess that slideouts allowed. We knew then that eventually we'd have a fifth wheel and the new truck to pull it and that would mean selling the land. And that's what happened.

So now we're visitors in an area that was once going to be our retirement home. It's still beautiful, still relatively undeveloped and still fairly inexpensive to live here. But we're not ready to settle and we still not sure we've found the perfect place to plant some roots yet. But it could have been here.