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TRAVEL DAY - 127 miles
WHITE OAK CREEK CAMPGROUNDto
REED BINGHAM STATE PARK
This week was all about being lazy. Tricia's work was done for the month and I was fairly well caught up with the blog so we relaxed, a lot! We managed to enjoy two nights with a campfire and one night with a BBQ. The weather was a bit chilly at night and the days were very damp, so we spent most of the time inside THE POD reading and listening to music.
Speaking of music, when we bought THE POD and ROVER they both came with a free 3 month subscription to the SiriusXM satellite radio service. We didn't take advantage of having the free service very much because we were traveling up the coast of the Eastern US with plenty of sightseeing opportunities to keep us busy. We were guilty of being in more of an extended vacation mode instead of starting our new traveling lifestyle. It is the one common thing that everyone in the fulltime RV community warns newcomers about. Don't burn yourself out, slow down and enjoy yourselves. We never got to that burned out feeling, but we did realize we were coming close to it. Moving twice a week, almost every week, was taking a toll on us.
We were seeing a lot of exciting places, including historic coastal cities like Charleston and Savannah, National Parks and Seashores, The Outer Banks and lighthouses, Washington DC and all of it's National Monuments. As if that wasn't enough we traveled up into the Shenandoah Mountains and The Blue Ridge Parkway, then on to The Great Smoky Mountains to see first hand the fall colors explode on the mountain sides.
Since coming down from the mountains we have slowed down. Spending a week at each stop is now the norm and not the exception. Our travels may not be as entertaining to read about as they have been in the past few months, but we are feeling more relaxed and enjoying ourselves in a whole different manner. Which brings us back to the music discussion, it may be time for us to think about resubscribing to satellite radio. I know they want us back real bad because they call at least once a week, on top of that we just got our November mail forwarded to us and there were four different offers for us to consider. We're still not ready to pull the trigger on signing back up though, even when we can't get cell phone service we always seem to have a few free public radio stations that come in just fine. You just have to take the time to search them out.
One other thing that may be worth mentioning is I recently took up reading books. I can count on one hand the number of books I've read for pleasure over the last twenty years, but that all changed back in September. Tricia has always been a heavy hitter when it came to reading, it's probably her favorite relaxation thing to do. When we lived in the condo she read mostly paperback books, but now we both only read digital e-books on our cell phones, we can't be carrying a bunch of heavy books around the country. I started by rereading the last book I read back in 2006 and quickly found it very entertaining. Since then I've been averaging one or two books a week and realized how much it was costing us, even at $2.99 a book it was adding up. So last week I signed up for Amazon's Kindle Unlimited Service, it is usually $10 a month but they had a promo going, the first 3 months for 99 cents. The let you check out 10 books at a time and with over a million to choose from I don't think I'll have a problem finding something to keep me entertained. Such a bargain I couldn't resist, the satellite music service will just have to wait!
Back when I working working 40 hours a week my daily routine usually included 2-3 hours of prime time TV watching while Tricia was reading her books in another room. Now I know what most of you are thinking, doesn't THE POD have a television? As a matter of fact it has two, but since we have been on the road I don't think I've watched more than 10 hours of television. I don't miss it one bit! We also have a DVD player and we carry just three movies at a time in THE POD. Some of the campgrounds that we have visited in the last few months have had a free lending library of DVDs and books. You are welcome to borrow a DVD to watch while you are at the park or take it with you and leave a different movie in it's place. The campground hosts usually have to sign up for a month or more to qualify for their free campsite, I'm sure they appreciate it when a new to them movie shows up in the lending library. A couple months ago I purchased three DVDs for 50 cents a piece at a flea market and I just keep trading them for something different to watch.
It's not always about saving money, it's also about saving weight and storage space. When you are towing your less than two hundred square foot home around the country there just isn't room for books and DVDs. Another thing we did before leaving our condo behind was to digitize both of our music CD collections. Now they only reside on our laptops, cell phones and iTunes of course. Now we can still enjoy all that music and it doesn't weigh anything or take up any space, perfect!
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