Some Pros and Cons about Full-time RVing

Now that we have been living this nomadic life for close to six months, it seemed like a good time to write about some of the positives and negatives.  In fact, we have found many things have both positives and negatives.

For example, we miss our home church and Pine Acres Church friends back in Weatherford, Oklahoma. It was nice to know where we were going to church every Sunday.  Now Mark must spend some time every week looking at area churches to find a place to worship on Sunday morning.  The positive is that we have gone to some great churches and have met some great Christians in our travels.  This week we knew we would go to Hope Lutheran in Westcliffe.  We have been here before because Mark's brother and his family worshiped here for many years.  It is a classic old church with a mountain backdrop, and they were glad to have an Engelman family there on a Sunday morning again.

Another negative to full-time RVing is being away from our friends and family back home.  But on the positive side, we have really enjoyed getting to see friends and family that live in other states.  This week we made the drive to Penrose, Colorado to meet our good friends Dan and Debbie.  When our boys were young, we traded off baby-sitting so we could still have date nights.  But they moved to Colorado, and we haven't seen them in a while.  Now that all our boys are grown, it was fun to catch up and have brunch at the Coyote's Coffee Den.

Another thing that takes up a lot of our time is deciding where we are going to live.  When you live in a house, you take it for granted that you will be living in the same town next week.  But with a house on wheels, the negative is you have to spend the time to find a new town and new camping site on a regular basis.  The positive is that you get to find a new town and camping site on a regular basis. We are thriving on being in a new location and exploring new places!  After a week in the country with no electricity, our batteries said it was time to find a new camping site. Denisa just had to take another picture of her home rolling through the pasture, this time towards the Wet Mountains that flank our valley on the East.

On our last morning we were treated to an eagle sitting atop an electrical pole, scouring the area for his next meal.  That brings us to another positive and negative of full-time RVing.  Finding your next meal takes more time because every grocery store is different.  We are now members of several different food store clubs in order to get their "members only" specials. We spend most of our time shopping at very small grocery stores in even smaller towns.  The positive is that we get to find and sample local cuisine that we never get tired of trying.

So we are learning to live with the negatives and enjoying the positives this last six months.  For now, we have landed in La Veta, Colorado, at the "Circle the Wagons" campground for the next several days.  Denisa read a travel brochure about the Twin Peaks area of southern Colorado, and suddenly that became our destination.  For those that think that Twin Peaks is just the name of a restaurant chain, we have photographic evidence that it is an actual place.

 
This area is also known as Spanish Peaks or Wahatoya (which for some reason means "Breasts of the World").  The negative is that we knew nothing about this area when we arrived.  The positive is that we get to learn first-hand about another part of God's wonder.