November 26, 2024 • 38 mins
What happens when you swap a traditional home for a 19.5-foot van and hit the open road? Join us as we chat with our lifelong friends, Don and Gae Taylor, who took the leap from their West Seattle life into the world of van living. After years in the software development industry, Don decided it was time for a change, supported wholeheartedly by his wife, Gae. Together, they embarked on an adventure across the U.S. and Canada, sharing with us the emotional rollercoaster of downsizing and the unexpected pause their journey faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dennis Day (00:00):
Hello everyone.
This is Dennis.
I've got a great show for you.
I have a friend of mine whoI've known since eighth grade,
maybe seventh grade, and theyhave taken a trip around the US
many times.
They're here to discuss theirvan life and their experiences.
Tell you some.
Gratton, hello, judy, hello,hello, you're looking great,
(00:27):
thank you.
And here's my friends from along time, don and Gay Taylor,
say hi.
Don and Gay Taylor, hello,hello.
I'm really excited because Donwas my best man at my wedding
and we've been friends forever.
We've managed to stay friendssince like 13.
That's pretty amazing.
We've managed to stay friendssince like 13.
That's pretty amazing.
He had.
These two folks had experienceof a lifetime driving around the
(00:48):
US and Canada in their van.
They had sold their home.
So we're going to talk aboutthat.
Before we do that, I want tomention that the Edge Group team
is the premier downsizing realestate team.
We know how to do downsizingreal estate team.
We know how to do downsizing.
If you're ready to downsize,give us a call or go to
edgegroupteamcom and let us know.
(01:10):
We say more, less house, morehome and discover downsizing
with us.
That's it for the promo.
Let's get going.
Don and Gay Taylor, tell usabout your experience of
switching from a home in WestSeattle to a van life.
Don Taylor (01:29):
In 2013, I'd been in front of a computer for a
minimum of 40 hours a week for33 years, writing and developing
software systems.
It was a good job, it paiddecently, we had a nice life,
our family, and I was absolutelysick of it 33 years.
I asked for three months offand my boss said oh, we couldn't
(01:50):
possibly let you leave forthree months.
So I went home, wrote aresignation letter and I quit.
I had talked with Gay, my wife,earlier about how much I was
sick of my job and she said whydon't you quit?
And I said we have a mortgage.
She said we'll sell the house.
All of that played into myresignation letter.
I submitted that and we set offto sell our house, emptied it
(02:13):
out, hired a realtor.
In May we had a small 19 and ahalf foot camping van, a road
trek that we had used onnumerous trips and enjoyed quite
a bit.
So we decided that we woulddrive around the country and go
visit friends and family and seenew sites, and so that's what
we did.
(02:33):
We put all of our stuff instorage that we knew we wouldn't
be able to replace without megoing back to work, and I really
didn't want to go back to workand so we sold and gave away a
lot of stuff and got a 10 by 12storage space and stuffed
everything else we had in.
We hit the road in September,closed on our house sometime in
late October from Vermont, keptgoing for seven more years until
(02:57):
COVID put the kibosh onconvenient travel through van.
Everything closed and thethings that you need, no matter
what, are a place to take ashower, a place to dump the van,
everything closed and thethings that you need, no matter
what, are a place to take ashower, a place to dump the van
and, occasionally, a place tostay and plug in.
All those became unavailableand everything shut down.
We put ourselves in Denver atthat at her brother's house,
(03:18):
much to his joy.
Judy Gratton (03:19):
Gae, were you working at that time?
What were you doing when hecame up with wanting to quit his
job and do this great thing?
How did you feel about that?
What was going on in your world?
Gae Taylor (03:30):
I was laying out by the pool eating Bon Bons.
What was I doing, Dan?
Don Taylor (03:34):
Taking care of animals, taking care of the
house, taking care of everythingexcept going to work for 40
hours.
Judy Gratton (03:39):
That's a lot.
Don Taylor (03:40):
As I found out, much more than 40 hours of work a
week.
Yes, I can vouch for that one.
Judy Gratton (03:44):
But to go you had to clear out the house.
What were the financial andemotional effects of doing all
this?
Getting ready to go?
Was it joyful?
Gae Taylor (03:54):
It was After we got going.
It was joyful.
I had spent a year writing downeverything we spent, what we
spent it on trying to figure outour bottom line.
I went through room by room.
I started with the spare room.
I took a bag and just I got twoof these.
I don't need this one, I don'tneed this.
And then it got easier andeasier to throw things in the
bag.
We had the Goodwill box, theSave box, and saved way too much
(04:17):
Christmas stuff.
Oh yeah, I can't give up that.
Judy Gratton (04:22):
But it was fun.
Wow, that's good to know.
I know a lot of people.
It's really hard to let go ofthings.
Gae Taylor (04:29):
It was for me too.
But I talked to this lady whoused to sell herself as the
declutterer at church, so Iinvited her to my house to see
if she could kickstart me, andI'll tell you, by the second
bookshelf I was like I think Igot it.
I was really letting go.
Good, I haven't missed any ofit.
I don't even remember what Igave away.
Don Taylor (04:46):
We stored a lot of artwork, books, tools, very
little furniture, a few thingsthat I knew we couldn't replace,
but a lot of it was notnecessary.
I should have followed Gay'slead and gotten rid of more
stuff.
We wouldn't have had thosethings to move, which we moved
twice.
When COVID hit, we moved inwith my brother-in-law and I
(05:06):
thought let's quit paying onstorage.
We moved all of that stuff toColorado and stored it in our
crawl space in his basement.
Then, when we got tired ofsharing his space when he was
working from home, we moved itall back up to Seattle when we
found a place to live.
Gae Taylor (05:24):
But we didn't know we were coming back to Seattle.
We thought we were looking forour forever spot out there in.
Don Taylor (05:30):
Colorado.
Colorado is pretty central, soit could have been anywhere.
Dennis Day (05:33):
So your West Seattle home was 1,700, 1,800 square
feet 1,800 square feet.
And then you went down to.
Don Taylor (05:41):
We're in a 900 square foot home now.
Dennis Day (05:44):
In your van you went from oh 92.
92 square feet in the van.
Don Taylor (05:49):
There's an aisleway between the bed and the driver
and passenger seats, with athird seat on the side, and then
all the rest is either cabinetor countertop with sink and cook
space, or toilet.
Not much room.
Gae Taylor (06:01):
It's smaller than a beach towel size.
Wow, you guys have to like eachother.
A lot, people told us when westarted off.
The neighbors were like I giveyou two weeks to be back.
You'll be sorry, you sold yourhouse.
Don Taylor (06:14):
Never reached that point.
Gae Taylor (06:15):
People asked did you fight a lot in the RV?
No more than when we were inthe house.
No more and no less.
Judy Gratton (06:21):
So it was just the two of you then in your RV
going down the road.
Don Taylor (06:26):
And a German Shepherd and two pugs.
We had to rehome our cat.
I refused to have a cat box inthe same space I lived in, and
so we had to rehome our cat.
That was a heartbreaker, but wehad our three dogs when we
started out.
Judy Gratton (06:40):
They're all gone by now They've gone by now, okay
, yeah.
Don Taylor (06:43):
But it's been a long time, over 10 years.
Judy Gratton (06:46):
That's true Three dogs and you.
What were some of the otherchallenges that you encountered
living in an RV?
Don Taylor (06:53):
When we initially moved in.
You just have to get used tothe space, and we weren't used
to it.
There were a lot of bumps andbruises and scrapes from
knocking our heads and shinsinto things.
That took a while to get usedto.
Fortunately, the design had adecent amount of storage space.
We quickly established exactlyhow we could stuff everything in
there.
We needed year-round clothing.
We needed winter clothes andsummer clothes.
Gae Taylor (07:15):
Women's clothes and skiing clothes yeah.
Don Taylor (07:19):
All the usual things , the only thing we didn't.
What's that?
Judy Gratton (07:22):
You brought all, then your wardrobe for all
seasons.
Don Taylor (07:26):
One thing we didn't have was any kind of formal
where we got invited to awedding and I had to go buy some
clothes to wear to the weddingbecause t-shirts and jeans
wouldn't cut it.
Judy Gratton (07:35):
I love the goodwill.
It's great for stuff.
Dennis Day (07:37):
Now did you guys set out Sorry, go ahead.
Don, go ahead with yourquestion.
Did you want to explain moreabout transitioning?
Don Taylor (07:43):
We set up a mail forwarding service.
That was one key thing.
We needed to keep getting mailand there was a local mail
forwarding service in WestSeattle, just a couple blocks
from our house.
We set up a contract with themand then we used to getting the
mail delivered.
Our first mail delivery was toa tiny post office in Maine.
We went out to Acadia NationalPark and had general delivery
(08:06):
done and it worked like a charm.
One recommendation don't evergeneral delivery across the
border.
We did it once in Canada and ittook 13 days, but it's great
for the US, Usually two to fourdays.
Judy Gratton (08:19):
Did you have to wait the 13 days, or did it just
go on to somewhere else?
Don Taylor (08:23):
No, it made it and we waited.
Gae Taylor (08:25):
But we're in Alaska.
No, we weren't.
Don Taylor (08:28):
We were in Whitehorse, british Columbia.
They have an Olympic trainingcenter there with an
Olympic-sized pool and lots ofbeautiful places.
We didn't have a problemhanging out there.
That's where we stayed thewhole time.
The mail forwarding wassomething we had to set up,
nothing in particular.
There's a shower in our RV, butit's set up so that you run a
shower curtain around the middleof the van and we never used it
(08:50):
.
Using all of the water supplyto take a shower seemed like a
foolish approach for being ableto stay in the van.
So we looked for public pools.
That was a part of our travelplan.
Look for public pools oroccasionally staying at RV parks
.
We've got a Passport Americadiscount pass paid half price.
There are a few things that youhave to pay attention to get
(09:11):
away with it without having togo back to home base, which we
didn't have you had mentioneddumping the van and I'm like
maybe we need to clarify.
It's a house on wheels,including the sewage system and
the freshwater supply system andall that.
Our particular model a10-gallon black water tank,
which is where the toilet goes.
You don't want that to overflow.
I can guarantee you that that'sa bad idea, and so you have to
(09:33):
make a point of tracking down aplace to empty it.
Ours lasts about 10 days, soevery 10 days we would find a
place in driving distance orless than 10 days.
We'd plot it out whether it isa RV campground or some other
public campground, a dump site.
There were places in the middleof nowhere in Wyoming that had
(09:54):
public dumps.
You pay $5 and you empty thevan and that's probably the most
unpleasant process of living ina van having to do that process
.
Our setup is so small, it onlytakes five minutes.
It's not really a very big deal, it's just very pleasant.
Gae Taylor (10:07):
It's only a big deal if you screw up.
Don Taylor (10:09):
Take your foot off the side.
I wrote it up in the.
We had a blog and I wrote it upin the blog because it was
pretty darn funny.
We were trying to rinse thetank.
It was a used RV, let's rinsethis thing.
So I had gay man, the littlewand that sprays, to put down
into the toilet to spray it out.
I was outside making sure thedrain was hooked up to the dump
(10:33):
site.
She didn't realize that thething spun around and got
splashed in the face.
It was brand new so it wasn'tfoul yet.
Gae Taylor (10:40):
It was clean water.
Don was mad at me.
Don Taylor (10:42):
And she was pretty mad at me too.
And so then we switched places.
I said, fine, I'll work thewand, you come out here.
And I said here's the outflowpipe.
It's pointing into the hole inthe ground to dump the thing.
Whatever you do, keep your footon this thing so that it
doesn't move.
And apparently I said it toofast or didn't say it.
Gae Taylor (11:02):
I said pull this knob and pull this lever.
I took my foot off to get tothe knob.
That was a bad idea.
Don Taylor (11:08):
And then I was flipping in, it wasn't.
There might have been someswear words.
So anyway, it was ugly a littlebit, but thankfully for Gay he
never had to do it again.
So there you go.
It became my sole duty.
So there's that.
What about laundry and thingslike that?
(11:33):
What do you do with yourclothes?
We have a big laundry bag thatslowly got filled.
When we got either convenientto a laundromat or down to a
floor on clothes, we'd seek oneout and use a public laundromat
to clean everything up.
We'd spend a couple of hoursthere every I don't know several
weeks, two or three weeks.
Gae Taylor (11:43):
We met so many wonderful people at those
laundromats.
So many stories.
Don Taylor (11:46):
So that was another thing that you're dependent on.
You need to look up and plan ontaking care of.
Judy Gratton (11:51):
Now, did you sit down before you did this and
plan all these things out?
You mentioned the mail, which Iwould never have thought of.
I'm sure I would drive off andnever get mail again.
The laundry I know I've seen inWashington state that some of
the rest areas do have places todump the dark water out of RVs.
Did you find that all over thecountry or no?
Don Taylor (12:14):
There are some states that do have those.
There's a public part that Iuse and it shows finds you on
the map and then it showsvarious places that you can go
to and whether they cost money.
I use that extensively to findplaces.
Oh yeah, water.
Some went to the watertreatment plant in Augusta,
maine.
Gae Taylor (12:31):
Where do you get water?
Don Taylor (12:32):
So that was the other thing.
We've gotten water from places,people's houses we've stayed at
.
We have gotten them from RVparks.
We have gotten water from oneconvenience store in one town
where we were staying.
They had an outside faucet.
I went and asked if we couldget some water and he said help
yourself.
Water is generally availableeverywhere.
Water is not as welcome.
(12:54):
It's unchlorinated and sothat's less welcome to put into
the RV.
And we did have to clean outthe freshwater tank, put a
little bit of bleach in it andflushed it once during the trip.
Gae Taylor (13:04):
But we didn't drink that water.
Don Taylor (13:05):
Yeah, we didn't have any issues with freshwater.
You just have to watch youramounts.
The tank on our van was, Ithink, 35 gallons, which is
about 10 gallons too much.
We would have to dump before werun out of freshwater.
So all you're doing is haulingextra weight.
So we would generally build thefreshwater tank about half full
and that would last for as longas it would take to get to a
(13:28):
dump site, and almost all dumpsites have a freshwater potable
water.
Judy Gratton (13:33):
Did you not want to leave it in the tank because
it would get old and make?
Don Taylor (13:37):
you sick?
We were living in the van, sothere was no chance of that.
We cycled through thefreshwater.
Dennis Day (13:42):
Did you go in and right at the time you sold your
house or near it, did you sitdown and plan your route?
Don Taylor (13:48):
No, we're not much on planning.
Currently.
Gay's brother and his wife werestaying at a fancy resort on
Cape Cod, across the country,about the time that we were.
Gae Taylor (13:59):
They called and told us that they were going out to
Cape Cod and they had thisreally nice place.
We invited ourselves, and thenwe drove as fast as we could.
We got there right after theygot the room.
Don Taylor (14:08):
Yeah.
So we went there and our maindriving force was the climate.
We didn't want to have to dealwith freezing climate.
Our RV is not fed up to copewith that stuff.
The lines and tanks areunderneath, on the outside of
the vehicle, so we did not wantto have to deal with freezing
lines, replacing lines embeddedthrough the van and all that
stuff.
(14:28):
So we followed the weathernorth when it got hot and south
when it got cold, and so thatwas the general pattern.
But in between there's lots ofplaces to go and lots of people
to see.
Our initial thing Gay called itour Christmas card tour,
because my wife has kindly sentout 100 cards a year at
Christmas time to friends andfamily and people we haven't
(14:49):
seen in decades.
We would show up in their townand call them up and ask them if
they would like to get togetherfor dinner, and so we got to
visit with all kinds of peoplewe hadn't seen in ages.
It was all kinds of fun, it wasreally fun.
Judy Gratton (15:00):
Did you hit all the states?
You said you went to Canada.
Don Taylor (15:03):
Yeah, we hit all the states.
You said you went to Canada.
Yeah, we hit all the states.
We didn't spend any timeexploring Kentucky, just by
chance.
We didn't stop, make a point ofgoing into Kentucky.
We hoped to go to Louisville,but we never did that.
We passed through Kentucky andwe went through West Virginia,
went through all the states,including up to Alaska.
Drove all the way up to Alaska,spent almost a month in Alaska
(15:25):
and we'd like to go back becausewe missed some of the biggest
national parks there.
Made it up into Canada, touredall the way around Nova Scotia,
went to Newfoundland, labrador.
I did not visit much in easternCanada except Toronto We've
driven across Alaska a few timesor Canada trying to get to
(15:45):
family reunions in Michigan,where it's from.
Dennis Day (15:48):
What are some of the highlights then?
Don Taylor (15:50):
We really enjoyed the trip up to Alaska.
That was quite spectacular.
You can't really drive anywherewithout spectacular views and
sights.
We got up to Denali and we'reone of the lucky 40% of visitors
who actually get to see themountain because it's not
covered in clouds.
It was beautiful when we werethere.
Gae Taylor (16:09):
Tell me how we did it.
Don Taylor (16:10):
One thing if you travel with animals, you have to
be careful about heat.
If you want to leave them alonein the van, you've got to be
able to keep them cool or openthe doors or take them outside
or give them whatever they need.
Dennis Day (16:21):
In.
Don Taylor (16:22):
Bali we can't, and the temperatures were quite hot.
It was the springtime but itwas already getting pretty hot,
so we had to split up.
There's a four-hour bus ride tothe interior lodge at Denali.
I went one day and then thenext day Gay went and I stayed
with dogs.
If you have animals, you haveto be in national parks.
Don't allow animals out on anyof the trails.
(16:44):
National forests are greatWilderness areas.
Judy Gratton (16:48):
Sanrio, not even on a leash.
Don Taylor (16:50):
You can take them on a leash in the parking lots,
which doesn't really play outwell if it's hot with a pavement
on.
So there is a drawback tohaving your animals long in that
regard.
But Alaska was fantastic.
We really enjoyed going up toNew Brunswick.
We traveled all the way aroundNova Scotia, got to see
Alexander Graham Bell Museum upthere, gros Morne, some
(17:14):
spectacular national parks.
We happened to show up onCanada's I think it was 100 and
some anniversary of the country.
They opened up all of theirnational park sites for free
museums.
So we got to tour those forfree.
And then we ferries toNewfoundland.
From Newfoundland we went toLabrador and spent more than a
few days there because we had abroken brake line.
(17:35):
We were there 15 days becausewe had to wait for a part which
couldn't make it, becausethere's two ways in by air or by
ferry and it was bad.
Gae Taylor (17:45):
You couldn't see.
It was so foggy you couldn'tsee your hand in front of your
face.
Don Taylor (17:48):
We were stuck parked behind a car repair base.
They thankfully let us plug ourvan in, so we had electricity
and we were snug.
It was fine.
It was just like anywhere else.
Where you have electricity youcan do pretty much whatever you
can get away with.
We carried probably 100 DVDswith movies and a few books, so
we watched movies at night.
Gae Taylor (18:05):
When we were behind that automobile place waiting to
be towed.
We were towed there, but when Igot out of the car the first
street I see is Sesame Street.
Don Taylor (18:20):
I was like that does not sound like Sesame Street
car repair place.
We did haul our bikes along sowe got to ride our bikes in some
spectacular places on somegreat trails.
Acadia National Park was giftedby somebody famous.
There are carriage trails allover the park that are just
absolutely beautiful for bikingand we were there in the fall.
So there's a trail that leadsto Miami from Homestead, florida
(18:40):
.
That is a bus route with bikelanes.
There's no cars and you can gofor miles.
We took that several times.
That was really nice.
Having some bikes was a greatthing.
We made runs to grocery storesand stuff like that bikes pretty
frequently.
Judy Gratton (18:53):
Cooking in your.
Don Taylor (18:55):
Yeah, there's a little two burner stoveer stove.
Originally there was amicrowave.
I pulled that out and replacedit with a toaster oven because
we don't microwave but we dolike toast.
We did pretty much all of ourcooking.
We stopped to eat out maybe acouple times a month.
Dennis Day (19:13):
So that was good.
So did you guys set a budgetper month, or what did you?
Do Couldn't go over $4,000 amonth Was it easy to make.
Gae Taylor (19:22):
There were some months we went really high If
the car or the van broke down,oh yeah, or the dog got sick.
But we'd make up the next monthand only spend $2,000.
Don Taylor (19:37):
Yeah, we did stay with relatives and friends and
that lowered our budget.
We weren't burning gas.
The gas when we left Seattlewas over $4 a gallon in 2000.
It was the most expensive gaswe ran into until we got to the
last gas station before theArctic Circle in Alaska and that
was over $5 a gallon.
The price went down as we wentsouth and east.
I don't quite understand howthat all works, but it was
pretty cheap back then.
I'm guessing it would probablybe three times the amount of gas
(20:00):
budget now.
Judy Gratton (20:00):
How many gallons of gas did your RV hold?
Don Taylor (20:03):
32 gallons and it got about 15 miles to the gallon
all the time.
Wow, so when we wereconsidering this we looked at
somebody suggested a bus-basedRV.
It was a beautiful big old bus,all outfitted and painted
really nice.
He opened up the back end toshow us the engine a diesel
Cummings.
The thing took up the wholeback end of the bus and I asked
(20:26):
him about gas miles.
He says, oh, it gets about sixmiles to the gallon going up or
down a mountain.
We didn't realize that was notquite what we had in mind
because we didn't want to travel.
The gas budget wasn't too bad,that's good.
Repairs caught us.
The van is older and we had tohave the front end on that.
We've gone through two of these, the same model, different
years.
The first one, we had the frontend rebuilt twice, and the
(20:49):
follow-on van that was five, sixyears newer.
We've had the front end rebuilttwice and those are expensive
repairs.
We fortunately had people'sfriends' homes to stay at.
On some of those and some ofthe repair times we slept in the
van parked in the dealerparking lot while the repairs
were being made.
That's another thing that wesaved a little bit of money on
(21:10):
by dodging.
Judy Gratton (21:11):
So what are your best memories, would you say,
over this?
How many years did you do this?
Don Taylor (21:17):
Seven years, 2014 to 2020, about my best memories.
Traveling through northeasterncanada was so much fun.
The people had a little bit ofan accent.
They were all super friendly.
The culture just felt different.
That was pretty cool.
I enjoyed that a lot.
Gae Taylor (21:34):
We went to a viking village up there and it was
really cold and the wind wasblowing so hard.
I bought this coat for $35 andit was the best coat ever.
It saved me.
Don Taylor (21:45):
It was a site that the Vikings had landed a
thousand years before Columbuscame to the United States and
they rebuilt a village using thetechnique that they discovered
are six foot thick peat mosswalls and they had guides
dressed up in the original garb.
It was freezing cold out.
You walk through their littletiny door and it's just
(22:07):
absolutely snug warm inside andit was interesting, just a lot
of interesting things to see, sowe did enjoy.
We also went down through theFreedom Trail area to Alabama.
Selma lucked out our timing.
We arrived in Selma, thoughtwe'd check and see what was on
at the movies.
Movie Selma had just come outand they were having an opening
showing by invitation only.
(22:29):
Since the movie was filmed inSelma, the filmmakers paid for
free showings for a couple ofweeks to the locals and the
locals were really generous andreally nice.
They got us a couple of ticketsso we got to go see that movie
in selma along with people, someof the people that had survived
the tomorrow march.
It was fascinating really.
That sounds, yeah, a lot ofbeautiful places, a lot of nice
(22:51):
parks and places we didn'treally expect of interesting
places.
Went to hot springs, arkansas,the smallest national park,
which is about three blocks long.
Spas, more or less health spas,and that sort of thing.
Wandered around there.
Acadia was absolutely beautiful.
Gae Taylor (23:07):
We spent a month in Utah, went up to a place called
Hanksville.
Utah is great.
You go up on this plateau and,oh man, the wind blew up there.
It was a lot of fun up there.
I could have stayed up therelonger.
Don Taylor (23:18):
We bought a rockhounding book at a local
shop in Moab, Utah.
Let's check out theserockhounding sites.
And so we traveled all over thestate looking for rocks, and we
found a lot of really coolrocks.
Gay had befriended a youngchurch who loved rocks, and so
we took off on the trip.
And she was shipping rocks backto this boy.
(23:39):
His parents finally asked usstop sending rocks.
His whole club is filled withrocks, and so we stopped.
Gae Taylor (23:45):
You know those boxes you get at the post office and
it can weigh as much as you wantit to weigh.
I'd load that up with rocks andhe wouldn't give up one rock.
I'm like throw him in the alley.
Dennis Day (23:55):
Well, during COVID, you guys had to park yourselves
in Denver.
Don Taylor (24:00):
Yeah, at our gay's brother's home, and so we tried
to help out there, did projectsaround the house and ended up
investing some of the money we'dstored with him so that we
could help him out.
We had a place to stay and heended up paying us back for that
when we wanted to buy a house.
But we were there for two yearsand then we came back up this
way and wanted to buy a house.
But we were there for two yearsand then we came back up this
(24:21):
way and started looking for ahome.
Judy Gratton (24:22):
Can you explain why, COVID?
What happened that made youstop traveling?
Don Taylor (24:27):
The RV parks all shut their doors.
They weren't allowed to stayopen.
That meant we had no place tostop to either dump and or do
laundry, take showers, so thatmade that part of it much more
difficult.
The pools all shut down, allthe public pools, so we had no
place to take showers andeverything was closed.
We could have driven around buthad been driving in circles.
(24:48):
We couldn't really stop to seeanything.
Judy Gratton (24:51):
Was it hard to get gas at that time, it seems to
me I remember that gas becamecheaper, but it was also harder
to find, wasn't it?
Don Taylor (24:59):
We had landed, so we had gone to Denver for a ski
outing with her brother and somefriends, and up in the
mountains while we were on thattrip, up in Frisco, Colorado,
Breckenridge, we were stayingthere and actually that was one
of the first outspots up there.
(25:20):
So we were in Denver when ithit and we just stayed parked
because there was no headingback up.
Dennis Day (25:29):
How long have you been at this place in Port
Angeles?
Your current we?
Don Taylor (25:34):
bought this in December of 2020 and moved in in
January of 2022.
So it's been two years, right?
Is that right?
Judy Gratton (25:44):
What made you decide to stop going, to come
back to a house?
Gae Taylor (25:50):
Don was a baby and he wanted to stop traveling and
live in a house and vegetablesand watch his plants grow.
And I wanted to keep ontraveling.
See how that went.
Don Taylor (25:59):
That's a pretty good summary, and I convinced her to
come up to Seattle.
We rented a friend's basementfor three months while we
searched for a home and found aplace here in Port Angeles.
We'd always come out here, orfrequently come out here, to go
mushroom hunting and camping.
I liked the area and it wasprobably the most affordable
(26:20):
place that we knew we liked.
We couldn't afford to go backto the Seattle area and buy a
house and we wanted a property.
Anyway, that's how we ended up.
Gae Taylor (26:30):
We decided the best places we decided to live was
Peoria, vermont or Port Angeles,washington Wow.
But Vermont had so many ticksthat no way we were staying
there with three dogs.
Don Taylor (26:42):
Yeah, I will throw that warning out.
If you are going RV lifestyleand you are going to visit
eastern United States forestsand that sort of thing, get your
skills up with dealing withticks, because they are.
And we each got ticks atvarious points and thankfully we
(27:02):
were able to discover them andget rid of them before they had
a chance to poison us withanything foul.
But I tell you, we visited somefriends that we knew in
Colorado and they lived inMassachusetts and we were
telling them about the ticks.
We said, oh, we just can't dealwith it.
I hate the whole tick thing.
What's the point of having abeautiful forest if you can't go
(27:23):
out and enjoy them?
And she said you were inColorado.
What about rattlesnakes?
I take a rattlesnake over atick, any tick.
They're awful.
Dennis Day (27:31):
Okay, so have you guys got plans for hitting the
road?
Don Taylor (27:35):
No, not really.
We've taken some relativelyshort trips to state campgrounds
and things like that.
We made one longer plus longtrip to Colorado and Arizona to
visit family and we don't haveanything in the works except
maybe escaping the winter gray.
I need to get hit of sun for atleast a few weeks, so one way
(27:56):
or another we'll head someplacesunny.
I don't know how warm it'll be,but it'll be sunny because I
need a dose of that Do you stillhave the same van, or?
We do.
We have the second one.
It's a 2004 Roadtrek 190popular.
It's 19 and a half feet longand fully outfitted with all
that good stuff Generator andfurnace, cork lane furnace and
all the things you can jam intoa camper, into one 19-foot van.
Gae Taylor (28:18):
We're looking for a new one right now, but we don't
like the design of any of thenew ones.
Yeah, yeah, they're not nearlyas efficient as these older
designs.
You open the back door of thenew ones and the toilet's right
there.
Judy Gratton (28:30):
Open to the world.
Oh my, oh my.
Gae Taylor (28:32):
I'm like, I don't like that.
Dennis Day (28:34):
Yeah no, how did you stay connected to the internet?
Don Taylor (28:39):
So we paid extra for our phone service to have our
hotspot space and so we couldrun a hotspot anywhere we had a
signal and so we used thatextensively.
It was a bit of trouble when wecrossed the border and all that
went away.
I had to track down days orrestaurants with hotspots
available in them to do stuff.
(29:00):
I maintained a blog.
It's still going.
It's not nearly as interestingas 10 years ago but at any rate,
break from work on the blogthat I tracked all of the places
and people and things we saw.
Judy Gratton (29:12):
We need to make sure that's on our site.
Don Taylor (29:14):
Yeah, I mostly did it for my mom so that she could
stay in touch, because we wereonly a phone call away.
But towards the end she wasn'tcapable of doing much of that
stuff.
My sister kept her.
Judy Gratton (29:24):
So what do you think is different about your
life now versus when you startedthis journey beyond?
Don Taylor (29:35):
the fact that you live in a stick-built house now
versus a RV van.
It's not as exciting when youwake up in the morning and pick
a direction to go.
I'm far cry from waking up inthe morning and doing my coffee
routine for an hour in themorning and driving my wife
crazy Gay's engaged with thecommunity much more than I have.
She's joined.
We're both in the garden clubnow and do volunteer work
locally.
(29:55):
She does different things thanI do, but I'm still plugged in
and making friends, meetingpeople.
I volunteer at the localcommunity college to help out
with their ceramics room upthere so I get a chance to keep
my hands in play, which is a bigfavorite thing of mine to do.
For play.
It's just different.
Focuses are different.
They're not about looking fornew things that we're going to
go find or see.
(30:16):
They're more about what to dolocally, what the weather looks
like, what might be available.
Enjoy coming up and thenplotting short trips to visit
with friends and family back inSeattle, the other side of
Mexico.
That's my take, gay.
Gae Taylor (30:29):
That says it all.
It's nice going to when youlive in one spot.
When you go to church, you seethe same people every Sunday.
When we were on the road we'dalways stop at church and it was
just meeting all the new peopleover and over again.
Don Taylor (30:42):
It was one of the consistent things we did, though
.
It gave us a place to park.
Every Saturday night we wouldpark at a church and Gay would
go to church the following dayand learn things about things to
do locally, as well as meetingthe people.
It was a really nice additionto our travel, actually when we
were in the van.
It had some consistency, didyou make?
Judy Gratton (31:04):
some new friends along the way.
Do you have people, new peoplein your life from your journeys
A?
Gae Taylor (31:10):
couple, wendy, who lives in Toronto her and her
husband and we've been up tovisit her.
And then our friend Larry Case.
He lives, like I think, inCalgary now and he was living or
had a girlfriend down in NewMexico, so we visited him down
there and kept in touch withthem.
Oh good, Good.
Don Taylor (31:28):
Yeah, we did have family and friends stops.
We had a regular route wherewe'd see my sisters and mother
in Arizona, gay's brother inColorado.
She's got multiple brothers andsisters in Michigan and Detroit
area so we would stop there mybrother in Minneapolis.
So we generally made longerstops to visit with family and
(31:50):
that kind of saved us a littlebit of money and it gave us a
chance to also connect a littlebetter Because in the past we
might see them once every fewyears.
We got more visiting in thepast?
Judy Gratton (31:59):
How many times do you think you went around the
country over these years?
Don Taylor (32:05):
We spent time in the south on our first time around.
We did get back down one moretime, so twice down all the way
through Florida, probably acrossTexas.
We went three times, so maybethree times all the way around.
Otherwise we tended to keep tothe north, where most of our
family is, and it's a bit cooler.
Heat was really the first thingto cope with.
(32:28):
We got caught in freezingweather a number of times.
You don't have to drain all thetanks, drain the fresh water
using bottled water to live inthe van.
We did that a number of timesas well, and the van is so heavy
that it worked and I wasdriving through five inches of
snow and it was fine.
Oh good, yeah, which, whichpleased me immensely, because it
scared me to death initially,and then I drove it.
It was great.
Gae Taylor (32:49):
One time we were leaving out of Denver and we
were going up to Wyoming to geton I-80 and come across west and
it started snowing.
It was bad and blowing.
And blowing hard.
And we stopped and asked thisWyoming guy does it blow like
this all the time?
What do you say?
(33:12):
The wind isn't blowing.
You're not in Wyoming.
Yeah, so bad that we had topull up on the side of the road
like a exit and all the semiswere lined up.
And then here's us.
Don Taylor (33:17):
Yeah, they closed I-80.
So there was no going anywhere.
We were stuck overnight and Ithought that's just so
ridiculous.
And then I got up in themorning and I looked outside and
there was a quarter inch ice onthe blades of grass outside the
van so it was an absolute sheetof ice, and so it was good that
they closed it on us, because Iwould have been stupid to drive
(33:38):
through it, I'm sure, yeah,yeah we started driving in the
morning.
Gae Taylor (33:41):
The first thing we saw was the RV tipped over on
the side of the road.
Judy Gratton (33:44):
It was like oh yeah yeah, that was, and you
were stuck with a good group ofpeople.
I've always really trusted thetruckers on the road.
Gae Taylor (33:53):
One of the things about traveling with dogs is a
lot of times we'd park atwalmart.
You get out at three in themorning in your bathrobe to let
the dogs go to the bathroom andall these truckers are out there
.
You're like, don didn't have todo that, but I did.
Dennis Day (34:11):
Ah you had the bathroom duty, yet yeah, yeah,
we created different things anylessons or words of wisdom for
somebody who might be thinkingabout hey, this sounds good that
was good and was good, andcarry some tools, tools, tools,
so you can't deal with stuff.
Don Taylor (34:28):
Duct tape, spare fuses.
We had a fuse go out in Sydney,nova Scotia, that wouldn't
allow, stopped the van fromstarting and I didn't have any
of those kind of fuses.
Gae Taylor (34:39):
So you just went out of one spot and put it over in
another spot, yeah, so we couldat least keep going.
Don Taylor (34:44):
But make sure you've got some spare things that
won't keep you from going, forsure.
What else?
Yeah, if you carry some tape,that is like we had some leaks
and I used electrical tape whichsticks, but you can pull off
when you want to fix itpermanently.
If the water's like we had agap on the back door, I put a
(35:05):
piece of tape across the backdoor so that the water would not
drip down inside of the frame.
Stuff to carry Some rubber-typetape for leaks, tools for
fixing things and don't evensweat.
I sweated it all the time.
Don't even sweat it when thingsgo bad on the van.
Get it fixed.
Judy Gratton (35:30):
And there are places to get them fixed.
All over the country We've hadrepairs done north south east
and west Sounds like plan onknowing repairs.
Gae Taylor (35:33):
Yeah, and when you go over to Canada, make sure you
don't say you want to stay.
What I told the?
I asked the guy at the bordercrossing what do I have to do to
stay here?
You got any paperwork overthere and he said pull over here
.
And they tore our van apart,top to bottom, hitting it, went
through our shoes and everythingbut they let us in.
Don Taylor (35:49):
We were clean, so it was okay.
Don't mess around with theborder patrol on either side.
Gae Taylor (35:53):
They they are not joking around no, they're not
funny, they're no they have nosense to you really that one guy
up in alaska, far up as youcould go the border cross, and
we were coming back in into can.
We're going into Canada andthey're like we've got to have
your eggs, eggs.
Judy Gratton (36:09):
Eggs.
They took the eggs.
I thought it was fruit andvegetables.
Don Taylor (36:11):
Really Well, they took our dog food which we
bought in the United States thatwas made in Canada.
And when we came back in theUnited States they said oh no,
that's made in Canada, but webought it in the US.
He said nope.
Gae Taylor (36:23):
Doesn't matter Out of there, but it was funny, the
car next to us, they were takinghis firewood away and I'm like
we had firewood.
They didn't take our firewood,but they took our dog food,
Don't you wonder?
Judy Gratton (36:33):
if maybe they were just like shopping yeah.
Dennis Day (36:35):
I admire you guys for doing this dream trip.
And also, you're still married.
That's just amazing.
For now, okay, any last wordsof wisdom or advice you have for
listeners?
Don Taylor (36:48):
I would say go for it.
You'll relax on the trip.
Don't sweat it.
I was worried about things allthe time and it was all fine and
everything worked, and so myadvice would be don't sweat it
and go for it, because what agreat experience People, the
places.
It's amazing how nice so manyplaces in this country are.
I had no idea.
All right, I'd do it again.
Judy Gratton (37:09):
Thank you, guys, so much for sharing this with us
and our listeners.
You're welcome.
Dennis Day (37:14):
Thanks for having us .
Yeah, and we'll put the link toyour blog so people can see way
back to 2014.
That was how I kept track ofyou Occasional call, but I was
like, oh they're here, ohthey're there, and I'd see great
pictures of places and familyand friends.
It was really a treat.
(37:34):
So that's another thing I wouldsuggest people do is keep track
of it with a blog or somethingand your family can follow along
.
So, anyway, that's it for thisepisode.
Thank you, don and Gay Taylor,for sharing your experience in
van life and we'll see you nexttime.
Bye.
Hello everyone.
This is Dennis.
I've got a great show for you.
I have a friend of mine whoI've known since eighth grade,
maybe seventh grade, and theyhave taken a trip around the US
many times.
They're here to discuss theirvan life and their experiences.
Tell you some.
Gratton, hello, judy, hello,hello, you're looking great,
(00:27):
thank you.
And here's my friends from along time, don and Gay Taylor,
say hi.
Don and Gay Taylor, hello,hello.
I'm really excited because Donwas my best man at my wedding
and we've been friends forever.
We've managed to stay friendssince like 13.
That's pretty amazing.
We've managed to stay friendssince like 13.
That's pretty amazing.
He had.
These two folks had experienceof a lifetime driving around the
(00:48):
US and Canada in their van.
They had sold their home.
So we're going to talk aboutthat.
Before we do that, I want tomention that the Edge Group team
is the premier downsizing realestate team.
We know how to do downsizingreal estate team.
We know how to do downsizing.
If you're ready to downsize,give us a call or go to
edgegroupteamcom and let us know.
(01:10):
We say more, less house, morehome and discover downsizing
with us.
That's it for the promo.
Let's get going.
Don and Gay Taylor, tell usabout your experience of
switching from a home in WestSeattle to a van life.
Don Taylor (01:29):
In 2013, I'd been in front of a computer for a
minimum of 40 hours a week for33 years, writing and developing
software systems.
It was a good job, it paiddecently, we had a nice life,
our family, and I was absolutelysick of it 33 years.
I asked for three months offand my boss said oh, we couldn't
(01:50):
possibly let you leave forthree months.
So I went home, wrote aresignation letter and I quit.
I had talked with Gay, my wife,earlier about how much I was
sick of my job and she said whydon't you quit?
And I said we have a mortgage.
She said we'll sell the house.
All of that played into myresignation letter.
I submitted that and we set offto sell our house, emptied it
(02:13):
out, hired a realtor.
In May we had a small 19 and ahalf foot camping van, a road
trek that we had used onnumerous trips and enjoyed quite
a bit.
So we decided that we woulddrive around the country and go
visit friends and family and seenew sites, and so that's what
we did.
(02:33):
We put all of our stuff instorage that we knew we wouldn't
be able to replace without megoing back to work, and I really
didn't want to go back to workand so we sold and gave away a
lot of stuff and got a 10 by 12storage space and stuffed
everything else we had in.
We hit the road in September,closed on our house sometime in
late October from Vermont, keptgoing for seven more years until
(02:57):
COVID put the kibosh onconvenient travel through van.
Everything closed and thethings that you need, no matter
what, are a place to take ashower, a place to dump the van,
everything closed and thethings that you need, no matter
what, are a place to take ashower, a place to dump the van
and, occasionally, a place tostay and plug in.
All those became unavailableand everything shut down.
We put ourselves in Denver atthat at her brother's house,
(03:18):
much to his joy.
Judy Gratton (03:19):
Gae, were you working at that time?
What were you doing when hecame up with wanting to quit his
job and do this great thing?
How did you feel about that?
What was going on in your world?
Gae Taylor (03:30):
I was laying out by the pool eating Bon Bons.
What was I doing, Dan?
Don Taylor (03:34):
Taking care of animals, taking care of the
house, taking care of everythingexcept going to work for 40
hours.
Judy Gratton (03:39):
That's a lot.
Don Taylor (03:40):
As I found out, much more than 40 hours of work a
week.
Yes, I can vouch for that one.
Judy Gratton (03:44):
But to go you had to clear out the house.
What were the financial andemotional effects of doing all
this?
Getting ready to go?
Was it joyful?
Gae Taylor (03:54):
It was After we got going.
It was joyful.
I had spent a year writing downeverything we spent, what we
spent it on trying to figure outour bottom line.
I went through room by room.
I started with the spare room.
I took a bag and just I got twoof these.
I don't need this one, I don'tneed this.
And then it got easier andeasier to throw things in the
bag.
We had the Goodwill box, theSave box, and saved way too much
(04:17):
Christmas stuff.
Oh yeah, I can't give up that.
Judy Gratton (04:22):
But it was fun.
Wow, that's good to know.
I know a lot of people.
It's really hard to let go ofthings.
Gae Taylor (04:29):
It was for me too.
But I talked to this lady whoused to sell herself as the
declutterer at church, so Iinvited her to my house to see
if she could kickstart me, andI'll tell you, by the second
bookshelf I was like I think Igot it.
I was really letting go.
Good, I haven't missed any ofit.
I don't even remember what Igave away.
Don Taylor (04:46):
We stored a lot of artwork, books, tools, very
little furniture, a few thingsthat I knew we couldn't replace,
but a lot of it was notnecessary.
I should have followed Gay'slead and gotten rid of more
stuff.
We wouldn't have had thosethings to move, which we moved
twice.
When COVID hit, we moved inwith my brother-in-law and I
(05:06):
thought let's quit paying onstorage.
We moved all of that stuff toColorado and stored it in our
crawl space in his basement.
Then, when we got tired ofsharing his space when he was
working from home, we moved itall back up to Seattle when we
found a place to live.
Gae Taylor (05:24):
But we didn't know we were coming back to Seattle.
We thought we were looking forour forever spot out there in.
Don Taylor (05:30):
Colorado.
Colorado is pretty central, soit could have been anywhere.
Dennis Day (05:33):
So your West Seattle home was 1,700, 1,800 square
feet 1,800 square feet.
And then you went down to.
Don Taylor (05:41):
We're in a 900 square foot home now.
Dennis Day (05:44):
In your van you went from oh 92.
92 square feet in the van.
Don Taylor (05:49):
There's an aisleway between the bed and the driver
and passenger seats, with athird seat on the side, and then
all the rest is either cabinetor countertop with sink and cook
space, or toilet.
Not much room.
Gae Taylor (06:01):
It's smaller than a beach towel size.
Wow, you guys have to like eachother.
A lot, people told us when westarted off.
The neighbors were like I giveyou two weeks to be back.
You'll be sorry, you sold yourhouse.
Don Taylor (06:14):
Never reached that point.
Gae Taylor (06:15):
People asked did you fight a lot in the RV?
No more than when we were inthe house.
No more and no less.
Judy Gratton (06:21):
So it was just the two of you then in your RV
going down the road.
Don Taylor (06:26):
And a German Shepherd and two pugs.
We had to rehome our cat.
I refused to have a cat box inthe same space I lived in, and
so we had to rehome our cat.
That was a heartbreaker, but wehad our three dogs when we
started out.
Judy Gratton (06:40):
They're all gone by now They've gone by now, okay
, yeah.
Don Taylor (06:43):
But it's been a long time, over 10 years.
Judy Gratton (06:46):
That's true Three dogs and you.
What were some of the otherchallenges that you encountered
living in an RV?
Don Taylor (06:53):
When we initially moved in.
You just have to get used tothe space, and we weren't used
to it.
There were a lot of bumps andbruises and scrapes from
knocking our heads and shinsinto things.
That took a while to get usedto.
Fortunately, the design had adecent amount of storage space.
We quickly established exactlyhow we could stuff everything in
there.
We needed year-round clothing.
We needed winter clothes andsummer clothes.
Gae Taylor (07:15):
Women's clothes and skiing clothes yeah.
Don Taylor (07:19):
All the usual things , the only thing we didn't.
What's that?
Judy Gratton (07:22):
You brought all, then your wardrobe for all
seasons.
Don Taylor (07:26):
One thing we didn't have was any kind of formal
where we got invited to awedding and I had to go buy some
clothes to wear to the weddingbecause t-shirts and jeans
wouldn't cut it.
Judy Gratton (07:35):
I love the goodwill.
It's great for stuff.
Dennis Day (07:37):
Now did you guys set out Sorry, go ahead.
Don, go ahead with yourquestion.
Did you want to explain moreabout transitioning?
Don Taylor (07:43):
We set up a mail forwarding service.
That was one key thing.
We needed to keep getting mailand there was a local mail
forwarding service in WestSeattle, just a couple blocks
from our house.
We set up a contract with themand then we used to getting the
mail delivered.
Our first mail delivery was toa tiny post office in Maine.
We went out to Acadia NationalPark and had general delivery
(08:06):
done and it worked like a charm.
One recommendation don't evergeneral delivery across the
border.
We did it once in Canada and ittook 13 days, but it's great
for the US, Usually two to fourdays.
Judy Gratton (08:19):
Did you have to wait the 13 days, or did it just
go on to somewhere else?
Don Taylor (08:23):
No, it made it and we waited.
Gae Taylor (08:25):
But we're in Alaska.
No, we weren't.
Don Taylor (08:28):
We were in Whitehorse, british Columbia.
They have an Olympic trainingcenter there with an
Olympic-sized pool and lots ofbeautiful places.
We didn't have a problemhanging out there.
That's where we stayed thewhole time.
The mail forwarding wassomething we had to set up,
nothing in particular.
There's a shower in our RV, butit's set up so that you run a
shower curtain around the middleof the van and we never used it
(08:50):
.
Using all of the water supplyto take a shower seemed like a
foolish approach for being ableto stay in the van.
So we looked for public pools.
That was a part of our travelplan.
Look for public pools oroccasionally staying at RV parks
.
We've got a Passport Americadiscount pass paid half price.
There are a few things that youhave to pay attention to get
(09:11):
away with it without having togo back to home base, which we
didn't have you had mentioneddumping the van and I'm like
maybe we need to clarify.
It's a house on wheels,including the sewage system and
the freshwater supply system andall that.
Our particular model a10-gallon black water tank,
which is where the toilet goes.
You don't want that to overflow.
I can guarantee you that that'sa bad idea, and so you have to
(09:33):
make a point of tracking down aplace to empty it.
Ours lasts about 10 days, soevery 10 days we would find a
place in driving distance orless than 10 days.
We'd plot it out whether it isa RV campground or some other
public campground, a dump site.
There were places in the middleof nowhere in Wyoming that had
(09:54):
public dumps.
You pay $5 and you empty thevan and that's probably the most
unpleasant process of living ina van having to do that process
.
Our setup is so small, it onlytakes five minutes.
It's not really a very big deal, it's just very pleasant.
Gae Taylor (10:07):
It's only a big deal if you screw up.
Don Taylor (10:09):
Take your foot off the side.
I wrote it up in the.
We had a blog and I wrote it upin the blog because it was
pretty darn funny.
We were trying to rinse thetank.
It was a used RV, let's rinsethis thing.
So I had gay man, the littlewand that sprays, to put down
into the toilet to spray it out.
I was outside making sure thedrain was hooked up to the dump
(10:33):
site.
She didn't realize that thething spun around and got
splashed in the face.
It was brand new so it wasn'tfoul yet.
Gae Taylor (10:40):
It was clean water.
Don was mad at me.
Don Taylor (10:42):
And she was pretty mad at me too.
And so then we switched places.
I said, fine, I'll work thewand, you come out here.
And I said here's the outflowpipe.
It's pointing into the hole inthe ground to dump the thing.
Whatever you do, keep your footon this thing so that it
doesn't move.
And apparently I said it toofast or didn't say it.
Gae Taylor (11:02):
I said pull this knob and pull this lever.
I took my foot off to get tothe knob.
That was a bad idea.
Don Taylor (11:08):
And then I was flipping in, it wasn't.
There might have been someswear words.
So anyway, it was ugly a littlebit, but thankfully for Gay he
never had to do it again.
So there you go.
It became my sole duty.
So there's that.
What about laundry and thingslike that?
(11:33):
What do you do with yourclothes?
We have a big laundry bag thatslowly got filled.
When we got either convenientto a laundromat or down to a
floor on clothes, we'd seek oneout and use a public laundromat
to clean everything up.
We'd spend a couple of hoursthere every I don't know several
weeks, two or three weeks.
Gae Taylor (11:43):
We met so many wonderful people at those
laundromats.
So many stories.
Don Taylor (11:46):
So that was another thing that you're dependent on.
You need to look up and plan ontaking care of.
Judy Gratton (11:51):
Now, did you sit down before you did this and
plan all these things out?
You mentioned the mail, which Iwould never have thought of.
I'm sure I would drive off andnever get mail again.
The laundry I know I've seen inWashington state that some of
the rest areas do have places todump the dark water out of RVs.
Did you find that all over thecountry or no?
Don Taylor (12:14):
There are some states that do have those.
There's a public part that Iuse and it shows finds you on
the map and then it showsvarious places that you can go
to and whether they cost money.
I use that extensively to findplaces.
Oh yeah, water.
Some went to the watertreatment plant in Augusta,
maine.
Gae Taylor (12:31):
Where do you get water?
Don Taylor (12:32):
So that was the other thing.
We've gotten water from places,people's houses we've stayed at
.
We have gotten them from RVparks.
We have gotten water from oneconvenience store in one town
where we were staying.
They had an outside faucet.
I went and asked if we couldget some water and he said help
yourself.
Water is generally availableeverywhere.
Water is not as welcome.
(12:54):
It's unchlorinated and sothat's less welcome to put into
the RV.
And we did have to clean outthe freshwater tank, put a
little bit of bleach in it andflushed it once during the trip.
Gae Taylor (13:04):
But we didn't drink that water.
Don Taylor (13:05):
Yeah, we didn't have any issues with freshwater.
You just have to watch youramounts.
The tank on our van was, Ithink, 35 gallons, which is
about 10 gallons too much.
We would have to dump before werun out of freshwater.
So all you're doing is haulingextra weight.
So we would generally build thefreshwater tank about half full
and that would last for as longas it would take to get to a
(13:28):
dump site, and almost all dumpsites have a freshwater potable
water.
Judy Gratton (13:33):
Did you not want to leave it in the tank because
it would get old and make?
Don Taylor (13:37):
you sick?
We were living in the van, sothere was no chance of that.
We cycled through thefreshwater.
Dennis Day (13:42):
Did you go in and right at the time you sold your
house or near it, did you sitdown and plan your route?
Don Taylor (13:48):
No, we're not much on planning.
Currently.
Gay's brother and his wife werestaying at a fancy resort on
Cape Cod, across the country,about the time that we were.
Gae Taylor (13:59):
They called and told us that they were going out to
Cape Cod and they had thisreally nice place.
We invited ourselves, and thenwe drove as fast as we could.
We got there right after theygot the room.
Don Taylor (14:08):
Yeah.
So we went there and our maindriving force was the climate.
We didn't want to have to dealwith freezing climate.
Our RV is not fed up to copewith that stuff.
The lines and tanks areunderneath, on the outside of
the vehicle, so we did not wantto have to deal with freezing
lines, replacing lines embeddedthrough the van and all that
stuff.
(14:28):
So we followed the weathernorth when it got hot and south
when it got cold, and so thatwas the general pattern.
But in between there's lots ofplaces to go and lots of people
to see.
Our initial thing Gay called itour Christmas card tour,
because my wife has kindly sentout 100 cards a year at
Christmas time to friends andfamily and people we haven't
(14:49):
seen in decades.
We would show up in their townand call them up and ask them if
they would like to get togetherfor dinner, and so we got to
visit with all kinds of peoplewe hadn't seen in ages.
It was all kinds of fun, it wasreally fun.
Judy Gratton (15:00):
Did you hit all the states?
You said you went to Canada.
Don Taylor (15:03):
Yeah, we hit all the states.
You said you went to Canada.
Yeah, we hit all the states.
We didn't spend any timeexploring Kentucky, just by
chance.
We didn't stop, make a point ofgoing into Kentucky.
We hoped to go to Louisville,but we never did that.
We passed through Kentucky andwe went through West Virginia,
went through all the states,including up to Alaska.
Drove all the way up to Alaska,spent almost a month in Alaska
(15:25):
and we'd like to go back becausewe missed some of the biggest
national parks there.
Made it up into Canada, touredall the way around Nova Scotia,
went to Newfoundland, labrador.
I did not visit much in easternCanada except Toronto We've
driven across Alaska a few timesor Canada trying to get to
(15:45):
family reunions in Michigan,where it's from.
Dennis Day (15:48):
What are some of the highlights then?
Don Taylor (15:50):
We really enjoyed the trip up to Alaska.
That was quite spectacular.
You can't really drive anywherewithout spectacular views and
sights.
We got up to Denali and we'reone of the lucky 40% of visitors
who actually get to see themountain because it's not
covered in clouds.
It was beautiful when we werethere.
Gae Taylor (16:09):
Tell me how we did it.
Don Taylor (16:10):
One thing if you travel with animals, you have to
be careful about heat.
If you want to leave them alonein the van, you've got to be
able to keep them cool or openthe doors or take them outside
or give them whatever they need.
Dennis Day (16:21):
In.
Don Taylor (16:22):
Bali we can't, and the temperatures were quite hot.
It was the springtime but itwas already getting pretty hot,
so we had to split up.
There's a four-hour bus ride tothe interior lodge at Denali.
I went one day and then thenext day Gay went and I stayed
with dogs.
If you have animals, you haveto be in national parks.
Don't allow animals out on anyof the trails.
(16:44):
National forests are greatWilderness areas.
Judy Gratton (16:48):
Sanrio, not even on a leash.
Don Taylor (16:50):
You can take them on a leash in the parking lots,
which doesn't really play outwell if it's hot with a pavement
on.
So there is a drawback tohaving your animals long in that
regard.
But Alaska was fantastic.
We really enjoyed going up toNew Brunswick.
We traveled all the way aroundNova Scotia, got to see
Alexander Graham Bell Museum upthere, gros Morne, some
(17:14):
spectacular national parks.
We happened to show up onCanada's I think it was 100 and
some anniversary of the country.
They opened up all of theirnational park sites for free
museums.
So we got to tour those forfree.
And then we ferries toNewfoundland.
From Newfoundland we went toLabrador and spent more than a
few days there because we had abroken brake line.
(17:35):
We were there 15 days becausewe had to wait for a part which
couldn't make it, becausethere's two ways in by air or by
ferry and it was bad.
Gae Taylor (17:45):
You couldn't see.
It was so foggy you couldn'tsee your hand in front of your
face.
Don Taylor (17:48):
We were stuck parked behind a car repair base.
They thankfully let us plug ourvan in, so we had electricity
and we were snug.
It was fine.
It was just like anywhere else.
Where you have electricity youcan do pretty much whatever you
can get away with.
We carried probably 100 DVDswith movies and a few books, so
we watched movies at night.
Gae Taylor (18:05):
When we were behind that automobile place waiting to
be towed.
We were towed there, but when Igot out of the car the first
street I see is Sesame Street.
Don Taylor (18:20):
I was like that does not sound like Sesame Street
car repair place.
We did haul our bikes along sowe got to ride our bikes in some
spectacular places on somegreat trails.
Acadia National Park was giftedby somebody famous.
There are carriage trails allover the park that are just
absolutely beautiful for bikingand we were there in the fall.
So there's a trail that leadsto Miami from Homestead, florida
(18:40):
.
That is a bus route with bikelanes.
There's no cars and you can gofor miles.
We took that several times.
That was really nice.
Having some bikes was a greatthing.
We made runs to grocery storesand stuff like that bikes pretty
frequently.
Judy Gratton (18:53):
Cooking in your.
Don Taylor (18:55):
Yeah, there's a little two burner stoveer stove.
Originally there was amicrowave.
I pulled that out and replacedit with a toaster oven because
we don't microwave but we dolike toast.
We did pretty much all of ourcooking.
We stopped to eat out maybe acouple times a month.
Dennis Day (19:13):
So that was good.
So did you guys set a budgetper month, or what did you?
Do Couldn't go over $4,000 amonth Was it easy to make.
Gae Taylor (19:22):
There were some months we went really high If
the car or the van broke down,oh yeah, or the dog got sick.
But we'd make up the next monthand only spend $2,000.
Don Taylor (19:37):
Yeah, we did stay with relatives and friends and
that lowered our budget.
We weren't burning gas.
The gas when we left Seattlewas over $4 a gallon in 2000.
It was the most expensive gaswe ran into until we got to the
last gas station before theArctic Circle in Alaska and that
was over $5 a gallon.
The price went down as we wentsouth and east.
I don't quite understand howthat all works, but it was
pretty cheap back then.
I'm guessing it would probablybe three times the amount of gas
(20:00):
budget now.
Judy Gratton (20:00):
How many gallons of gas did your RV hold?
Don Taylor (20:03):
32 gallons and it got about 15 miles to the gallon
all the time.
Wow, so when we wereconsidering this we looked at
somebody suggested a bus-basedRV.
It was a beautiful big old bus,all outfitted and painted
really nice.
He opened up the back end toshow us the engine a diesel
Cummings.
The thing took up the wholeback end of the bus and I asked
(20:26):
him about gas miles.
He says, oh, it gets about sixmiles to the gallon going up or
down a mountain.
We didn't realize that was notquite what we had in mind
because we didn't want to travel.
The gas budget wasn't too bad,that's good.
Repairs caught us.
The van is older and we had tohave the front end on that.
We've gone through two of these, the same model, different
years.
The first one, we had the frontend rebuilt twice, and the
(20:49):
follow-on van that was five, sixyears newer.
We've had the front end rebuilttwice and those are expensive
repairs.
We fortunately had people'sfriends' homes to stay at.
On some of those and some ofthe repair times we slept in the
van parked in the dealerparking lot while the repairs
were being made.
That's another thing that wesaved a little bit of money on
(21:10):
by dodging.
Judy Gratton (21:11):
So what are your best memories, would you say,
over this?
How many years did you do this?
Don Taylor (21:17):
Seven years, 2014 to 2020, about my best memories.
Traveling through northeasterncanada was so much fun.
The people had a little bit ofan accent.
They were all super friendly.
The culture just felt different.
That was pretty cool.
I enjoyed that a lot.
Gae Taylor (21:34):
We went to a viking village up there and it was
really cold and the wind wasblowing so hard.
I bought this coat for $35 andit was the best coat ever.
It saved me.
Don Taylor (21:45):
It was a site that the Vikings had landed a
thousand years before Columbuscame to the United States and
they rebuilt a village using thetechnique that they discovered
are six foot thick peat mosswalls and they had guides
dressed up in the original garb.
It was freezing cold out.
You walk through their littletiny door and it's just
(22:07):
absolutely snug warm inside andit was interesting, just a lot
of interesting things to see, sowe did enjoy.
We also went down through theFreedom Trail area to Alabama.
Selma lucked out our timing.
We arrived in Selma, thoughtwe'd check and see what was on
at the movies.
Movie Selma had just come outand they were having an opening
showing by invitation only.
(22:29):
Since the movie was filmed inSelma, the filmmakers paid for
free showings for a couple ofweeks to the locals and the
locals were really generous andreally nice.
They got us a couple of ticketsso we got to go see that movie
in selma along with people, someof the people that had survived
the tomorrow march.
It was fascinating really.
That sounds, yeah, a lot ofbeautiful places, a lot of nice
(22:51):
parks and places we didn'treally expect of interesting
places.
Went to hot springs, arkansas,the smallest national park,
which is about three blocks long.
Spas, more or less health spas,and that sort of thing.
Wandered around there.
Acadia was absolutely beautiful.
Gae Taylor (23:07):
We spent a month in Utah, went up to a place called
Hanksville.
Utah is great.
You go up on this plateau and,oh man, the wind blew up there.
It was a lot of fun up there.
I could have stayed up therelonger.
Don Taylor (23:18):
We bought a rockhounding book at a local
shop in Moab, Utah.
Let's check out theserockhounding sites.
And so we traveled all over thestate looking for rocks, and we
found a lot of really coolrocks.
Gay had befriended a youngchurch who loved rocks, and so
we took off on the trip.
And she was shipping rocks backto this boy.
(23:39):
His parents finally asked usstop sending rocks.
His whole club is filled withrocks, and so we stopped.
Gae Taylor (23:45):
You know those boxes you get at the post office and
it can weigh as much as you wantit to weigh.
I'd load that up with rocks andhe wouldn't give up one rock.
I'm like throw him in the alley.
Dennis Day (23:55):
Well, during COVID, you guys had to park yourselves
in Denver.
Don Taylor (24:00):
Yeah, at our gay's brother's home, and so we tried
to help out there, did projectsaround the house and ended up
investing some of the money we'dstored with him so that we
could help him out.
We had a place to stay and heended up paying us back for that
when we wanted to buy a house.
But we were there for two yearsand then we came back up this
way and wanted to buy a house.
But we were there for two yearsand then we came back up this
(24:21):
way and started looking for ahome.
Judy Gratton (24:22):
Can you explain why, COVID?
What happened that made youstop traveling?
Don Taylor (24:27):
The RV parks all shut their doors.
They weren't allowed to stayopen.
That meant we had no place tostop to either dump and or do
laundry, take showers, so thatmade that part of it much more
difficult.
The pools all shut down, allthe public pools, so we had no
place to take showers andeverything was closed.
We could have driven around buthad been driving in circles.
(24:48):
We couldn't really stop to seeanything.
Judy Gratton (24:51):
Was it hard to get gas at that time, it seems to
me I remember that gas becamecheaper, but it was also harder
to find, wasn't it?
Don Taylor (24:59):
We had landed, so we had gone to Denver for a ski
outing with her brother and somefriends, and up in the
mountains while we were on thattrip, up in Frisco, Colorado,
Breckenridge, we were stayingthere and actually that was one
of the first outspots up there.
(25:20):
So we were in Denver when ithit and we just stayed parked
because there was no headingback up.
Dennis Day (25:29):
How long have you been at this place in Port
Angeles?
Your current we?
Don Taylor (25:34):
bought this in December of 2020 and moved in in
January of 2022.
So it's been two years, right?
Is that right?
Judy Gratton (25:44):
What made you decide to stop going, to come
back to a house?
Gae Taylor (25:50):
Don was a baby and he wanted to stop traveling and
live in a house and vegetablesand watch his plants grow.
And I wanted to keep ontraveling.
See how that went.
Don Taylor (25:59):
That's a pretty good summary, and I convinced her to
come up to Seattle.
We rented a friend's basementfor three months while we
searched for a home and found aplace here in Port Angeles.
We'd always come out here, orfrequently come out here, to go
mushroom hunting and camping.
I liked the area and it wasprobably the most affordable
(26:20):
place that we knew we liked.
We couldn't afford to go backto the Seattle area and buy a
house and we wanted a property.
Anyway, that's how we ended up.
Gae Taylor (26:30):
We decided the best places we decided to live was
Peoria, vermont or Port Angeles,washington Wow.
But Vermont had so many ticksthat no way we were staying
there with three dogs.
Don Taylor (26:42):
Yeah, I will throw that warning out.
If you are going RV lifestyleand you are going to visit
eastern United States forestsand that sort of thing, get your
skills up with dealing withticks, because they are.
And we each got ticks atvarious points and thankfully we
(27:02):
were able to discover them andget rid of them before they had
a chance to poison us withanything foul.
But I tell you, we visited somefriends that we knew in
Colorado and they lived inMassachusetts and we were
telling them about the ticks.
We said, oh, we just can't dealwith it.
I hate the whole tick thing.
What's the point of having abeautiful forest if you can't go
(27:23):
out and enjoy them?
And she said you were inColorado.
What about rattlesnakes?
I take a rattlesnake over atick, any tick.
They're awful.
Dennis Day (27:31):
Okay, so have you guys got plans for hitting the
road?
Don Taylor (27:35):
No, not really.
We've taken some relativelyshort trips to state campgrounds
and things like that.
We made one longer plus longtrip to Colorado and Arizona to
visit family and we don't haveanything in the works except
maybe escaping the winter gray.
I need to get hit of sun for atleast a few weeks, so one way
(27:56):
or another we'll head someplacesunny.
I don't know how warm it'll be,but it'll be sunny because I
need a dose of that Do you stillhave the same van, or?
We do.
We have the second one.
It's a 2004 Roadtrek 190popular.
It's 19 and a half feet longand fully outfitted with all
that good stuff Generator andfurnace, cork lane furnace and
all the things you can jam intoa camper, into one 19-foot van.
Gae Taylor (28:18):
We're looking for a new one right now, but we don't
like the design of any of thenew ones.
Yeah, yeah, they're not nearlyas efficient as these older
designs.
You open the back door of thenew ones and the toilet's right
there.
Judy Gratton (28:30):
Open to the world.
Oh my, oh my.
Gae Taylor (28:32):
I'm like, I don't like that.
Dennis Day (28:34):
Yeah no, how did you stay connected to the internet?
Don Taylor (28:39):
So we paid extra for our phone service to have our
hotspot space and so we couldrun a hotspot anywhere we had a
signal and so we used thatextensively.
It was a bit of trouble when wecrossed the border and all that
went away.
I had to track down days orrestaurants with hotspots
available in them to do stuff.
(29:00):
I maintained a blog.
It's still going.
It's not nearly as interestingas 10 years ago but at any rate,
break from work on the blogthat I tracked all of the places
and people and things we saw.
Judy Gratton (29:12):
We need to make sure that's on our site.
Don Taylor (29:14):
Yeah, I mostly did it for my mom so that she could
stay in touch, because we wereonly a phone call away.
But towards the end she wasn'tcapable of doing much of that
stuff.
My sister kept her.
Judy Gratton (29:24):
So what do you think is different about your
life now versus when you startedthis journey beyond?
Don Taylor (29:35):
the fact that you live in a stick-built house now
versus a RV van.
It's not as exciting when youwake up in the morning and pick
a direction to go.
I'm far cry from waking up inthe morning and doing my coffee
routine for an hour in themorning and driving my wife
crazy Gay's engaged with thecommunity much more than I have.
She's joined.
We're both in the garden clubnow and do volunteer work
locally.
(29:55):
She does different things thanI do, but I'm still plugged in
and making friends, meetingpeople.
I volunteer at the localcommunity college to help out
with their ceramics room upthere so I get a chance to keep
my hands in play, which is a bigfavorite thing of mine to do.
For play.
It's just different.
Focuses are different.
They're not about looking fornew things that we're going to
go find or see.
(30:16):
They're more about what to dolocally, what the weather looks
like, what might be available.
Enjoy coming up and thenplotting short trips to visit
with friends and family back inSeattle, the other side of
Mexico.
That's my take, gay.
Gae Taylor (30:29):
That says it all.
It's nice going to when youlive in one spot.
When you go to church, you seethe same people every Sunday.
When we were on the road we'dalways stop at church and it was
just meeting all the new peopleover and over again.
Don Taylor (30:42):
It was one of the consistent things we did, though
.
It gave us a place to park.
Every Saturday night we wouldpark at a church and Gay would
go to church the following dayand learn things about things to
do locally, as well as meetingthe people.
It was a really nice additionto our travel, actually when we
were in the van.
It had some consistency, didyou make?
Judy Gratton (31:04):
some new friends along the way.
Do you have people, new peoplein your life from your journeys
A?
Gae Taylor (31:10):
couple, wendy, who lives in Toronto her and her
husband and we've been up tovisit her.
And then our friend Larry Case.
He lives, like I think, inCalgary now and he was living or
had a girlfriend down in NewMexico, so we visited him down
there and kept in touch withthem.
Oh good, Good.
Don Taylor (31:28):
Yeah, we did have family and friends stops.
We had a regular route wherewe'd see my sisters and mother
in Arizona, gay's brother inColorado.
She's got multiple brothers andsisters in Michigan and Detroit
area so we would stop there mybrother in Minneapolis.
So we generally made longerstops to visit with family and
(31:50):
that kind of saved us a littlebit of money and it gave us a
chance to also connect a littlebetter Because in the past we
might see them once every fewyears.
We got more visiting in thepast?
Judy Gratton (31:59):
How many times do you think you went around the
country over these years?
Don Taylor (32:05):
We spent time in the south on our first time around.
We did get back down one moretime, so twice down all the way
through Florida, probably acrossTexas.
We went three times, so maybethree times all the way around.
Otherwise we tended to keep tothe north, where most of our
family is, and it's a bit cooler.
Heat was really the first thingto cope with.
(32:28):
We got caught in freezingweather a number of times.
You don't have to drain all thetanks, drain the fresh water
using bottled water to live inthe van.
We did that a number of timesas well, and the van is so heavy
that it worked and I wasdriving through five inches of
snow and it was fine.
Oh good, yeah, which, whichpleased me immensely, because it
scared me to death initially,and then I drove it.
It was great.
Gae Taylor (32:49):
One time we were leaving out of Denver and we
were going up to Wyoming to geton I-80 and come across west and
it started snowing.
It was bad and blowing.
And blowing hard.
And we stopped and asked thisWyoming guy does it blow like
this all the time?
What do you say?
(33:12):
The wind isn't blowing.
You're not in Wyoming.
Yeah, so bad that we had topull up on the side of the road
like a exit and all the semiswere lined up.
And then here's us.
Don Taylor (33:17):
Yeah, they closed I-80.
So there was no going anywhere.
We were stuck overnight and Ithought that's just so
ridiculous.
And then I got up in themorning and I looked outside and
there was a quarter inch ice onthe blades of grass outside the
van so it was an absolute sheetof ice, and so it was good that
they closed it on us, because Iwould have been stupid to drive
(33:38):
through it, I'm sure, yeah,yeah we started driving in the
morning.
Gae Taylor (33:41):
The first thing we saw was the RV tipped over on
the side of the road.
Judy Gratton (33:44):
It was like oh yeah yeah, that was, and you
were stuck with a good group ofpeople.
I've always really trusted thetruckers on the road.
Gae Taylor (33:53):
One of the things about traveling with dogs is a
lot of times we'd park atwalmart.
You get out at three in themorning in your bathrobe to let
the dogs go to the bathroom andall these truckers are out there
.
You're like, don didn't have todo that, but I did.
Dennis Day (34:11):
Ah you had the bathroom duty, yet yeah, yeah,
we created different things anylessons or words of wisdom for
somebody who might be thinkingabout hey, this sounds good that
was good and was good, andcarry some tools, tools, tools,
so you can't deal with stuff.
Don Taylor (34:28):
Duct tape, spare fuses.
We had a fuse go out in Sydney,nova Scotia, that wouldn't
allow, stopped the van fromstarting and I didn't have any
of those kind of fuses.
Gae Taylor (34:39):
So you just went out of one spot and put it over in
another spot, yeah, so we couldat least keep going.
Don Taylor (34:44):
But make sure you've got some spare things that
won't keep you from going, forsure.
What else?
Yeah, if you carry some tape,that is like we had some leaks
and I used electrical tape whichsticks, but you can pull off
when you want to fix itpermanently.
If the water's like we had agap on the back door, I put a
(35:05):
piece of tape across the backdoor so that the water would not
drip down inside of the frame.
Stuff to carry Some rubber-typetape for leaks, tools for
fixing things and don't evensweat.
I sweated it all the time.
Don't even sweat it when thingsgo bad on the van.
Get it fixed.
Judy Gratton (35:30):
And there are places to get them fixed.
All over the country We've hadrepairs done north south east
and west Sounds like plan onknowing repairs.
Gae Taylor (35:33):
Yeah, and when you go over to Canada, make sure you
don't say you want to stay.
What I told the?
I asked the guy at the bordercrossing what do I have to do to
stay here?
You got any paperwork overthere and he said pull over here
.
And they tore our van apart,top to bottom, hitting it, went
through our shoes and everythingbut they let us in.
Don Taylor (35:49):
We were clean, so it was okay.
Don't mess around with theborder patrol on either side.
Gae Taylor (35:53):
They they are not joking around no, they're not
funny, they're no they have nosense to you really that one guy
up in alaska, far up as youcould go the border cross, and
we were coming back in into can.
We're going into Canada andthey're like we've got to have
your eggs, eggs.
Judy Gratton (36:09):
Eggs.
They took the eggs.
I thought it was fruit andvegetables.
Don Taylor (36:11):
Really Well, they took our dog food which we
bought in the United States thatwas made in Canada.
And when we came back in theUnited States they said oh no,
that's made in Canada, but webought it in the US.
He said nope.
Gae Taylor (36:23):
Doesn't matter Out of there, but it was funny, the
car next to us, they were takinghis firewood away and I'm like
we had firewood.
They didn't take our firewood,but they took our dog food,
Don't you wonder?
Judy Gratton (36:33):
if maybe they were just like shopping yeah.
Dennis Day (36:35):
I admire you guys for doing this dream trip.
And also, you're still married.
That's just amazing.
For now, okay, any last wordsof wisdom or advice you have for
listeners?
Don Taylor (36:48):
I would say go for it.
You'll relax on the trip.
Don't sweat it.
I was worried about things allthe time and it was all fine and
everything worked, and so myadvice would be don't sweat it
and go for it, because what agreat experience People, the
places.
It's amazing how nice so manyplaces in this country are.
I had no idea.
All right, I'd do it again.
Judy Gratton (37:09):
Thank you, guys, so much for sharing this with us
and our listeners.
You're welcome.
Dennis Day (37:14):
Thanks for having us .
Yeah, and we'll put the link toyour blog so people can see way
back to 2014.
That was how I kept track ofyou Occasional call, but I was
like, oh they're here, ohthey're there, and I'd see great
pictures of places and familyand friends.
It was really a treat.
(37:34):
So that's another thing I wouldsuggest people do is keep track
of it with a blog or somethingand your family can follow along
.
So, anyway, that's it for thisepisode.
Thank you, don and Gay Taylor,for sharing your experience in
van life and we'll see you nexttime.
Bye.
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