Tuesday at Escapade

Well, it's Tuesday and I'm starting to get in to this 'escaped' mode. Instead of trying to figure out how much we can get in today, Ken and I took our time getting ready. In fact this was his day for heading out before me. I had taken my time, showering, doing dishes and then had a message from him to meet at 'Hospitality' at 10:45.



They have one building set up where you can get a cup of coffee anytime. It's also where a lot of the booths are for signing up for various volunteer opportunities. We always end up in there longer than intended because it seems there is always some interesting new Escapee friend to chat with.

Ken was delayed in getting to the room since he had detoured in to a discussion with a couple trying to decide on tow vehicle. They had stopped him when they'd heard him mention in a morning seminar that he towed a jeep as this was a prime candidate in their search.

Ken wanted me to go into the Vendor market with him to further price the power protection system he is thinking now may be a worthwhile 'insurance policy'. As it turns out we never got that far!!

We stopped by for a visit with Joe and Kay Peterson, the club founders. These two treat everyone as their extended family and the energy, enthusiasm and joie de vivre that you feel just being around Miss Kay is contagious.

We also talked to Dave Loring, the investment/retirement advisor and he said he wanted to talk to us in the afternoon if possible. With that we decided to drop back over to the Hospitality room and grab a barbeque sandwich for lunch. Again we got caught up in a conversation with a lady who is a Solo RVer. It's surprising the number of women here that are fulltiming on their own.

When we got back to talk with Dave, he was chatting with the retired optometrist we'd met yesterday and his wife. We talked with Jeff and Barb for awhile and decided to meet them for dinner.

We spent far more time with the investment planner, Dave, than we'd expected. It was a very valuable conversation where Ken and I learned a great deal about our options based on our particular situation. Dave had some very good ideas on 401K rollovers, what money to put where and why. He had some contacts for us on health insurance alternatives. We even spent some time talking about the pros and cons of moving up to a different motorhome. Overall he was very encouraging, confirming that we should be in good shape but emphasizing that for the first year of my retirement we need to track every dime of our spending so that we can be sure reality of expenses is matching our investment strategies. We came away with lots of reading materials that we'll have to dig through once we get back to Quincy.

It was late afternoon by the time we finally sloshed our way back to the RV.

It was obvious as we approached that our flamingoes were up to some shenanigans. They were now all facing over toward the AirStream pod. Two new flamingoes had arrived and appeared to be luring our group, with one of our flamingos starting to make the move in their direction.

Some friendly banter followed with the Airstream group and they invited us to join them. We had to ask for a rain check since we were meeting Jeff and Barb at 5:30.

Jeff and Barb came over to our rig and we all road in the jeep to McGrath's here in Sedalia for dinner. McGrath's had been the restaurant of choice when I was here with work but I must say that while the meal was ok, it was just ok. However, spending the time with these two new full-timers more than compensated to make it a wonderful evening. We lingered at the restaurant over several rounds of drinks. It's amazing how much we have in common. Besides all being 50-somethings, they've raised three athletic boys recently out on their own. They had even owned a Sportscoach as their first motorhome until recently upgrading the the Allegro Bus. Ken and Jeff were really in sync on all their ideas on various motorhome systems and spent lots of time talking jeeps. Both had been soccer coaches and spent lots of time on that topic as well. They invited us to join them at their motorhome when we got back.

Ken was really interested in Jeff's setup to pull both a Harley RoadKing and a vehicle. This is a pretty slick system with lifts and a lot of flexibility.

Going to visit them only re-ignited my love of the Tiffin motorhomes. I can't think of one option they don't have included. We spent several hours inside talking and with the layout, huge quad slides, upgraded flooring, cabinets and furniture, we really felt we were sitting in a very well-appointed family home. Really made us feel like we were slumming it when we came back to our motorhome!!

We're hoping that this end-of-day rainbow on Tuesday is a sign that Mother Nature will bring us some dry weather and sunshine now. If it doesn't start drying out soon, getting all these RV's out of here on Friday could be a real mess!!

Hugs, C