PB&J vs. Fine Dining

I got a comment on my last blog post about our trip to Las Vegas that has kept me laughing since I read it. The commenter claimed we were cheap, and clearly retired too early since we didn't appear to spend nearly enough money during our trip, evidenced by our having to suffer through a lunch of PB&J. They suggested we would have been better off simply staying at home and renting some movies.


Well, I am here to say we are guilty as charged! We are most definitely guilty of enjoying PB&J on occasion. In fact, we are guilty of enjoying it all over the USA during our many travels. We are also guilty of suffering through inexpensive mozzarella and tomato baguettes purchased at a train station in London, bargain priced cheese and crackers purchased and consumed in the Alps of Switzerland during a 106 mile hiking trek, and $1.00 energy bars brought from home and consumed while traipsing through Australia, Costa Rica, Turkey, Egypt and whole lot of other countries. Yep. Also guilty as charged.


We've also just retired at ages 48 and 56, with plans to continue to travel and see the world for a good four to six months of each year. Not a bad trade off for the price of ingesting a few humble sandwiches along the way.

Our typically cheese and bread lunch while in Switzerland hiking the alps this last September, normally consumed while gazing out at some unbelievable vista.

Viva Las Vegas on a Budget (of sorts)

It's been a busy month! Immediately after returning from our younger daughter's wedding this last weekend, we turned around and headed to Las Vegas to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary. Our goal was to celebrate our anniversary and have a blast doing so, but also to stay on budget . . . a difficult task in this city of excess.


It started with a promotion I spotted on Travel Zoo a few months back offering an overnight stay at Bally's plus a nightly buffet dinner for two at either Paris, Planet Hollywood or Rio, all for just $56 a night. I bought a two night stay for $112 total, and began quickly planning out the rest of the trip. Neither Mike or I care to gamble - we view Las Vegas primarily as an easy-to-drive-to destination where we can enjoy top notch shows and fabulous dining. Neither of which come cheap by the way. The days of cheap shows and even cheaper buffets are long gone, at least on The Strip. 


Hotel reservations secured, I zeroed in on which shows we wanted to see. The budget allowed for one blow out show, which we had already decided would be Viva Elvis by Cirque du Soleil, plus one or two more shows that were considerably less expensive. I turned to my trusty discount sites, TravelZoo and GoldStar, and quickly found 50% discounted tickets to The BeatleShow at Planet Hollywood. Perfect! We had buffet privileges at Planet Hollywood because of our TravelZoo voucher, which would make for a perfect dining/entertainment combo.


I then spotted a 25% discount deal for the CSI Experience at the MGM Grand which sounded intriguing, so I purchased two tickets to that as well.


Now to try and score discounted Viva Elvis tickets . . . there was nothing on either the official Viva Elvis site, GoldStar or TravelZoo, so I did a general search next, using "Discount Offers for Viva Elvis in Las Vegas" as my search phrase. Success! Displayed were numerous sites offering a 25% discount per ticket. I selected a website that appeared credible and purchased discounted, mid-range $90 per person tickets that placed us in Row 8, stage right. And yes, $90 was only mid-range, even after the 25% discount!


On the morning of our trip, I packed a bag with granola bars, bananas, apples, bread, peanut butter, jelly, cookies and pretzels, and filled a small portable ice cooler with water and soda, to cover us for breakfasts and lunches during our trip. Buying all three meals out becomes quickly cost prohibitive, not to mention calorie prohibitive. We prefer to eat simply for two of our three daily meals, and splurge on just one. I also brought a bottle of wine to enjoy in our hotel room, allowing us to bypass the ridiculously overpriced restaurant and bar wine offerings. To give you an idea of how steep the markup is, I brought a lovely J. Lohr 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon that set us back $30, but I have personally seen this same bottle offered at $105 in more than one restaurant.


We took off in our car, and were settled into our spacious and attractive room at Bally's three and a half hours later:

You'll note the wine is already out and ready to go on  the coffee table  . . . 

We enjoyed a pre-anniversary toast in our room (our actually 30th wedding anniversary was the next day) before heading out to explore both Bally's and Paris, since the two hotels are connected. We walked through the Paris shopping arcade, enjoying window gazing at the high end boutiques, and shared a frozen hurricane at Fat Tuesdays, before heading over to Planet Hollywood to see The BeatleShow and have dinner at the hotel's Spice Market buffet. Both were wonderful, and a bargain to boot. The show tickets were purchased at half price for $35 each, and the buffet was part of our hotel deal, in essence free. 


On day two, our actual anniversary, we started off the day by walking over to the MGM Grand to do the CSI Experience. I knew it was an interactive event that involved trying to solve a crime CSI style, and I liked that I'd bought the tickets at a 25% discount, but other than that I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, it turned out it was a lot of fun! We were given a file folder and a set of visual clues, and then had to use our own powers of observation to determine who did it, in CSI style of course. 


After coming out of the exhibit, we walked over to Wolfgang Puck's Bar & Grill, still within the MGM Grand, to enjoy a must-try appetizer I'd read about while putting together this trip - Truffled Potato Chips with Bleu Cheese. When they brought out the plate below, we about passed out from the wonderful aroma. What can I say other than that they were deliciously decadent . . . and that we ate the plate clean.

We walked a portion of The Strip next, to try and burn off at least a few of the calories we'd just ingested, before heading back to our hotel to change into swim suits and while away the remainder of the afternoon at the pool.


We headed back up to our room afterward for much needed naps, then got ready for our fancy-schmancy anniversary celebration evening - our free dinner at Paris' Le Village buffet, followed by Viva Elvis at The Aria hotel, about a 30 minute walk from Paris. Given I'm not a night owl by nature, I was counting on the walk to refresh and revive me before we arrived at the show and took our seats, which it did. And what a show it was! A rockin', rousing 90 minutes of music, dance, acrobatics and special effects which knocked both our socks off. Honestly, how did we exist before Cirque du Soleil came along and raised the bar so on live entertainment?

I know, not the fanciest of dress for our 30th anniversary, but it was hot, hot, hot at over 100 degrees, and shorts and sundresses just seemed the sensible way to go!

We stopped on the way back to our hotel to enjoy the 11:30 PM water fountain show at The Bellagio, before pouring ourselves into bed, completely exhausted, but totally satisfied with our big day, and with the trip overall. 

The free water fountain and music show at the Bellagio

Here's the budget breakdown of our trip:

• TravelZoo voucher for two nights at Bally's plus nightly buffet: $112
• Gas: $90
• Fat Tuesdays: $9
• The BeatleShow: $70
• CSI Experience: $34
• Wolfgang Pucks Bar & Grill: $11
• Viva Elvis show: $180
• Walking The Strip, water fountain show at Bellagio, pool time at Bally's: $0
• TOTAL FOR TRIP: $506

Take away the pricey 30th Anniversary celebration to go see Viva Elvis, substituting a less expensive and discounted show like, say The Australian Bee Gees at the Excalibur for $25 a ticket, and the cost drops significantly to somewhere around $375. Which, for an action packed two night stay in Las Vegas, is not a bad deal at all, and proof that with a little pre-planning, Las Vegas can still qualify as a bargain destination.

Here Comes the Bride

Because this blog is a journal of my life, and something I hope will eventually become a family document, sometimes the things I include will be highly personal. Like today's entry. Because I'm literally over the moon with joy, I want to document my younger daughter's wedding this past weekend in Lake Tahoe. The wedding was big on sentiment, but very small on cost - an excellent reminder that at heart, the day is really about the bride and the groom and the lifelong commitment they are preparing to make.


My dream for my daughters during their growing up years was that they go to college. I harbored no dreams about their getting married, and certainly no dreams whatsoever about throwing some great big, elaborate ceremony. I simply wanted them educated and happy, not necessarily in that order. Whether or not they chose to get married was entirely up to them. (As does whether or not they choose to have children, but that's a separate discussion altogether.)


But I do yearn for their happiness, very much so, and there was no question  my younger daughter was deeply, madly in love and yearning to marry her young man, and so I yearned for it right along with her.


And he did it the right way. He flew down and asked my husband and myself for permission to ask our daughter to marry him. We were impressed, very impressed, and he will get lifelong brownie points from the two of us as a result. A few weeks later he then got down on one knee in front of my daughter's entire sixth period class, and asked their teacher to marry him. He gets more brownie points for that one too.


Originally they wanted a no-fuss wedding, and were discussing eloping. When I learned of their plans I was heartbroken, and explained to my daughter that her dad and I didn't care if they got married at city hall, a church or at a chapel in Las Vegas, we just wanted to be there to share the event with them.


Thankfully, my pleas did not fall on deaf ears. They kindly altered their plans to accommodate both sets of immediate family, 13 people in all, and this last Saturday we were guests at a lovely, intimate wedding on a spot of land overlooking lush, beautiful Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe.


The bride was radiant, the groom extremely handsome in his naval uniform. The parents of the bride? Unbelievably happy. Sometimes life is very, very sweet.

The view from the wedding ceremony location.

My husband walking our daughter down the aisle.

The waiting groom.

The happy and newly married couple.

The joyous parents of the bride.

On Being Happy and Fulfilled in Early Retirement

We're home for the next few weeks, but we surely won't be idle. Over the course of the next 10 days we'll be celebrating Mike's birthday, our younger daughter's wedding, and our own 30th wedding anniversary. Shortly after we finish celebrating all of these wonderful events we'll kick off our longest trip yet - 24 days in our RV traveling up the California coastline, then over to Sonoma, Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes. We have a long list of To-Do items, but at this rate it's going to be a long time before we get around to doing them. Which is just fine.

Some have expressed curiosity on how Mike is doing in early retirement so far.  Well, up to this point, we've been so busy that he's thinking he may need to block out a day in the near future and mark it as a "Do Absolutely Nothing!" day. In fact, yesterday he actually got just a little bit cranky because we had so many things scheduled. All of them very interesting and/or fun for sure, but cumulatively perhaps just a little too much a few too many days in a row.

Alas, today was no different, even though it was Mike's birthday. To celebrate the beginning of his 57th year, we set our alarms for 5:30 AM so we'd have time to enjoy our normal morning routine of sipping coffee and talking a bit before getting ourselves and our bikes ready for a 35 mile bicycle ride to the beach and back. We were on the bike trail by 8:00 AM, at the beach sitting on a bench eating homemade banana muffins and watching surfers by 9:30 AM, and finished with our ride and back at our car by 11:00 AM. We then raced home so I could make lunch while Mike showered and got ready for an early afternoon political discussion class he wanted to attend at our local university. He rode his bicycle there and back, while I remained at home to do the laundry. Mike returned home just in time to enjoy a short nap  before we left for his birthday celebration dinner at Savoy Restaurant and Lounge, a hip venue in Costa Mesa I'd discovered via Groupon. Our dinner was superb, and even better, half price, thanks to Groupon.

Were we tired when we returned home? Yes, most definitely, but over and over on the drive home we kept exclaiming about what an absolutely wonderful day it had been.

What we've learned so far in our early retirement is that the daily routine that works best for us is to spend time each morning doing something physical, followed by a chunk of time pursuing intellectual or creative pursuits. The former for us includes hiking, biking, running, kayaking, weight lifting and yoga. The later includes attending lectures on topics of interest to us, pursuing a second language, keeping up with our book club readings, learning a new instrument, taking ballroom dance lessons, and exploring creative writing. After all of that, any decision we make about what to do for the remainder of the day, even if it's just sitting in our backyard reading magazines and sipping tea, becomes simply the icing on the cake. 

The days when we follow this routine are generally outstanding. The days when we do not? Not even close.

I should add that our particular basket of interests do not involve the spending of significant money. Our gym membership runs $9.98 a month per person, group dance lessons are $10 a person, our enrollment in OLLI runs $230 a year per person, less than $1 a day, and everything else we enjoy doing on a regular basis is either very, very inexpensive or altogether free. What it all really takes is commitment and energy. But what an amazing return on our investment we get!

Everyone's basket of interests will be different of course, but that's not really the point. The point is to have a basket of interests, and then to do them. A lot. To the point of discomfort at times, even. The bottom line is that there is no reason to have a flat, boring life in retirement unless we choose to have a flat, boring life in retirement. 

As Ernie Zelinski states in his excellent book on preparing emotionally, intellectually and physically for retirement, The Joy of Not Working, "When you do that which is difficult, life becomes very easy. When you do only that which is easy, life becomes very difficult." 

It's easy to sit on a sofa all day watching TV, but it's not much fun after a while. It's difficult to go on a 35 mile bike ride, but it sure makes the rest of the day easy and lovely by comparison. And that's really what it's all about in the end.

In Praise of Dirty Feet

We are back from our recent trip to Big Bear and not only did we succeed in spending $0 additional money over and the cost of our campsite, gas to get there, and ice for our cooler, we managed to return to camp most days with fabulously dirty feet.

Fabulous because we got our dirty feet as a result of hiking and traversing over 26 miles of paths and trails during our four night, five day visit to Big Bear. Several mornings after breakfast, I'd pack up a simple sack lunch of PB&J, fruit and cookies, plus some trail mix for snacking, while my husband gathered up our hiking boots, hats, and walking sticks, and filled our backpacking bladders with water. 

As we headed out each morning, we could see the shaking heads of our camping club friends, most of whom appear not to understand our passion for being active. We love our friends, but we likewise shake our heads that more people don't appear to understand and embrace the importance of being active throughout life. At ages 49 and 56 respectively, we have no health issues, excellent resting heart rates, low blood pressure, low cholesterol and energy to spare.

Our first day out we set off in search of a campground called Hanna Flat. The trail sign stated that the trail to Hanna Flat was 4 miles long, meaning an 8 mile round trip hike in total, perfect for our first day at 7,000 feet, with our lungs still acclimating. The trail took us through several lovely meadows and past some boulder strewn hillsides, as well as over a stream and though a section of brightly colored wildflowers. We got a bit confused at one point, but carefully adhered to the backcountry orientation rule of one person staying put while the other searched around a bit, but did so within eye sight of the "staying put" person. Although we quickly found our way again, it was a good reminder of how very, very easy it is to get disoriented while hiking. Back on track, we continued hiking until we reached the two hour point. At that point, recognizing we had a corresponding two hours of hiking still to do to get back to our car, we gave up hopes of finding the campground this time out, and sat down on some rocks to enjoy our sack lunch before turning around and heading for home. 

On our second day I ran a trail called the Alpine Pedal Path, which winds along the north shore of Big Bear Lake, while Mike went bicycling around the lake. Still acclimating to the altitude, I will admit to some huffing and puffing during my run. The rest of the day? We sat outside in chairs and read. (See, we do know what downtime is!)

On our last day out we hiked just under 12 miles in total, starting with the Cougar Crest Trail, which could be reached on foot from our campsite. We followed the Cougar Crest trail up the hill to where it intersects with the legendary Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Even though we've done this hike several times before, I always get a thrill when we get onto the PCT and see the PCT trail sign marker. After taking several photos (I can never resist), we continued east on the PCT for several more miles before turning around and starting back. About halfway back we recognized we were still going strong as a result of having finally acclimated to the altitude, so we decided to detour up to Bertha's Peak, a butt-kicking 3/4 mile climb that rewarded us with breathtaking views of the entire Big Bear Valley - lake, town, ski resorts and all. As we sat down to enjoy both the views and our hard earned sack lunch, my husband said "I love this life we're living, and I love sharing it with you." 

That comment? Priceless. The cost of showering off our dirty feet each night? Zero. The cost of the trip in total? See below:

• Serrano Campground no-hookups site: $28 x 4 nights: $112
• Gas: $50
• Food:  No change from what we'd spend if at home 
• Restock ice for ice cooler: $4 (We keep produce in our ice cooler as it tends to get freezer burn in most indoor fridges due to uneven air distribution. We also keep our soda and beer in it as well.)
• Hiking, biking, running, reading, socializing and nightly campfire: $0
• TOTAL FOR TRIP: $166

The amazing Pacific Crest Trail marker.

What we gazed at as we enjoyed our lunch at the top of Bertha's Peak.

Why do we hike? Because we love both the way it makes us feel while we are doing it,
and the amazing sights we wouldn't see otherwise.

A Lovely Sunday in Early Retirement

Our week here in California has been absolutely lovely weather wise - slight marine layer in the morning, and then sunny and in the low 80's for the remainder of the day. Bicycling weather in other words! So, yesterday we finally kicked off a long talked about goal of biking to the beach and back each week that we are in town. We're fortunate to have a dedicated biking trail within just a few miles of our home, called the Santa Ana River Trail, that currently allows for up to 50 miles of uninterrupted out-and-back biking, and we had vowed to make better use of it in our early retirement. 

Today's goal was to do 26 miles, stopping once we reached Huntington Beach at the halfway mark to have breakfast before heading back. Mike loaded up the bikes for the drive to our start point while I packed up homemade banana muffins and fruit for our sack beach breakfast. After removing our dogs from the back seat of the car, where they had both jumped up in expectation of going with us, we gave each one a biscuit, kissed their sad little faces goodbye and drove away from the house to our starting point. Once there we unloaded the bikes, locked the car and headed out.

It was a wonderful morning for riding, and traditionally we experience a slight headwind when heading west to the beach, followed by a slight tailwind as we head back, which works out perfect from an energy expenditure standpoint. Sometimes though, the wind shifts and we end up with a headwind both ways, (we've never been so lucky as to get a tailwind both coming and going!) so we never know for sure what we're going to encounter. Which keeps us on our toes, and things interesting overall.

We were feeling pretty good as we started pedaling. Mike turned on his Garmin to monitor our mileage and pace and reported we were already doing four minute miles, pretty good for the two of us. As we pedaled past Angel Stadium we were entertained by the sight of hundreds of classic cars, along with some classic rock. Nice!

We skirted a couple of golf courses and a soccer field before entering a small wetland area just a couple of miles before the halfway mark. At this point the headwinds really kicked up, and our per mile pace dropped by about a minute as we put our heads down and pedaled slowly and steadily against the wind. (In my mind I stayed positive and strong by holding onto hope that the wind would continue long enough for us to experience it as a lovely tailwind once we finished breakfast and started back.) As we reached the ocean and turned north, the force of the winds neutralized, and we leisurely cruised toward the pier to enjoy some scenic sights along with our breakfast muffins.

At the Huntington Beach Pier, with Ruby's Diner and it's famous red roof in the background

As we headed back afterward, we indeed noted a strong tailwind, and were able to cover the return 13 miles about five minutes faster than the the first half 13 mile section. Since ultimately this weekly ride is about improving our overall biking conditioning, we were pleased by our positive split, even if mother nature helped a bit.

Thoroughly relaxed once we returned to the house, I read and did needlepoint for the rest of the afternoon, while Mike worked on an investment balance sheet, his idea of a good time, honest.

We finished off the day by enjoying homemade eggplant Parmesan, salad and wine, and taking our dogs for a walk around the neighborhood. After which we pretty much collapsed exhausted into bed.

How was your Sunday? I'd love to hear!

Dual Retirement Three Weeks In

The week is almost over, and I am amazed all over again at how many wonderful ways there are to enjoy our time in early retirement. Our week has been just crazy busy and today I am feeling in need of some down time, though I don't think I'm going to get it!


And my newly retired husband? Well, I always knew he was a power force at work, one of the many reasons he became so successful in his field, but over the years I increasingly felt I got the short end of his energy stick as left more and more of his energy at the office. Friday nights were more often spent at home because he got home late, and was exhausted when he finally did arrive. I could usually get away with pushing him to play hard on Saturday, but Sundays were generally reserved for church and time to simply unwind before the week started up all over again. But, oh my gosh, how things have changed since he retired last month! Without the energy drain of his former 60 hour workweek, including his commute time, he is just raring to go these days. Which I love, because his energy is feeding my energy and so we're both just overflowing with it at the moment.


So, we've been working out every single day, vs skipping a day here or there, which is what happened before he retired. And not just one workout! We're now doing several things jointly, like running and then going to the gym to do weights, or doing weights followed by yoga, or running and then getting on our bicycles to run errands around town. The result is we are increasingly overflowing with energy, which then translates into having enough energy to . . . 


Attend daily classes at our university, via their Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program. Everything from classes in Intermediate Spanish to World War II, plus a showing of the film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, about the life of George M. Cohan. Oh, and because we've been on campus all week, on Tuesday we were able to look through a telescope the Astronomy Club had set up on the campus lawn, and see for ourselves the image of the planet Venus passing in front of the sun. Although Venus was just a tiny black dot, we could see it, and were pretty excited about being able to enjoy this rare event so spur of the moment.


Yesterday we got invited after our last class to join some new OLLI friends for Happy Hour at a local Mexican restaurant, also spur of the moment. It took a minute to realize that, hey, we can do this now! 


Today we are - going for a run, riding our bikes to our local bicycle shop to upgrade our tires, walking over to the mall to use a gift card while our bicycles are being worked on, returning home afterward on our bikes to have lunch, swapping out our bikes for our for car to do our weekly grocery shopping, taking Mike to Old Navy to get some new non-work summer clothes, dropping by Total Wine for some free wine tasting, then returning home for dinner, before finishing our day at our local dance studio to take a Salsa class. I know, it's a lot, but it's all stuff we enjoy, and dang it, we have the have the energy to do it so we're going to!

June Bucket List/May Wrap Up

Let me start off by saying that after just one month I am a convert to the benefits of setting short term goals. As you'll see in my May wrap up below, I made substantial progress on things I'd been putting off for too, too long. Having the list on display in my office ensured it remained front and center the entire month, the reason, I'm sure, I was successful in achieving or making progress on so many of my May goals.


May Bucket List Wrap Up

1. Attend one yoga class a week.  Achieved! I was shocked at how stiff and rickety I felt at my first class, compared to the last time I'd taken yoga some years ago. So shocked I almost had a panic attack - my physical fitness has always, always been a constant in my adult life. But even fit people's bodies age, as mine clearly had over the last few years. The good news though, was that I began to see improvements in my flexibility after just a couple of classes.
2. Lift weights at least once a week.  Achieved! I had been religious about weight training up until two years ago when my prior workout partner relocated. At that point I had to fight to keep it up because I find weight training in general, and particularly on my own, to be so utterly boring. But, I do understand how incredibly important it is to keep my muscles fit and strong as I continue to age. And now that I have a workout partner once again, via my husband, I'm actually very happy to be back in the weight training groove.
3. Add speed training to at least one of my weekly runs to begin to lower my per mile time from the mid 10:00's back into the low 9:00's/high 8:00's, where it was last year.  Started. I'm beginning to do sprints over small segments of my workout, about one long block at a time. It will take me a few months to get back to my prior "fighting" speed of about 9:00 minutes per mile, but I'm committed to doing it. 
4. Pick another running event to begin to train for once I complete the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon on May 12.  Delayed. I'm committed, but haven't settled on anything just yet, so I'll roll this one to June.
5. Eat no more than 150 calories of low value food per day, preferably after dinner.  In progress. This, apparently, is my worst and hardest habit to break. I did achieve much greater consciousness on how often I was turning to sugar to alleviate whatever unpleasant emotion had temporarily arisen. I also began to make herbal tea in the afternoon and evening to give myself something soothing and sugar free to sip instead of attacking the cookie jar. I'm also learning it's better sometimes to forego sweets altogether, rather than trying to be satisfied with just a taste. 
6. Limit online viewing to one hour or less per day, preferably after dinner (I have to laugh - we may have cut out cable, but the lure of TV continues via streaming instead!).  Achieved! The urge to turn on the TV earlier in the day "just because" is a sure sign I've slipped into a stance of laziness. If I can resist the urge and turn to anything else instead, it quickly goes away, and I certainly feel better doing whatever I chose to do instead. Like needlepoint, which I recently picked up again.
7. Search the internet for healthy, easy to make meals to bookmark for our upcoming RV travels.  Achieved! And really, there wasn't very much out there that was specific to long term RV travel when I searched. Simplicity was the general theme for the one blog about RV cooking that I did find, so I set aside my former habit of outlining grand meals before heading out in our RV, and focused instead on making salads and simple side dishes on the road. As well as stir fry and quesadillas. Both accommodate almost any mix of ingredients and are easy to make.

June Bucket List

1. Pick another running event for this year, preferably a club event so I can share training for it and running it with my fellow club members.
2. Overcome my fear and actually begin attending Intermediate Spanish and Conversational Spanish classes held through the ongoing learning program I'm enrolled it at our local university, instead of just continuing to think about it. 
3. Plan ahead for this summer's Concert in the Park series so I have both dinner and bicycles ready to go ahead of time, as opposed to not planning ahead and, oops, driving there and buying non-economical, prepared meals instead.
4. Do detailed planning for our 25-day July RV trip so we have lots and lots of well thought out options to choose from each day. (Not doing this too often results in "buying" our daily recreation, always more expensive and rarely as satisfying.)
5. Spend just a minute or two a day to consciously planning what we will do each evening in order to avoid the TV being turned on simply out of habit. (It's fine if we plan ahead to watch a particular show. It's not OK if we watch it simply out of laziness.)
6. Do a complete sweep of our garage to eliminate more clutter. (Our garage is technically clean - we can park both our trailer and one car in it already - but I know there is a lot more stuff we can purge now that we have the time to do it in more detail.)

Lessons Learned During Our Kick Off Retirement Trip

We just arrived home from our grand retirement RV trip and life has never been sweeter. We fell in love with RV'ing all over again on this trip, and discovered we really do like being in our rig for long periods of time, particularly on the days when we move from one place to another. It's exciting to break down, hook up to our SUV, and prepare to discover a whole new place. Moving day, as we call our transitional days, is really, really fun!


We learned a lot as well. We learned that we do best if we wake up early, 6:00 AM in our case, in order to have ample time to wake up over coffee and get a run in before starting our "real" day. 


In the wine country town of Paso Robles our morning runs took us through vine covered hills like this:

In the coastal county of Santa Barbara our morning runs took us along ocean bluffs with views like this:

Either way, a pretty incredible way to start the day. We felt the air, we smelled it and we saw beautiful things. We got to that sweet spot where your heart is pumping, your breathing is steady, your head is clear, and life feels completely amazing. It also pretty much guarantees the rest of our day is going to be great as well, because we've cleared the clutter from our heads. 


And yet, everyday we had to force ourselves to ignore our lazy selves, put down our coffee cups, and pick up our running shoes. You would think after all these years we would have our workout routine down pat, but alas no, we have to re-commit ourselves to being active every single morning. Most times we succeed, because over the years we've learned that if we commit to doing that which is difficult, the rest of our day becomes very easy by comparison. As opposed to the opposite, which is exactly what occurs if we give in to our lazy selves and skip our morning routine.


On the days we didn't run we hiked. We followed beautiful trails along the coast of Cambria, and up into the mountains overlooking Morro Bay. We met other hikers, and sometimes their dogs. We exchanged brief words of encouragement, verbal pats on the back if you will, as we did so. "Just a little more uphill and you're there," or "What a pretty dog!" We experienced the simple joy of PB&J sandwiches, apples and ice cold water in the midst of a challenging hike. And the simple pleasure of switching out of our hiking shoes and back into our sandals when we finished.

At the top of Cerro Alta Summit, overlooking  Morro Bay.

The beginning of the spectacular Moonshadow Beach trail in Camria

We also explored. We drove all 16 narrow, windy, twisty little miles of Santa Rosa Creek Road in Cambria, discovering the wonderful home farm bakery location of Linn's Fruit Bin along the way. And their wonderful olallieberry pies! The Circle Bar B Ranch and it's cowboy dinner theater. We didn't manage to get tickets this time around, but next time for sure! And the road the ranch is on is supposed to be the same one the Reagan's used to get to their Santa Barbara hideaway, so even more to explore next time we're in the area.


We visited oodles and oodles of wineries in Paso Robles and the Santa Ynez Valley, enjoying each one's unique wines, perspective and countryside setting. 


We spent a wonderful three days with our camping club in Goleta at Refugio State Beach, re-appreciating all over again how our lives our enhanced by having met these wonderful folk. There's just something about people that RV. Perhaps it's the knowledge that we are all vulnerable to mishaps and breakdowns while on the road, but RV people tend to be some of the nicest and most generous people we've ever met.


We weren't particularly eager to head for home on our last day out, the mark of a great trip. In fact, we would have preferred to have simply moved on to another new town with our trailer! We absolutely loved being on the road, and we are eager to get out again next week, and then again in July for what will be our longest RV trip so far - 24 days.


In the meantime, we are renewed, incredibly excited about our new life, and more determined than ever to live each day as fully and meaningfully as possible.