I grew up on a farm just outside of Mediapolis, Iowa. While in college in January of 1984, I got a job at the Burlington Post Office. I thought I'd just work there until I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up, but somehow I ended up retiring from the PO 34 years later.
In 1985 I transferred to Havelock, North Carolina, and then in 1990 to Bradenton, Florida. Crazy about small planes since I took my first flight in a neighbor's Cessna 172 as a kid, I decided to learn to fly a paramotor - the smallest aircraft of all! It was May of 2000, and the local instructor was Check. We began dating that fall and have been together since, eventually marrying in June of 2012. I transferred one last time with the PO back to Mediapolis in 2009, where Check and I helped care for my parents until they passed away.
When the Post Office offered me an early retirement in January of 2018, we jumped at it, and took off in Weepy on my last day there. Our goal is to sell the house as soon as we can [June 19, 2020: SOLD!] and travel full-time until we either get tired of it, or we see somewhere we want to settle.
Neither Check nor I grew up in camping families, so the idea of living in an RV was a big reach for us. I think the first time we realized that we would like having an RV was on one of our many trips to the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. We were tired of having to drive everyday from a hotel in Asheville or Hendersonville to be able to hike. At a trailhead one day one of us said, "If we had a small camper, we could sleep right here" and everything just grew from there. By the time we got home from that trip we HAD to have one. We bought Weepy from Lichtsinn's right in Forest City, Iowa where Winnebagos are made. At first we hadn't planned to actually live in the RV, but we realized pretty quickly that it was perfect for us. Now with the trailer, we have everything we need with us all the time, and we couldn't be happier.
