John's First Day Not To Go To Work!

We are down to 9 days before we leave Newcastle.  This week we are dog sitting our friend’s adorable Yorkie – Munchkin.  We have been her sitter many times over the past five years while her parents go on vacation.  We will miss having her but maybe they can time some of their vacations with when we are in Sulphur.  She gets along with our girls very well so she’s easy to take care of.  The hardest part is she wants to eat our girls’ food and our girls want to eat her food and that’s all a big no no.  We don’t want Munchkin getting sick!

Over the next week we have several dinners out with friends that we are looking forward to as well as a couple of events to attend which include dinner at Vast which is at the top of the Devon Tower and another event at Remington horse track.  We’ve never been to Remington so should be fun.

As we are getting closer to relocating to Sulphur I thought I would take some time to do some restaurant reviews in the Blanchard and Newcastle area.  You can find these on my Restaurant Review page.

John has Retired

 

Today John retired! His office had a nice party for him and they shared lots of stories. They had a fun pie bar as part of the refreshments.  John isn’t a cake fan but likes pie so they had individual pie crusts in tins with fillings and toppings to make your own pie.  It will take a bit before it sinks in for him that he’s really retired.  He’s going to miss the folks he worked with – one of them he has been with for 34 years.  He is going to miss being able to help improve patients’ lives.  But he isn’t going to miss the daily grind and the mundane paperwork.  

Since the rent for our RV lot in Newcastle is paid up through November 8th - Election Day - we have decided to wait until that day so we could vote before moving to Sulphur.  In the remaining 11 days we plan to finish up appointments and seeing our friends.  Tomorrow we are going to take the girls and head to the eastern part of the State for a fall foliage drive.

We are elated that we are both now fully retired since we have so many places we want to travel to, but after spending over five years in the A-AAA RV Park in Newcastle, OK we will have to say goodbye to the owners, who we have become good friends with.  We also will say goodbye to some of the residents we have come to know well and all this will be emotional.  Living in this park has been so much more memorable than living in the home we had for 16 years.  We have met so many wonderful people and it is a place where folks look out for each other.  We will be back for short visits I'm sure.  So on November 8th we head to our new base - Cedar Blue RV Park - in Sulphur, OK where we own a lot in this private RV park.

The fall colors in the park and magnificent.

We have worked hard on our place at Cedar Blue to get it ready for us to spend 5-6 months a year.  We added a small enclosed room so we have more living space with a TV.  We also have a full sized refrigerator in it to store food and drinks.  In addition, we have a very large covered cement patio with a nice fire pit and outdoor seating and, yes, another TV.  Since we decided to spend storm season there instead of trying to outrun them, we also have an in-ground storm cellar and a storage shed.  Finally, we have a boat and waverunner on this property.  The boat ramp is only about a mile away!


Here are some photos of our place at Cedar Blue.

We have a pontoon boat and waverunner at Cedar Blue and are about 1 mile or so to the boat ramp for Lake Arbuckle.  As you can see we can pull our RV under a large cover.  We have a nice add-on room with large covered patio and storm cellar and gorgeous sunsets.  It's a great place to relax.  We are right by the Chickasaw National Recreation Area so there are lots of hiking trailers and plenty to see and do within the park.

Kick-off to Retirement Blog

We are kicking off our new retirement blog to document our travels around the country in our retirement.  My plan is to not only blog about what we are up to but to do reviews of RV parks, restaurants, places we visit and so on.  I hope to post something weekly and take all of you along with us on our adventures.  So here we go!

John retires October 27th and we relocate to Cedar Blue RV Park on November 8th so we are taking care of lots of things before we head to the south like medical appointments, oil changes, RV repairs, and seeing friends.  This last weekend our dear friend, Priscilla, hosted a party for a few of our friends to give us a chance to say good-bye and it was a wonderful time of good food and conversation.  We just wish we had been able to spend more time with each of them but social media will allow us to stay in touch which is great.

In getting ready to relocate John is trying to replace a large rubber gasket that runs up and down along one of our slide outs.  These help keep the rain from coming in along the slide outs and this one had split in half.  When living in an RV you try to do any repairs you can yourself to keep from having to drop the rig off at a repair facility or call out a mobile repair - especially if it won't be covered under the extended service agreement - and John is pretty handy.  So he ripped that big rubber gasket off yesterday and used a lot of Goof Off and elbow grease to get the adhesive off.  Today the plan is to try to get the new gasket to stick and stay as it is a peel and stick thing.  Plan B is to screw it on.  We also have a recall on our electric steps for our front door so we are trying to get the dealer to order the parts in and then have us come by to get them repaired so it's a one-day event.  When we have to leave the RV overnight we have to pack up us and the dogs, empty the entire refrigerator since it won't have electricity or propane to run off of, and find a place to stay and a place to put our food.  So it's kind of a pain.  We did buy a refrigerator to put in our little add on room at our place at Cedar Blue RV Park just so we have a place to unload our food to should we need to take the rig in for repairs.

Mark and Donna - Own RV park we have lived

 in for 5 years