Originally written October 1, 2022 before everything changed in yet another whirlwind in our lives… So here it is from then, edited (bottom) for now…
We watch a number of YouTubers… and one of them has what they call ”real talk Tuesdays.” Well it isn’t Tuesday, but let’s give a real talk update about what is going on, where we are at, and a bit more spelled out about what happened back in May.
We’ve referenced becoming unexpected full-time RVers. We eluded to things but we’ve never really stated what happened.
So let’s start from what happened this year… Our 20th wedding anniversary was in February and we were in Savannah. As a surprise for us, Vicky got us a Curling lesson in Charleston. Now here is the funny part, the only available date was Memorial day weekend. But hey, we got it booked. So here is where things started to stack up on us…
During our stay in Savannah, our AquaHot quit working and drained itself of all fluids. We called around and finally made an appointment back at the dealer that we bought Walter from. We also, at the same time had our clothes washer stop working. We also had taken a bit of damage in gail force winds in Delaware back around Thanksgiving (2021), so we added replacing the slide toppers to the list. Then as we were leaving the campground in Savannah, our windshield cracked. So to say the least, we were limping into the spring… So we drop the big guy off late February. Our next planned trip being May 24th. Fast forward a bit, nothing from our rv dealer so we scheduled to go pickup. They did fix the Aqua Hot, and the washer (at least we thought they did). Well we get the big boy home and start packing for our one week trip. We pulled out stuff that we knew we wouldn’t use for this trip since not everything was fixed and we were going to be taking the big boy back to the shop for the remaining repairs. So we packed. Went to start up the big guy to move him, two dead chassis batteries. We got to the point we weren’t even worried about making the trip. Everything just seemed to line up that we should just stay home. But we didn’t…
Trip to the auto store, two new batteries later…
And we are off to Charleston! We arrived on Tuesday as planned, though a bit late in the day. We get all setup and boom. There we are, living in the lowlands for a week.
Thursday comes … we were watching our facebook live feed of our local (home) weather guy talking about the storms rolling through the Greenville SC area. Somewhere around 3:30p, our smart home went offline. Everything. No cameras, no thermostat, no wifi, no sensors… It was very odd. That doesn’t normally happen. Maybe the cable was out? I check the Spectrum website and we cannot see the modem. The whole house is dead. So we figure, power outage. I make a text to a neighbor – “hey is your power out…” and then her phone rings…
Our neighbors call in a panic, ”are your cats in the house?!” Franticly yelling/asking if we are in the house, are our cats there… she screams “your house is on fire!”
From that moment on, our lives are forever changed with a fixed point in time. At roughly 3:34PM on May 26th, a bolt of lightning struck our house. It entered from the roof above our bedroom, traveled through the attic space, into our bedroom, through the wall into the living room and struck our countertop in the kitchen.
In the moments after, we watched via FaceTime, and pictures being texted to us (at our request) from our neighbors, our beloved home simply burned down… At that time, we weren’t yet towing a vehicle with us so both of our cars were in the garage, and they too were lost.
In the hours after we were in shock.
It is one thing to choose to live full time RV life, when you can plan it and when you get to keep the things you want to keep. It is something entirely different when you simply have no choice and everything else is gone.
In the days following, we hired a cleanup crew to salvage what we could, most of the salvageable things fit into 44 moving boxes. Things like cookware, items that were in both of our offices that was not plugged in. Some storage things on one side of the house.
Everything in our bedroom, master bath, garage, livingroom, dining room, most of the kitchen, gone. If fire didn’t destroy it water did.
In the following weeks we lived in shock. We started this blog to document our trials and struggles in the hopes that someone in the future would find us and see they are not alone.
This. Is. Hard. It’s one of the hardest things we’ve ever dealt with. The calls quit coming. The people stop asking. Our support system went away. In some cases people don’t understand losing everything and, that is okay. We never asked for help, or sympathy. We know we are much more lucky than others… But the lack of spatial awareness from so many. I can’t tell you how many people after 3 months asked if we were back in our house. Or asked if we were rebuilding? No, we weren’t. It’s 4 months later we just settled with our insurance. If we rebuilt we are still talking another two years. Losing everything isn’t resolved in a few weeks. Maybe a few years… but not a few weeks.
Which leads us to now…as we sit with the remnants of Hurricane Ian… listening to the wind and rain hitting our home. We are selling our land in SC. We put an offer in on a new place hoping we can redefine what our home base is.
We stand at yet another crossroad. We made many plans to live full time. We have no exit plan for living in a house again. Equally we had a house and made no plans for full time living…
And then, Frederick happened. In the last wander, we took in TN, KY, OH, PA and MD. Of course MD is home for us so that is easy. But we’ve both changed.
…
Update 04/03/2023
So I deleted the ending. It really made no sense. Sometimes looking back at the moment, you know what you were trying to say, but it just doesn’t make sense. The whole last paragraph was really to say, we knew moving back to Maryland was the easy road, but it really wasn’t. We are different then when we left. We have different requirements for this stage in our lives. Is our new home perfect? Nope. Perfectly imperfect. Is it the same Maryland? Nope. It’s different. We’ve both changed, we both grew… we also changed our latitude which changed our attitude.
We’re home now… and I thought we should let the few who read along see what we were thinking at the time… and to say look forward to a few more posts. The 2023 camping season has just begun!
Despite the tears reading/editing this, I promise this story has a happy, happy ending!
Thank you Walter, forever our lifeboat!