Fun With Friends

If you’ve followed our blogs, you know that being in the desert for over a month last November left us a little lonely. (I talked about it in Desert Solitude). That has NOT been the case for the past month we’ve spent boon-docking in the deserts of California and Arizona.

We knew January would be a social month for us, but I didn’t realize how exhausting it would be to hang around with people non-stop. When we left Boomerville at Quartzsite and moved over to American Girl Mine (in California near Yuma) to meet up with yet another group of full time RVers, I felt like I needed a day of solitude before we got there. But we hurried along because we didn’t want to miss out on the fun. And we haven’t. We’ve had a blast!

When we first got to the Arizona desert, we met up with friends who have been full time since September. Ray and Pam of Santana RVing. We stayed out at Kofa National Refuge in a really nice spot – just them and us.

Staying (and traveling) with others is always a gamble (or so I’ve heard) – people have different schedules and social preferences. After three weeks of traveling with the Santana’s, I can say that again we’ve struck gold with travel buddies. We (and they) found a wonderful balance of spending time together, and going off on our own or with others.

So that began our month of socializing.

Then together we moved to Boomerville to be with a branch of Excapees. We met so many new people and met up with friends we made last fall at the Crab-O-Rang . So we had a great time being with friends old and new.

We made the trek to the Desert Bar two times! Once with the Xscapers group and once with the Boomers. Great day both times!

We went to a group social for the Escapees group and met an RV salesman that grew up in the same small town of Caruthers that Tom went to school in. That “small-world” stuff happens all the time!

We met new people at an RVillage meetup at the Quartzsite Yacht Club. Then at a presentation, I learned the value of sharing your location with other RVillage  members. Tom already knew all this as he’s our Social Director, but it made me want to poke around on their site – which is like a location specific Facebook.

After that meeting, another couple brand new to the full time nomad life reached out to us, and we met up with them for a lovely visit.

One couple that we follow on YouTube, Paul and Lorena of The Motorhome Experiment reached out to their fans in the area to come by for a meetup, so of course, we went there too! (you can see us in the beginning of this video)

Add to all that the many happy hours, potlucks, presentations, campfire chats and game nights we had at Boomerville and perhaps you can see why I’m exhausted!

We ended up leaving the Boomers event a bit early in order to go over to the Xscapers camp. They had moved because the cell service disappears during “the Big Tent Show”. We were happy to spend the last few days at their event because we have great friends in that group as well.

Again, more presentations, potlucks, campfires and game nights. Whew!

While it was sad when their Big Bash event came to an end, and everyone departed to continue on their journeys, it was a little nice to have some peace and quiet again!

Some may find it hard to believe that life traveling full time can lead to more friendships than we had when we were stationary, but it’s true.

We will be keeping up with many people we’ve met and no doubt our paths will cross again. And I look forward to it immensely. But for now, I don’t mind a little down time with just Tom and I.

Happy Travels.

Peace & Love, Joy