Dreaming ZZzzzZz

In Europe, we had a tent trailer and travel all over with it. It was real camping, no electricity, no fridge, NO WATER, not even propane and if you can believe it, no TV. The longest we travelled there was for a whole month. For that trip, my wife sister and her husband came to visit, not having a palace to receive them, we escape the embarrassment by “going” with the tent trailer. We traveled to Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria and back in Germany with a stopped in the Bavaria. This seems like a lot but in Europe, most of the countries are really small.

When we will be retire, we will usually be travelling 6 months per year, and those months will be from November to May (give or take few weeks). When we are going to leave in November, we will be getting out of Dodge as fast as we can. The truck and trailer aim straight south. So most of the time, we will be crossing New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia as fast as… the speed limit (We won’t be able to slow down or the water in the trailer could freezeJ). When the weather get warm enough, we will be slowing down and start visiting Mid South states.

The first few years, I think we will be going more on the west side, probably spending 3 or 4 of winter’s month in Texas, New Mexico and/or Arizona. By the time we get really old (possibly 55 ha ha), we might just slow down and go to Florida.

I wish that we would have the freedom to just never stop. We are from the province of Québec, and we have to be back for 6 months per year to keep all the health benefits. There is an exception, every 7 years, we can ask for an exemption to be gone for a whole year. We are thinking about starting with this exemption, which would mean, we start our journey November 2013, in April 2014 we will have the exemption applied, an then in November 2014 we start our second year (18 full months).

This is fine but… we can’t spend more than 6 months, in a calendar year, in the US or we could be considered resident for the IRS. There is more technical issues but I don’t want to get into that now, please check in November 2013, I will have most of the in/out of the rules. This really limits the number of northern states we can visit.

My sister in law and her husband didn’t get bored-up with the experience of travelling in the tent trailer. They bought a motorhome and are fulltimer now; I think they have been fulltimer for over 10 years (that’s lot of experience!). For the first year travelling, we might travel together; this will be a great time for us to share their knowledge. They will be also up for the 7 years exemption; we are planning this spring to spend time with them and start some itinerary planning.