Life on the Road

By Grant Emrick

“Me, retire? What wilI I do with myself?” Grant Emrick asked his wife during a retirement party on his 75th birthday. Several months later, he “unretired” to spend a year with Lynn in Haiti working on the financial records of an American-supported hospital.

While in Haiti, they decided to settle in Winston-Salem. They also wanted to travel, visiting their four children scattered from Massachusetts to California. The solution was to buy an RV and go “on the road.”

Although Grant knew their new traveling life “would require me to perform multiple mechanical functions at every stop,” he was ready for their new life. They bid goodbye to friends, stocked the fridge, hooked up the car. They were on the road.

Part 1:  Me, Retire?

The first day was uneventful until we arrived at our first stop. I had no trouble backing into the campsite and hooking up utilities, but when I pushed the button to open the slides, nothing happened. None of the RV park workers could help so I called for an expert. Meanwhile, another worker asked if I had set the parking brake. Oops!! This accomplished, everything worked perfectly. I offered some payment to the repairman; he was happy and my first problem was solved.

We made it to New England and back to Tennessee before our next adventure. We woke up about 3 a.m. to a blaring LP gas alarm. Immediately shutting off the gas and opening all of the windows stopped this; we were able to sleep, somewhat uneasily, the rest of the night. The next day a dealer told us that 90 percent of the time this is caused by low voltage in the house batteries but he had no time to help us. So we motored on to our next stop, Memphis, where we had planned to have the vehicle serviced.

The car dealership that serviced the vehicle wouldn’t look at the house batteries so we had to locate an RV dealer. The RV dealer managed to charge the batteries and get us back on the road by 5 p.m. the same day.

Apparently I had learned my routine duties well because we didn’t have any more maintenance problems until almost at the end of our trip. One Friday evening in Tempe, AZ, someone began banging on our door to tell us that water was pouring out of one side of our motor home. The plug on the hot water heater had blown out, and the tank emptied in minutes. This was easily repaired the next day by a repairman who showed me how to bypass the water heater in the unlikely event it happened again.

Since these were the only maintenance problems on the entire trip, I felt that my pre-trip confidence that I could manage such challenges was validated.

Navigation was a piece of cake, thanks to an up-to-date GPS system. When we left home, I was armed with all the maps that I thought we would need. As we crossed state lines, I would stop at welcome centers to get a current state map until I realized that I didn’t really need them. We had a good US Atlas which helped us in general terms, and we relied on the GPS for specific routes. (We had more trouble at times when we were depending on maps rather than the GPS.)

When approaching San Francisco we knew that we didn’t want to go over the Golden Gate Bridge directly through the city so, relying on maps, I planned a route around the city. Of course, I missed a turn-off and made a u-turn to get back on track. Half an hour later, I got on a freeway heading away from where we wanted to go, made a second u-turn in less than an hour, and eventually was driving onward towards our destination. (Lynn crowned me King of U-turns.)

On another adventure on the Los Angeles freeway, we arrived at a planned stop on the northwest side to find the campground completely filled. Looking at a city map, with freeways running in every direction, I decided there was no alternative but to set the GPS, pray and proceed. For the next half hour the GPS guided us through the LA freeway system, changing from one freeway to another several times, making one entrance from the left onto the freeway, passing through central LA at mid-day, and miraculously arriving at our destination on time. We noted that on this harrowing trip, we had seen no other RV’s and decided that everyone else knew better than to do what we did!

For accommodations, we used a huge directory of campgrounds, supplemented by the internet, to plan our stops. Where we intended to stay for several days, we usually called ahead and made a reservation. For overnight stays, we didn’t always make a reservation; this was not a problem except for our Los.Angeles adventure.

Important aspects of life on the road were meals, mail, banking, laundry, haircuts and filling prescriptions. We were always able to find a supermarket, so cooking wasn’t a problem. With permission, we used our neighbor’s address as our home address, and she forwarded our mail periodically. Banking was a cinch with the internet. We could find a cooperating credit union to deposit any checks and ATM machines to obtain cash. Laundry was interesting in one location when all of my underwear turned blue. (A longterm park tenant swore that the manager was adding something to the water!) Anyway, there was no permanent damage. Our pharmacy, a national chain, would always transfer our prescriptions so this was no problem.

Our trip took us from Maine’s rocky shores, through the green hills of Vermont, passing through the mid-west, across our broad country to the beautiful Pacific coast of California, through the desert southwest, back through the south, returning to North Carolina, covering over 8,000 miles in about eight months.

We ended our RV experience near Lexington at High Rock Lake. Opening the shades the first morning, we saw one of the most beautiful views of our entire trip. At that predawn hour the lake was perfectly still, mirroring a tree-lined bank, with only ducks breaking the water’s glassy surface. The trip was wonderful, but for us, there’s no place like home.

Our trip was ended. We had seen much beauty all over the country; we enjoyed spending extended time with our family; we learned we could handle living on the road. But most of all, we learned that we really wanted to spend our retirement in our comfortable nest in Winston-Salem.