Our First Journey

Having retired at the end of 2025, Kim and I are traveling from Goshen, IN, to Mesa, AZ. We have a 2018 Newmar Dutch Star (Floor plan 4369) motorhome. We purchased it in August in Florida and had it home until late September, when we took it to Lebanon, TN (a suburb of Nashville, TN), to The National Indoor RV Center (NIRVC). It is a full dealership, motor home/service/storage facility. They have 5 stores in the US. This Nashville location can store 500 motorhomes inside. They repaired the peeling paint above the windshield and made a list of about 35 things to repair. It worked well. They email me a list of the costs for each repair, and I simply approve or reject each item. We picked it up in late December 2025 and headed for Mesa.

Since we are retired, we planned to travel slowly. Having full-time RV'd before, we generally travel no more than 200 - 300 miles per day. We also won't pull in to park after dark. We took 13 days to travel 1,600 miles. Before we left, we joined Harvest Hosts. It turned out to be a really good deal for us. We only spent 2 nights in campgrounds on the way to AZ. Two of the nights were in museums. We got there mid-morning, visited the museum, then stayed the night and left the next morning.

We stayed at a Harvest Host site at Atkins, AR, at the home of Pete and Sheryle Hagen. He has to be one of the neatest people we ever met. We stayed 3 nights with full hookup, and they were so good to us. Here's Pete.

We arrived at the Mesa Spirit RV Resort in Mesa, AZ Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026.

Looks like Annie is getting adjusted to retirement.