The Great American Baseball Tour

...is becoming a reality.

*happy dance happy dance*

Background:

After Mark's parents retired, they embarked on "The Great American Baseball Tour".  They took three years, a 5th wheel trailer and set on their way to visit every baseball park in the United States and Canada.  Their objective at each ballpark was to eat at whatever restaurant was in that ballpark, buy a cap representing the home team, buy a program and (of course!) see a game.  

Pretty much as soon as Mark heard about this great adventure, it went on his bucket list.  
Pretty much as soon as Mark shared this with me, it went on mine.


Back to now:

Mark still has a few years before retiring, but because he researches everything before he undertakes anything, he is already on this.  He has been spending a bit of time here and there researching the pros and cons of different travel trailers.  5th Wheel vs bumper pull vs RV.  He's been looking up different floor plans and trying to find what mode of living will be the best fit for us.  We spent a couple hours the other night looking at different trailers, and I have to say ... I got quite excited.

Now, we both know we have a few years before any of this happens, but we also both know time does fly by rather quickly.

Our life:

When we first moved here, we thought this is where we would live forever.  We love it here.  We love our little piece of the world.  We love our church.  We love our town.  We are quite happy and content here, for the most part.
...but...
We still aren't as close to family as we would like.  We are close enough to visit and make it to important functions and big family events, but we miss out on so much of the smaller things.  We want to get closer to our family.

Our plan (as of today, which we know can change) is to sell our house after Mark retires, sell everything we no longer need or want, put everything else in storage and hit the road for our own version of The Great American Baseball Tour.  Mark's plan includes lots and lots of blue roads.  He doesn't want to merely travel the interstate, he wants to see and feel the country.

We'll spend about three or so years doing this, and then we'll be looking for a place to live.  Closer to family.  (And yes, Mark is already researching that as well.)

Our big obstacle:

Our animals.
I don't think we should take the chickens on the trip.  The fresh eggs would be nice, but the chickens in the trailer would not be too practical.  For them or us.  I'm thinking Jenni might have her chickens by then, so hopefully she would take ours in.  Finding a home for the chickens will be quite easy.
We plan on Georgia O'Keeffe and Dolce coming with us.  Same for our cats.  Cecelia Beaux might be a problem.  She gets car sick.  Not sure how fun this sort of a life would be for her or for us.  We'll have to look into this some more, but I'm also hoping maybe my mom can be my fall back plan (She doesn't know this yet.) and she can take Cecelia in for a couple years.  So yeah, we've got a few details to work out on our plethora of animals in such a small space, but hey, they might like an adventure too.  As Mark pointed out, walking the dogs would no longer be a treat, but would be a necessity.  I'm thinking some walking and hiking along the way with the dogs will be fun for us and them.