Monday, August 8, 2016

Time to Settle Down....

You probably have noticed our blog entries have slowed down considerably. Well, after six wonderful, exciting, adventurous years of travelling around the country, we've decided to settle down here in Nampa, Idaho and build a house.

We've visited every state in the country...many states multiple times and had a blast...never regretted a moment.



We had a few cities on our list to investigate on this trip. They were: Grand Junction, Colorado, Flagstaff, Arizona, Minden/Garnerville, Nevada, Nampa, Idaho, Kennewick, Washington, Fort Collins, Colorado. Nampa is our choice.
Here's where Idaho is located and Nampa (the blue circle) in the SW part of the state.


Some overall statistics from our travels:

We started out in California September 23rd, 2011 and are ending it August 1st, 2016

1808 days...as of August 1st

247 RV Parks

Average price per night: $27.94

Average nightly stay: 5.96....this includes wintering over in Nokomis for 150 days three years in row.


Average daily mileage: 195 miles

47,436 miles total

First three year's travels


2015 trip

Our current trip west


We looked around this area, west of Boise, three years ago and really liked it. It has agriculture, low crime, conservative, good demographics, great weather (no tornados, hurricanes or thunder and lightning storms), easy winters, not-that-hot summers, lots to do, gorgeous country.



We went and bought a 2-acre piece of land in a nice neighborhood outside of town where we're in the process of planning and building our home.

The star south of the lake is our land.

Neighborhood...all 2-3 acre lots

Kim has been designing our home for years now in anticipation of building it. She's been planning for a 1,200 square foot house but the CCRs of this development said 1,800 square feet. We thought that was fine but.....then we read the amendments that now said 2,400 square feet is the minimum ! That's a lot of house for 2 people. However, we went ahead and made ourselves a new floor plan that we're very happy with.

We always liked an open floor plan.

Here are some photos of our land, starting from the left side (the west side) and moving to the right. Notice the great east-facing view of the mountains behind Boise. That'll be our morning view and, in the winter, they are covered with snow!

far left....west is to the left


turning right

more right turn....check out the moutains

far right....at the road


We're staying in our coach at a great RV park while the house is being built. Right now, we're looking at breaking ground in about 2-3 weeks (hopefully) and then 3 months construction, which ought to get us into the house in December. Wouldn't that be a great Christmas present?!!!


We'll be posting photos as the construction proceeds and photos of what we're planning for the inside rooms. So we hope you all will be interested to follow the progress.

...and our latest Katie photos....

all fluffy

Horsies !

...with her favorite toy

Cooling off on the car's AC after a run

After a grooming

How can you not love this lady?


Love to you all,


Steve and Kim and Katie

Kayaking again...finally!

Finally, we got back on the water. This time at Meacham Lake in upper state New York, just on the north edge of the Adirondack Mountains (yo...