New Year, Same Weirdos
A 2023 Look Ahead
Happy New Year fellow weirdos! I just paid to renew this domain, so I figured I should make the most of it and write something. Does anyone read this anymore? Blogs are so 2002 …
Camper Update
The camper is still at Camping World. That’s six months! Thank goodness it wasn’t our home, and the tire explosion happened at the end of the season. We’ve heard from the dealership a few times, they are still waiting on matching cabinet parts. Hopefully everything is complete soon, camping season is only weeks away! I’m counting this as a winter of free storage. But I am curious if the dogs will recognize the smell after this long. I’ve always spent the winters taking the dogs out to the camper to keep it familiar and “home” to them (and just to visit it and reminisce about the good days). They may be uneasy our first time out, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.
Typically I spent the winters with painful wanderlust and FOMO watching full-time RVers kayaking in Florida in January, or hiking in Sedona in December, and I convince myself I really want to go full-time too! This tire and repair debacle has really given me a new perspective and appreciation for our house.
Okoboji, but make it cold
During this particularly snowy and miserable winter, Jamey has been wandering around like a weirdo saying “I miss ‘Boji” so when his basketball season ended, we rented an AirBnB in his happy place for a quick weekend.
It was fun and different. It’s a lot quieter in the winter, fewer people, which is nice. I was surprised how many things were still open. More of the quintessential touristy spots, like Barefoot Bar, obviously were closed, but it was still popping with ice fishing folks.
The AirBnB was so cute it gave us a moment to ask ourselves “should we buy a cabin?” and searched Zillow to see what was around. There was a one bedroom, one bathroom house across from Big Spirit Lake (not directly on the lake, but there was still a partially obstructed view of the lake) for $130K. What if we sold the truck and camper and bought a cabin? We could AirBnB it half the time to help make the payment … We could use it year round, being in Okoboji in the winter is fun! Okoboji is a nice half way point for my girlfriends, we could have more girls weekends in my cabin. I could just decide Jamey was being a jerk and head to the cabin for some peace … what a great idea!
But reality check – there is a lot of work that would go into an AirBnB rental from afar – someone in town to answer immediate needs, someone to clean, someone to mow and shovel … managing that seems like a lot more work on my shoulders. Not to mention all the G-D problems we’ve had in our current house this winter to deal with … I can’t manage two houses. Things break a lot in campers, and they aren’t an appreciating asset like a cabin is, but they also don’t require a full time crew to maintain everything.
As a side note, that house is still for sale, so I suspect something might be terribly wrong with it …
What’s to Come?
We’re still thinking about buying a new house. The neighborhood is still not great. The Walmart and Appleebees in the rough part of town I mentioned last year have closed due to all the crime. Will that mean the criminals go criming somewhere else and the safety of my town improves or does it mean abandoned buildings for other crimes? Looking at the city crime map, we continue to be a in a very safe part of town, but I’d like my entire town to be safe, not just my 12 square blocks.
Since we don’t have the camper yet and we are unsure what the future holds as far as staying here or moving, the camping season remains a mystery.
We will be biking from Fargo to St. Cloud over Memorial Weekend. We’ll bike about 60 miles per day on the new Prairie Lakes Route and stay in hotels along the way.
My friend Chuck is getting married at the Gun Flint Lodge in August, so we’ll be camping down the road for his wedding in August.
That’s all we have planned so far.
Stay tuned for more adventures with the Wandering Weirdos.
