In 2013 I was job hunting, and I had enough money to live in a house with utilities and internet or I had enough money to take my tent and my car and travel to see things that I had never had the opportunity to see. My kids dubbed the trip the Gypsy Adventures and I embraced the name. So along comes November of 2024 and here I am retiring a little earlier than expected and once again I have the financial freedom to live in a house with utilities and internet or hit the road you go see the rest of the things I didn’t see the first time around. Guess which one I chose? Yep, the Tennessee Gypsy is riding again and this time I’m riding in style. Instead of a tent that looks like a lounge chair with a cover on top, I bought a small 2022 Forest River No Boundaries RV and I’m pulling it with my Kia Sorento. Yep, I’m a little scared and a little excited.
But … before I could hit the road, I had to get out of the rental house in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I had served as the City Administrator for the last 3 and half years. I had a 2500 square foot house, and it was relatively full. Long term, I was planning on settling back in Sevierville, TN and I found climate-controlled storage locker in nearby Knoxville. But I did not want to take everything with me that I had in that house. Over the years I had acquired stuff, cleaned out my parents’ house, my sister’s house, bought stuff on the internet that I never would use and saved stuff that I thought someday I would use.
The cleaning out process was overseen by my friend Missy Stahl. She was kind, fair but firm. There were times she asked if I wanted to keep something and there were times that an option was not given. I knew better than to argue. Along the way, we decided to celebrate the holidays with a new little tune of our own called the 12 days of moving:
- 12 cans of sausages
- 11 can of Pam
- 10 iPhone Cords
- 9 pairs of shoes
- 8 boxes of Cream of Wheat
- 7 Crock pots
- 6 sleeping bags
- 5 raisins boxes
- 4 boxes of oatmeal
- 3 jars of Apple butter
- 2 pair of winter gloves
- 1 jar of artichokes from 2008
Luckily, I had great friends who had either been coworkers or longtime friends who were willing to assist in my endeavors. They helped me sort through stuff, encouraged me, sometimes strongly, that I needed to get rid of stuff and others helped me pack, load and move. Because I wanted to hit the road for the Thanksgiving holidays, it all needed to be done in 5 weeks. So, I bought a travel trailer, figured out what I needed to make it work, sorted out the keep with the sell, and boxed the keep. A U-Haul was packed with lots of help from those friends. It was transported by great friends who unloaded into the locker. If you ever want to figure out who your friends are, try asking them to help do something that everybody hates and see who sticks around. Those are real friends.! Thank you to you all!
Thanks to Missy, Tyler, Graig, Ismail, and all the others who found time to help, I met the deadline. On Sunday morning, I waved goodbye to the house in Spring Hill and headed towards the east! My first stop on the journey was in Sevierville, Tennessee. This will be my permanent address. PM if you need it for some reason. I will get an email when mail gets delivered. I can look at the sender then either discard it, ask them to send it to me and they will forward it to a location near where I am, or they will open it and scan it and send it via email. I hope that I will know the good stuff from the junk and there won’t be much mail that I have to deal with but since I need a street address for the accounts you have today. So, I do! It is a file folder in the bottom drawer of the Ipostal file cabinet in the Staples in Sevierville.
From Sevierville, it is on to Hartwell Georgia. Hartwell is a beautiful little Corps of Engineers Lake in eastern Georgia. I’ve heard about it for years from Myles but never been there. My son, Jeremy, stopped there last year when he was making a cross-country trip said it was beautiful. So, after years of wanting to go there, that’s where I’m going to head next.
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Meanwhile just like I did with Gypsy trip one I’m going to blog it along the way, show you pictures, tell some stories, ask some questions and just generally keep people who want to know what I’m doing aware of where I’m at and that I’m making it. Stay tuned because this TnGypsy is Riding again!