Jay & Lena's Rolling Home
Full-timers since May 1997 · 34 feet of fifth wheel · no fixed address

Howdy, and welcome aboard. We're Jay and Lena Akins. Jay is 63 and I'm 64, which he likes to bring up. For thirty years Jay ran the feed store in our little town in the Missouri Ozarks, and for twenty-four years I cooked lunch for six hundred kids a day at the elementary school. We retired, we looked at each other, and we said, now what? So last May we sold the house, auctioned most of what was in it, bought a 34-foot fifth-wheel trailer and a diesel pickup to pull it, and hit the road. Our son Gary set us up with this laptop computer and showed me how to work it, and I type these updates whenever a campground office will let us plug into their phone line for a few minutes. Most of them are very nice about it.

Newest at the top. I write these, and Jay reads over my shoulder and corrects the mileage.

March 1998 City of Rocks State Park, New Mexico We left Quartzsite at the end of February, spent a few days in Tucson and an afternoon in Tombstone (Jay had to see it, and it was every bit as touristy as I warned him), and came on into New Mexico. This park is something. Great big rocks stand up out of the desert in a bunch, some of them as tall as a house, and the campsites are tucked in among them, so every site feels like its own little canyon. The stars at night are thicker than I have ever seen them, even back home. We are staying a week. Jay has climbed every rock he is allowed to and some, I suspect, he is not.

December 1997 to February 1998 Quartzsite, Arizona Our first winter as snowbirds! Quartzsite is a little desert town on the interstate that is nearly empty in summer, and in winter it fills up with RVers from all over the country and Canada. We camped out on the government desert south of town, on a long-term permit that let us stay the whole season, with no hookups at all. We learned to live on our tanks for two weeks at a stretch, and Jay put two solar panels on the roof with help from a neighbor. Christmas dinner was a potluck with a dozen rigs pulled into a circle like a wagon train. Then came January. If you have never seen Quartzsite in January, I can't describe it. They say a million people come through over the winter. There's a huge RV show under a big tent, and the gem and mineral shows, and swap meets for miles, and people selling everything from rocks to boots to dates by the pound. You could walk all day and not see the end of it. Jay bought a hat and a geode. I bought a cast iron Dutch oven I do not have room for. In February we drove the truck over to Yuma for a few days, and walked across the border at Los Algodones like half the snowbirds in Arizona do, and Jay got new glasses for less than the frames alone would cost back home.

November 1997 Down the coast and through California Down Highway 101 into the redwoods. Those trees made me feel like a churchgoer all over again. Then inland and down the middle of California, past more orchards and vineyards than I knew there were in the world. Thanksgiving at an RV park with strangers who weren't strangers by the pie.

October 1997 The Oregon coast Out across Idaho, where we stopped at Craters of the Moon and walked on old black lava that crunched like burnt toast. Down the Columbia River Gorge past Multnomah Falls. Then the coast. We saw gray whales spouting off Depoe Bay, rode the elevator down to the Sea Lion Caves (you smell them before you see them), and climbed up to the lighthouse at Yaquina Head. It rained eleven days out of fourteen and we didn't care one bit. Jay had never seen the ocean in his life. He stood on the beach in his feed-store jacket for about an hour.

September 1997 Yellowstone National Park Two weeks in Yellowstone at the RV park at Fishing Bridge, which only lets in hard-sided campers on account of the bears. We saw Old Faithful go off four times. We sat in our truck for forty-five minutes in the Hayden Valley while a herd of bison walked down the middle of the road, taking their time and looking in the windows. At Mammoth the bull elk were bugling all night, a sound like a rusty gate and a pipe organ at once. It snowed on us the last morning. In September!

August 1997 Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming The Tetons come straight up out of the flat with no foothills in front of them at all. I had seen pictures. Pictures are no help. We camped near Jackson Lake and fished (Jay) and read (me).

June and July 1997 South Dakota and Wyoming The Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and Custer State Park, where the wild burros walk right up to the truck window and beg. Devils Tower. Over the Bighorn Mountains to Cody for the Fourth of July and the rodeo. Jay put two hundred dollars of new brakes on the truck in Sheridan and told me he had planned to all along.

May 1997 Leaving home The auction was May 10. The rig left the driveway May 17, after a week of me crying and Jay pretending not to. We did a shakedown week at Table Rock Lake, about two hours from home, so if anything went wrong we could limp back. Things that went wrong: the water pump, the awning, and the jar of pickles that was not stowed. Lesson learned.

We've had a lot of e-mail from folks thinking about doing this, so here's what I've learned in ten months. I'm no expert. I just got here first.

Mail. Gary picks up our mail at his house, throws out the junk, and once a week or so we call him with where we'll be. He sends the rest Priority Mail to General Delivery at the post office in the next town, or to the RV park with our name and site number. Call the post office first. Most are fine with it. Bills we pay by mail the same day they catch up with us.

What we got rid of. Nearly everything. Forty-one years of married life went on the auction block on one Saturday, and I'll be honest, I had to go sit in the truck for part of it. The piano went to our granddaughter Nicole. My good dishes went to Gary's wife. What we kept: our wedding quilt, the photographs (two boxes), Jay's tackle box, my mother's cast iron skillet, and the Bible. You will not miss the rest. I promise you. I thought I would, and I don't.

Cooking in a tiny galley. I cooked for six hundred children a day. Now I cook for one man in a kitchen I can touch both sides of at once. Tips:

• One-pot meals are your best friend. Chili, stew, chicken and dumplings.
• The crockpot is wonderful when you have hookups. Start it in the morning, come back from sightseeing to supper.
• Use the cast iron over the campfire and save your propane.
• Buy groceries small and often. There is no room for the warehouse-store sizes, and you'll be in a new town next week anyway.
• EVERYTHING gets put away before you move. Everything. Remember the pickles.
• The little oven runs hot in back. Turn your pans halfway through.

Boondocking. That's camping with no hookups. Learn how long your water lasts (us: about two weeks if we're careful), take short showers, and keep an eye on your tank gauges. Run the generator only at the polite hours.

Getting along in 300 square feet. Jay gets the truck radio. I get the dinette. Every couple of days one of us takes a long walk alone. Forty-one years of marriage did not prepare us for each other quite this closely, but we're doing just fine.

Jay here. Lena lets me have this part. Diesel, pulling the trailer unless I say otherwise.

That's about 11 1/2 miles to the gallon overall, and about 11 pulling. Cheapest diesel so far was in New Mexico last week, dearest was in California, no surprise. I keep a notebook in the glove box and write down every fill-up, and Lena says I'm the only man in America who enjoys a gas receipt.

• Trailer: 34-foot fifth wheel, two slide-outs, bought used with 8,000 miles on it. Queen bed up front, galley and dinette in the middle, a recliner for Jay and a rocker for me.
• Truck: 1995 Ford one-ton diesel, white. Jay calls it Big Ed, after nobody we know.
• Extras: two solar panels (new in Quartzsite), a little generator, a CB radio, folding lawn chairs, a welcome mat that says nothing at all, and a flag on a pole by the door so folks can find us.