Robin Hood Planning (Or Taking From Rich Planners and Giving to Poor Planners)

At home in Forth Worth...

Now, about the teaser from the end of my last post regarding our upcoming RVing plans:  It appears, Lord willing, that I will indeed be able to retire in June!  That is, unless the loopy politicians in Washington finally kill off capitalism and our investments all go south.

Sandy and I have given much thought to the kind of retirement ours will be.  It would be easy for me to toss the S&B and all of its expenses and irritations.  However, we both think we would need to have a home port somewhere with at least a modest bungalow that we could call home, with Phannie parked a few steps away when we aren’t on the road.  And since that’s essentially the living arrangement we have now (although it’s perhaps not quite a modest bungalow), the operative question is whether we can afford the expense of keeping the property and putting up with the worry factor when we’re away.  We think the answer is yes, but we’ll have to confirm that in actual practice.  So, we’ll see.

Now, back to the planning thing:   As I explained in the previous post, planning is not something that comes easy for me.  I occasionally have to do planning for the sake of avoiding chaos, but I generally keep it to a minimum, preferring spontaneity as I do.  Basically, my planning is limited to financial matters and trips.  Sandy isn’t particularly interested in planning either of these, so that’s where I have to man up and do it.  Luckily, the financial planning was largely done a long time ago and is more or less on autopilot; I don’t have to tweak it much.  As far as trip planning goes, I’ve always thought that less is more.  For me, planning a trip is simply envisioning a part of the country I would like to see and then considering what major attractions we might encounter along the way. But this is minimalist planning, done from a very high level and requiring rest afterward.  I could not possibly include at the same time planning about how to get there; that would be much too laborious.  I’m just smart enough, however, to know that picking a route is necessary at some point; after all, I probably need to know what direction I should point Phannie on the day of departure.   

With this in mind, it occurred to me that I might get blog readers to do some planning for me on our trip to Yellowstone this summer.  This will be our first trip after retirement—and the first one that will be open ended in terms of when we must return.  That in itself is a fantasy for which I’ve waited during my entire working career.

Departure from Texas will be in July, and we will be making haste toward Colorado to escape the blast furnace that is a Texas summer.  I don’t need much planning to get to Colorado, as that is pretty much a no-brainer.  I just point Phannie north by northwest and stop when we see mountains—piece of cake!  Near Colorado Springs, we’ll drop in on Ed and Marilyn for a few days at Mountaindale.  From there to Yellowstone, it gets a little fuzzy.  We love mountain scenery, but we’re not too interested in being frightened in our big rig on narrow roads with hairpin curves. We love bucolic settings such as those found in national and state parks, but sometimes we just don’t fit.  It’s a sacrifice we don’t mind making, however, for the sake of traveling comfort. 

We like small town settings, historical venues and eating in restaurants frequented by the locals.  We don’t follow sports, golf, fishing or hunting, and we can’t do much in the way of long walks or hiking (bad joints).  We like music, museums, festivals, rallies, tours, roadside stands, waterfalls, rivers, creeks and lakes.    

So, here’s where the Robin Hood thing comes in:  We would like for those of you who have more planning than you need to give us some since I'm too lazy to plan.  Somehow this seems entirely appropriate these days; even Warren Buffet thinks so! 

We would love to hear your ideas about a good route and attractions from Colorado Springs to Yellowstone, given the criteria I’ve described.  We’ll get to the rest of the trip later; I can only take so much planning right now.