Escapees March-April 2019 Vol 40 Issue 5

                    

      

      From the time she was a child, Teri always felt a need to explore whatever scenery lay around the bend. “Our family always took Sunday drives that were a highlight for me,” she recalls. As an adult, she loved taking back roads instead of driving on interstates. She even found the house of her dreams while taking a different road home one day after work. Her job provided daily reminders about the importance of following your dreams before it’s too late. Eventually, it was time to make her spontaneous meanderings a permanent thing. She wasn’t old enough for social security checks, but she feared if she waited any longer to follow the travel dreams in her heart, she would end up like many of her clients: too physically weak to explore the world and out of time to live. “Working in healthcare most of my life, and especially in hospice where we served patients and families that were terminally ill, I would see people waiting too long to retire,” she says. For them, travel and adventure were no longer an option. These people inspired Teri to map a path to her dream life. Soon after encountering a local nonprofit group that helps mid-life people craft their second and third career lives, she paid off her mortgage and lowered her cost of living. “My home was the only debt I had, and I began to ‘practice retirement’ by trying to live on what my social security check would be.” Teri also prepared for early retirement by taking a few other important steps. For example, since she doesn’t qualify for social security withdrawals, Teri took on a consulting role with the hospice agency to keep money coming in. Meanwhile, she

earned the title of “Master Naturalist” through the University of Minnesota Extension Program, which allowed her to pursue choice short-term summer volunteer positions in various parks and public lands. Finally, after spending too many nights sleeping in a tent during her naturalist volunteer stints, the van life came calling. “I heard about class-B RVs and started researching used Roadtreks,” she recalls. She had a Golden Retriever at the time, so the ease of traveling with her dog and meeting others at Roadtrek rallies felt like a good fit for the traveling lifestyle that she was already enjoying. “I found the Escapees website and other RV organizations as well and read the forums to learn about this exciting lifestyle that I had not heard of before.” Over the next five years, she put 136,000 miles on her 1996 Roadtrek 210, traveling part-time on

                              

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   