When we started our full-time traveling our boys were 6 and 9.  As they have grown, their interests have changed and their educational endeavors have become larger.  In 2003, they said, "Are you guys just going to talk to us about real estate investing, or are we going to do something?"  So we bought a fixer-upper at the beach in San Diego. By spring we found ourselves living in the house.  As San Diego is Cheryl's hometown, over the years we were here often, and the boys had made several friends.  During the summer of 2003, the guys had signed up for the San Diego Junior Life Guard program.

Have you seen the TV shows about the homemade radio controlled battling robots, or custom motorcycle and hot rod building?  Mitch and Max have.  That spurred on their interest to cut, bend, and weld metal, so next we built two small dune buggies.

As the summer of 2006 approaches, Max has signed up for his fourth season of Junior Lifeguards.  Mitch, having completed three sessions of Life guarding, has decided that he'd rather spend his summer surfing.  They both play guitar, and along with their friend, Micah, have formed a garage band; (see their video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6315008829291713155&q=garage+band).

Their roots to the San Diego beach area grow stronger and their interest in full-time travel wane.  We have continued to travel over the last couple of years, but not full-time.  In 2005 we enjoyed a two month tour of the Appalachian area.  We spent a month in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland, and made several other shorter trips during during the past three years.

So today we live in San Diego.  We are torn between squeezing out a few more major trips with our sons or engaging in activities that require staying in one place.

As this is being written, we are on a six week trip to check off our final four "unslept-in states".  All we have to do is spend the night in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and then we can say that we've slept in all 50 states!  This is a goal we'd like to accomplish, and, as Mitch will be 18 in January, we don't think he'll have much interest in another long RV trip with us.

There are places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do that probably won't happen with Mitch and Max.  We haven't made it to the Canadian Maritime provinces.  Didn't see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. We didn't try out the Olympic luge training track in Musgegon.  Not to mention going to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, and Brazil, just to name a few.

On the other hand, the guys would like to start a business.  They express interest in acquiring a multi-unit fixer upper, starting a manufacturing plant, an online sales business, or other endeavor.  We just bought a second old house in San Diego.  Like the first one, it's a block from the beach and in need of major remodeling.  This will be our project over the next several months.

But no matter how I look at it,  all these projects sound stationary and long term in relationship to the time before the boys grown up and move on.

I have created this page to explain why many of our regular readers don't receive the travelogues updates they became used to.  When we do travel we continue to create more web pages and send out a notice, but our travel adventures have been less.

So the last of our children will be moving on with their own lives and adventures.  At that time Cheryl and I will most likely get back into our truck and fifth-wheel and travel again.  We'll probably sell or rent any homes and be full-timers again.  But for now,  it's a mix between traveling adventures and educational projects.