John and Lori
We are a married couple from Maine who are taking a few years off from full time work to travel the U.S. in our RV with our trusty companion Gizmo.
John retired from law enforcement in 2011 after working almost 30 years. Lori is leaving her full time position as a nurse at MidCoast Hospital after working here for nearly 30 years.
We have decided to spend the next several winters traveling the United States and enjoying as many national and state parks as possible. We are both very passionate about being out in nature and absolutely love hiking.
We will begin our new adventure on October 2nd, 2015 with no definite location… just a plan to head west and to follow the 70 degree rule.
Gizmo
Gizmo was born 9/25/2006. We are his second parents, adopting him from the shelter in 2010. His life of adventure started in June 2010. His first big adventure was to hike all the 4000 footers of NH. No small feat for a 15 pound Shih Tzu. There are 48 peaks in NH 0ver 4000 feet some are over 20 miles round trip. Once this challenge was complete he moved on to the NH fire towers and the Belknap mountains in NH. He now has a hiking harness full of patches. Gizmo’s other passions are camping, shopping and exploring new places with his humans
Our RV
We purchased our RV in March of 2015. It is a Fleetwood Excursion 33D. It is one of the smallest Class A diesel pushers on the market. We have been planning to buy one for a few years now and we have spent the past few years trying to figure out what type of RV. We settled on the Class A for several reasons. The first was the ease of driving and the second was the size. We knew if we had a 5th wheel our overall length might be larger than what we could bring into a national park. The Class A allows us to pull a car behind and then disconnect it if we are trying to get into a smaller area. The other thing we liked about this plan is we prefer to drive a smaller car exploring vs. always having to drive around in a large truck. The RV is just the perfect size for the 3 of us and with a drop-down loft bed allows us to have guests.
The original plan was to make this purchase in 2016 or 2017 but after the sudden death of one of Lori’s co-workers of over 25 years she decided to buy sooner than later. It is scary to make a leap from full-time work to traveling but none of us know what the future holds. This is why we decided to make this purchase and pursue our dream of traveling now. We want to enjoy the all the natural places in this country while we both have excellent health. We plan on returning to Maine each year and work hard for the summer to save up for another opportunity to travel.
gizmogoeswest 
Ok, what is the 70 degree rule?
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Travel to be in places that are 70 degress
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