Living in the bed of a pickup when your bodies are getting older

In two weeks I will be 70.

After I wrote that I just stared at it for about a minute.  Could that really be true?

I've never had "hard" birthdays.  Turning 30 40, 60, 65 were just numbers.

But 70 is a different thing.  No reason it should be, but it is.

I am, officially, old.  I am on Medicare, this month I will be forced to start taking Social Security, my body aches from having old joints and arthritis in many of them, I worry about what's happening to the "younger generation," I have to concentrate on getting enough fiber in my diet, I would rather watch a 1950s western for the 10th time than a new movie, I forget where I sat my coffee cup, I go to bed earlier and earlier, we bought a home in a retirement community..............wait..........what did I just say?

We did something that I never could have imagined doing on my own.  But that's the best part of being a "we" instead of an "I"---you do things you couldn't have imagined doing.

We decided to buy a home in Leisure World, Mesa, AZ, a retirement community with three swimming pools that are open 24-hours a day, two golf courses, two recreation centers, miles of sidewalks to walk on at any time of the day or night, a ballroom for dancing that we can use any time nothing else is scheduled in it, and miles of safe roads to ride our bikes on.

There were multiple reasons, but the main one was that we are getting old.  Have I mentioned that I will be turning 70 in a couple of weeks? 

We love the desert, something that we have learned together over the past six years.  And we love camping and hiking in the desert on our public lands.  But we can tell that it is getting progressively more difficult to do this in the way we had been doing it---which is to leave our Whidbey Island home for 5 months and live the entire time in our little camper. 

So now we have another plan that will enable us to continue with what we love and need from our camping.  We will have the home base during that 5 months be our home in Leisure World, and take one- to three-week trips from there in our camper.  Almost everywhere we have stayed in the desert (Arizona, California, and Utah) is within a day's drive of Leisure World.

Unsurprisingly, we immediately agreed on the home we wanted.  We could tell from the listings and from how homes were being remodeled to be "flipped" what most people were looking for in homes in this retirement community.  Mainly, it seems that people want new floors, new appliances, new bathrooms, and new kitchens.  They want a lot of space in the home, so homes that have had rooms added on or porches enclosed sell for more.  Homes that are next to the golf courses command a lot more money---many people who live here golf.  And it seems that everybody wants all of their interior walls to be painted white.  Entire homes with only one color.  

We had a different set of priorities.  We also wanted a home on the golf course.  But not because we are golfers.  It is because we are used to wide open spaces.  So not only did we want one on a golf course, but we wanted one on the end of a fairway.  That way, from our home, we had no walls or other structures for a couple of hundred yards.  I learned the value of this type of location from my parents, who also had a home in Leisure World that was at the end of a fairway.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it was to us.  Here is the view from our back patio:

That is really quite a lot of space in one's "back yard" considering we are in the middle of a city.  And the feeling it gives is hard to describe---it is that feeling of openness that we crave in our camping road trips and in our home on Whidbey Island.  AND we don't have to mow it! 

The aerial map below shows how much distance there is outside the back of our home.  The purple pin is on our home:

We also wanted space between us and our next door neighbors, as much as was possible given it is in a city.  Our lot is wedge shaped, which gives us that.  Being on a curve gives us more space!

 We also wanted a home that was not on one of the main roads through Leisure World.

Finally, we wanted a home that was near the center of the community.  Leisure World is bounded on three sides by very busy, and noisy, roads.  Walking around here we realized that at a certain distance from these roads the road noise is nonexistent.

We wanted quiet and open.  And we got it.

The home we chose is on the small side, in comparison to other homes here.  One reason for that is, thankfully, no previous owners have added onto it.  So, from all of our living spaces in the home---bedroom, living room, kitchen, dining room, and rear patio---what is visible is the view of the golf course shown earlier.  The only time we would be looking at a wall is when we are taking showers.

Views out the living room and dining room:




View out the bedroom:




What we gave up for this benefit of openness to the outdoors is "new."  The home is in need of some things, like rear slider doors (there are FIVE doors that exist to the patio---an example of what I mean by the original design of the home emphasizing the view to the outside) and all need to be replaced.  It has popcorn ceilings that have to go.  And it needs repainting inside.  We will do no remodeling because it doesn't need it.

In the ways that our Whidbey Island home suits us, this one should also suit us---it is quiet with views of nature from every room.

So, here we are, living in the same retirement community that my parents lived in for 20 years. For the foreseeable future we will be here part-time, using the swimming pool and walking around the quiet streets in between trips to the desert in our camper.  We will still be living for many months of every year in our wonderful Whidbey Island home and in the bed of our pickup.  But time catches up with everyone, and we can feel it stalking around us waiting to pounce.  When it does, we are now more prepared for it.