7-Year Itch

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.

We celebrated our 7^th anniversary of full-time RVing yesterday, May 20^th. We sold and closed on our house in Colorado Springs on May 20, 2013 and began our journey that day as full-time RVers. We downsized from the 2,500 square foot house we had and moved in to our 37-foot motorhome with less than 400 square feet of living space.

During the past 12-months we made a concerted effort to travel to and visit the last three states we’d never been to: Vermont, Rhode Island and Delaware. We planned a trip to travel in early-summer 2019 up the Eastern seaboard to see those last three states and visit several places that we’d never been to before.

Those new places included: Hilton Head Island, Myrtle Beach, Hershey, PA (Hershey Park), Cooperstown, NY (Baseball Hall of Fame), Vermont (Lake Champagne and Ben & Jerry’s factory), Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. It also included Newport, Rhode Island and Delaware Seashore State Park (the only state park that we’ve ever been to that had a bar and grill in the park), Fort Belvoir, VA and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. We also stopped in Tennessee to see America’s most visited National Park for the first time, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

We then headed west through Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock and east Texas on our way to San Antonio to visit Julie’s mom. Then we made our annual trek to Colorado Springs in August to see family and friends and take care of some appointments. We kept going west for our annual two-week September stay in Page, Arizona at Lake Powell, followed by two-weeks in Las Vegas.

We left Las Vegas in early October and went to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta for the fifth time, but every year is exciting.

After the Balloon Fiesta, we headed to Tucson, AZ, where we ended up staying for five weeks. We left Tucson in late-November and headed east on I-10 back towards San Antonio where we planned to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with Julie’s mom.

After Christmas we left San Antonio and headed west again. We had decided to winter in California this year and had campground reservations at Camp Pendleton in January and Coronado Island in February.

We had plans in early-March to go back to Arizona and meet up with friends for a Fantasy RV Tours trip across the border to Puerto Penasco, Mexico. At the time, there was very little news about Coronavirus. Our trip to Mexico was uneventful. We had no access to the internet in Mexico and really didn’t know how bad COVID-19 had spread while we were gone.

We returned to Camp Pendleton and made a trip to Costco a few days later to look at some patio lights. It was crazy there with people panic-buying everything. The normally slow going, half-empty campground soon filled up with RVs and families, as schools had closed. We also got phone calls from several Navy campgrounds to cancel our reservations for the weeks and months ahead. At that point, we decided to leave early and drive across country to Florida, where we had an appointment.

The past couple of years we had started thinking about where we wanted to live once we stopped full-time Rving. Last spring in Hilton Head, we checked out the new Latitude Margaritaville 55+ retirement community. They had just opened their model homes and we really liked them. We like the community amenities (Paradise pool, fitness center, theater, bar and grill, etc.) and that your HOA fee covered all the amenities, including the landscaping around your home.   

We had decided early on to look for a 55+ retirement community that didn’t have a golf course, because it seemed that everything in those communities was centered around golf (including HOA fees), and we don’t golf. We researched a lot on https://www.55places.com/.

We looked at a 55+ retirement community just south of Tucson that had beautiful homes, but there was nice golf course, and homeowners had to do their own landscaping and then maintain it.

We finally decided that we liked Latitude Margaritaville the best, but wanted to look at the original one started in 2018 in Daytona Beach, Florida. We liked Florida because there’s lots to see and do there year-round. We especially like Florida being “tax-friendly”, with no state income or estate taxes and lower property taxes. We flew from San Antonio to Orlando in mid-December 2019 and visited Latitude Margaritaville. We went ahead and decided to have a house built. Construction starts next month and it should be finished this coming November or December.

The past 12-months for us were busy as we traveled just over 13,000 miles, but we finished our quest to see all 50 states. We’re really excited about building a new home and going from our 400 square feet of living space to just over 1,600 square feet.

We plan to sell our 2004 Chaparral boat this year that we currently store in Utah at Lake Powell. We also plan to sell our motorhome early next year. We still want to go camping, but will downsize to a camping trailer, maybe an Airstream.    

Stay healthy and safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Busy Week

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.

Last Tuesday we drove down to Patrick Air Force Base, located between Satellite Beach and Cocoa Beach, Florida for an appointment for Julie to get a new military ID card. Everyone is now required to wear a facemask throughout DoD due to COVID-19 while on base, and they were wearing facemasks at Patrick. We checked in at the pass & ID office and were told to wait in our car until they called us on the phone.

We also stopped by the Patrick commissary to pick up some groceries and I was surprised to see lots of paper towels and toilet paper. 

My sister Marcia and brother-in-law Mike arrived in their motorhome on Tuesday afternoon at Willow Lakes to stay for six nights, on their way home to Virginia.

Wednesday morning we drove up to Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach to show Mike and Marcia around. We stopped for lunch across the street from the Beach Club at the Absolutely Cheezee. We enjoyed some awesome grilled cheese sandwiches to-go.

Julie and I drove back to Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach on Thursday morning for a 9:30AM appointment to meet with an interior designer. We spent most of the day picking out the cabinets, countertops, flooring, plumbing fixtures, etc. for our new house.

We had done a lot of research on all the options and associated prices. Based upon the interior designer’s suggestions, we made a few changes and are really happy with our choices.  Here’s a picture of samples of our cabinets, quartz countertops, tile floor that looks like wood flooring, kitchen backsplash that looks like tear drops, shower tile, the Listello trim on the shower walls, and the pebble tile for the master bath shower floor.

Mike and Marcia also had an appointment on Thursday morning at Latitude Margaritaville to meet with a salesman to look through the model homes. They’re thinking about downsizing and buying a home here too.

Friday was Julie’s birthday. Earlier in the week, my sister Janet scheduled a Zoom video conference on Julie’s birthday to catch up with family and friends. It was our first-time using Zoom and we enjoyed seeing and talking with everyone: my three sisters, Janet (and Nancy), Cathy (and daughter Brittany), and Marcia (and Mike). Also dialing in were Julie’s sister Cindy & Terry and our friends Vince & Lisa and Kris & Jan.

Marcia has been busy here sewing us a few more facemasks. We really appreciate these masks since they’re so very hard to find. 

We plan to continue to maintain “social distancing” and hunker down in our motorhome until early-August.

Stay healthy and be safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Hunkered Down

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.




We’ve been hunkered down in our motorhome at Willow Lakes RV & Golf Resort for two-weeks today. It’s located on the north edge of Titusville, Florida which is near the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.

Although our days are normally uneventful now, we’ve tried to take nice, long walks every day. The first week we were here we visited friends Ron and Kathy who live here in the park. It was fun catching up with them.

On Friday that first week, we decided to get out and drove up to Daytona Beach to see how the construction was coming along on the Latitude Margaritaville Beach Club. It is for residents of the Latitude Margaritaville community to use and was supposed to open this summer, but now it’s doubtful. It’s on the Atlantic Ocean, about 10-miles northeast of the community.

Easter Sunday, our friend Leesa, stopped by to say hello. We got to know Leesa when we were stationed in England back in 1986-1988. She and her husband Bernie just bought a home up the coast between here and Daytona Beach. This’ll be the fourth time we’ve lived near Leesa (England, Germany, Colorado and now Florida).

We stopped by to see Leesa and their new home this past Wednesday. While there, Leesa made hand sanitizer for us, since we can’t find any to buy.

We had an appointment at Latitude Margaritaville last Friday to look again at the model homes. It’s about a 40-mile drive from here straight up I-95. We wanted to take a closer look at the Coconut model to see where our AC outlets were installed outside and in the garage. 

We have an appointment in the design center this coming Thursday to pick out our cabinets, countertops, flooring, plumbing fixtures, interior paint colors, etc.

Today we drove up to Daytona Beach to go see our lot # 916 for the first time. Our salesman suggested going to look at it on a Saturday or Sunday because during the week it’s a really busy construction zone. The street in front of our lot is finally paved and utilities are installed. The small lake behind our house is starting to fill up. Construction on our new home is slated to begin in June.

We plan to continue to maintain “social distancing” and hunker down in our motorhome until early-August.

Stay healthy and be safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Sea to Shining Sea

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.



We left Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California a week ago last Thursday, March 26^th, and headed east on our 2,500-mile trip to Florida: Oceanside-Yuma-Benson-Las Cruces-Fort Stockton-Kerrville-Beaumont-Biloxi-Tallahassee-Titusville. There wasn’t much traffic on I-10 as many states along our route had enacted “shelter-in-place” guidelines. We only stopped for diesel fuel. The Buc-ee’s in Alabama had the least expensive diesel fuel we’d seen along our route.

After we left, we decided to accelerate our trip from 14-days down to an 11-day trip as it seemed the coronavirus pandemic was getting worse along our route. We were very concerned that Florida was going to close its borders.

Florida did set up COVID-19 “check-points” on eastbound I-10 and southbound I-95 on March 30th. We crossed the Florida state-line on Saturday and went through the checkpoint. They only asked one question: “Have you stayed the night in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or Louisiana in the past two-weeks?” We answer “No”, and they told us to have a nice day. Luckily there was no traffic backup and the whole check took less than a minute.

We overnighted in Tallahassee last Saturday and drove to the 55-plus RV resort near Titusville, FL on Sunday where we’d arranged for a space to park with the owner of the particular RV lot. We’ll continue to maintain “social distancing”, hunker down and “shelter-in-place” in our motorhome until early-August.

Last week, after talking with my sisters Janet and Marcia and their spouses, we’ve all collectively decided to cancel our planned road trip to Alaska next summer. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the border to Canada is closed. If we could cross, we’d have a 14-day quarantine. Also, Alaska currently has a 14-day quarantine. Alaska also currently forbids travel between any of its towns and cities. We all spent a lot of effort planning and making reservations for this 2 ½-month road trip. Now we’re all busy cancelling our reservations.  

Stay healthy and be safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Flatten the Curve

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.


We got back to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California two weeks ago on Wednesday, March 11^th. We didn’t have a good internet connection in Mexico so we were somewhat oblivious to how crazy things had gotten back here in the USA with coronavirus.

On Thursday we went to a nearby Costco to look for some patio lights I’d seen weeks before. The parking lot was completely full and there were only a few shopping carts left. After asking a store employee what was going on, she said they had sold 37 pallets of toilet paper in 30 minutes! Of course, there was no hand sanitizer, wipes or paper towels left either.

We hunkered down at the campground and continued practicing social distancing, coughing in our elbow, not touching our face, washing our hands often for at least 20-seconds, and sheltering in place.

We had planned to leave here in early-April and go to Seal Beach for a month and work our way up to Sacramento to see my sister Janet and her wife Nancy in mid-May.

My hometown newspaper, the Denison (Iowa) Bulletin & Review wrote an excellent article about my sister Janet who was on the Grand Princess cruise ship and her lengthy coronavirus quarantines.

https://www.dbrnews.com/news/former-denison-resident-spends-time-in-quarantine-after-grand-princess/article_17cd4b4e-6e22-11ea-82f3-d3d0295db032.html  

Two Navy campgrounds called me last week and told me they were closing and they cancelled my reservations. The campground at Vandenberg wasn’t taking any new reservations.

The campground we’re in is still open, but they’ve closed all their facilities, the beach and the ocean (to surfers, kayakers, etc.) on Saturday. 

We were supposed to fly from L.A. back to Orlando next month for appointments in Daytona Beach where we’re having our new house built. We decided flying was too risky with the coronavirus pandemic and have decided to drive back to Florida from here. We’ve planned a two-week trip to cover the 2,500 miles and leave tomorrow morning. We found an available RV lot in a 55-plus RV resort near Titusville, FL where we’ll hunker down for a few months.

Stay safe out there and help flatten the curve!   

Steve & Julie Cornelius