It’s been an amazing journey since we started the beginning of our full timing adventure 3 months ago. We’ve had some wonderful experiences, met some very interesting people and have really been enjoying living in our new home.

Rather than start from the beginning, spending a month or two on our blog, finishing or at least bringing our story up to date before making our site live, I thought I would just jump right in, start with our present experiences and then go back and fill in the blanks.

We’ve had a wonderful stay at The Thousand Trails Orlando preserve and have met some great folks, including our neighbors Rhonda and Bruce. I’m a little sad that they’re taking off today but happy that they’re continuing their full timing adventure in their antique Airstream – it’s beautiful. We shared some great conversation and cooking duties at two really nice dinners together. Bruce is one heck of a cook.

Our good friends Joanne and Karen were visiting for a few days – we had a great time even though we hit our coldest spell of the winter and had to spend a lot of time indoors.

The night before last, our evening was interrupted by an evacuation of our section of the park. There was a brush fire a half mile behind the park which the fire department was having difficulty controlling.

It started slowly with a few people noticing the smoke in the woods behind section D with a few comments “hey, have you seen the fire?”. Then the fire department showed up, looking for a way to access the fire from the backside of the fire in the campground. Everyone was fascinated, but there was no level of concern until the wind picked up towards our direction. I think it hit everyone at once that the fire was increasing in intensity and it was coming our way.

The Thousand Trails staff was going door to door, recommending that we evacuate the area. Another look at the fire and most everyone agreed and began to make preparations to leave. With a lot of help from Joanne and Karen – do we know how to show our friends a good time!- we managed to button everything up and leave, looking for another place to park. It was pretty chaotic but everyone remained calm.

Looking back on the incident after we were out of danger, a few things became apparent. It was really luck and the work of the fire department that prevented the fire from quickly becoming out of control. Obviously we would have left the coach and high tailed it out of here in the car.

If you’re full timing and have everything with you including important papers, it would be a good idea to have a “go-pack” of your most important documents that you could grab before leaving your RV in and emergency. A better solution is to have all of your important documents scanned and saved in the cloud – a topic for another post. We have gone completely paperless.

Had this happened in the middle of the night and had the fire spread more quickly, the situation here could have been dire. You can’t depend on the campground to alert you to danger, whether that is fire or a weather emergency like a tornado.

While there are emergency alert apps for your smartphone, I think the best solution is a dedicated emergency alert radio like the Midland WR30 or the Ambient WR-334-U which is my preference. The WR-334-U can be powered by solar power or by hand crank and includes a flashlight, siren and smart phone charger.

Hopefully the only excitement today will be lounging in the hot tub.

Ambient Weather WR-334-U Emergency Solar Hand Crank Weather Alert Radio, Flashlight, Siren, Smart Phone Charger Average Rating: 40 total customer reviews...

MIDLAND WR300 Weather Radio Average Rating: 073 total customer reviews...