An Outpost

We are working through our retirement plans, anxious to make our way on the road with our coach. There are stunning places to visit in the United States and, as future snowbirds, we have no concerns about finding the types of parks where we would like to stay during the fall and winter seasons of Canada.

Canada, though, is proving to be challenging. We are required to live at least 153 days in Ontario if we want to continue to be covered by our healthcare system. The question is: where would we stay during that time? Most of the parks that I have researched in Ontario are, well, not quite what we would be looking for as part of our stay. Not bad for a night or two but not something we would want to use for a week, a month or a season or two.

When Lorraine and I went to visit Hearthside Grove Motorcoach Resort in Michigan, we really loved the place. And touring the sites gave us an idea.

Our current house is way too large for the two of us. Our first thought was to sell the house and travel full-time. Now we are thinking that we may want an outpost in Ontario, our own tiny house with our RV, as a base from which we can travel and return. It would provide a permanent residence, a potential site for when we come off the road, and it would be expressly built for our lifestyle and our coach.

All of the photographs on this site are taken by me. Except for the two that follow. They are from the Hearthside Grove Motorcoach Resort website. It was seeing this site, Lot 148, that gave us the idea.

Once we have sold our current home, what would prevent us from finding a suitable lot in the country, not that far from where we are now, and transform it into a small oasis with a tiny house and a nice area for our coach?

The house pictured above is roughly 600 square feet. And it has a small storage building along with some nice landscaping and a paved drive. Looks just perfect for a couple of castaways to spend a bit of time when landed in Ontario.

We actually have a much larger version of this arrangement right now. Our coach is parked alongside our home and we have been basically living out of the coach during the summer. We do make some use of the house but really all of that space seems quite excessive now. Our current house has about 6,000 square feet of space. And we have almost 7 acres of land to maintain.

With an outpost, we would still have the flexibility to travel whenever we might wish. We could close up the outpost and reopen it whenever we made our way back.

Still dreaming a bit I suppose. But I think a project like this — I would do as much of the building and landscaping as possible — would be fun to do over the next few years during the spring and summer months in Ontario. And we would have our adventures in the south as we follow the nice weather in the fall and winter.