Well, it’s official—I retired on April 30th! After 50 years of working, it feels surreal knowing I’ll never have to step into an office again. And yet, instead of kicking back, Shane and I have been busier than ever.

Right after retiring, we had to take Serenity into the shop—her fridge conked out again. I had already spent over $500 on a mobile tech to replace the propane solenoid, thinking it was finally fixed. But just a couple of days later, it stopped cooling on propane entirely, and wouldn’t run on AC without tripping the house GCFI. At that point, I decided to go the warranty route and took her to Camping World. They quickly found that one of the electric heating elements had a short, causing the fridge to pull a whopping 8 amps instead of the normal 2.5, which explained the GCFI issues. They replaced the part, and the fridge started working beautifully on AC—so cold that we actually had to turn it down to keep everything from freezing.

But my main concern had always been propane, since we’ll be boondocking often. Despite repeatedly bringing it up, Camping World assured me it was working fine and sent us on our way—after keeping Serenity for a week.
We finally got her back, loaded up our things, and tested the fridge on propane. Overnight, it lost all the cold it had built up. By Wednesday, both the fridge and freezer were sitting at 70 degrees. We restarted it, hoping for the best, but nothing changed. The propane was running, the indicator light was steady, and we could hear it burning—yet the fridge remained warm.

I called Camping World again today (Thursday) to report the issue and confirm whether bringing her back would still fall under the same warranty claim. So far, they don’t have an answer and need to check with the warranty company. And to top it all off, they won’t take her in again until Monday—frustrating, since we need her ready by Friday for our next trip!
Meanwhile, we’ve already loaded so much into the RV that now we’ll have to unload again. Plus, we have a “everything must go” sale in just two days that’ll clear out nearly everything in the house except our bed and a single dresser. It’s chaos, but that’s life.

Still, I know hiccups like this come with the adventure. We’re rolling forward, and despite the challenges, I’m holding onto hope that everything will come together. After all, this is just the start of something incredible.