Candi and Michael ~ On The Move

Tales from Grenada and Beyond

It’s Official, We’re ~ “On The Move”

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"We're going to need a bigger truck"

“We’re going to need a bigger truck”

We’re just about set to make the move from our home of 6 years in Atlantic Beach, FL to our first stop in Key West. Because Michael is a professional photographer with lots of great equipment and we like to live comfortably (good knives, nice wine glasses, etc.) plus we have our large Irish Setter, Mick, to transport, we decided to rent a small U-Haul trailer that we would drop once we got to Key West. We again asked our young friend Asher to help us pack the trailer. We did great job packing almost everything in nice and tight the day before we planned to leave. We only had the last bits and pieces to box up and pack before we were ready to go. There was only one problem – even though the last items could fit into the trailer, Michael was concerned we were overweight. Minimally, this meant we would worry the whole time we were traveling and we could potentially face serious issues so Michael negotiated a larger truck.

We had the largest trailer that U-Haul rented already packed in our driveway so we had to get a full truck. This meant we now had to pull our car or drive separately which we decided we didn’t want to do. Ok, now we needed to unpack the trailer and pack the truck without Asher’s help (he was in school). UGH! We grabbed some breakfast and a couple of sweaty hours later we were repacked, ready to drive to U-Haul to return the trailer and get a car carrier attached to the new truck. As we were getting ready to leave, it started raining hard. We were lucky it waited until we almost finished with the packing but we were still pretty wet. There was an issue with the lights on the car carrier which we needed to get fixed but finally we were ready to go at 2:00 (we had planned to leave at 9:00).

Mick, our Irish Setter, settled right in for the trip and our cat, imprisoned in a cat carrier, cried all the way. It rained hard most of the trip. I drove first and got us two-thirds of the way to Miami. I pulled off the highway to get gas and got a surprise lesson on how to maneuver a car carrier through a gas station. This was the first time I had pulled a trailer and I didn’t understand how to compensate for how it moved. As I was pulling into the gas pump I was WAY to close (like less than an inch away) from hitting the post protecting the pump from people like me.

Michael took over and through a ridiculous amount of maneuvering, got us around the post and at the pump. I was a little rattled but Michael just smiled and said it didn’t cost us any money. Got to love a man like that! Michael took over driving while I thought through how I would maneuver the trailer more successfully the next time and started plotting where we would stay overnight. I had originally researched the Homestead/Florida City area but since we started out so much later, we decided to stop before Miami. The best city for hotels that would take pets was Boca Raton and I selected a Fairfield Inn. We arrived around 9:30 PM. I took our cat and luggage up to the room with a bunch of restaurant delivery menus while Michael walked Mick. I was concerned that we delivery options would stop at 10 PM, the Fairfield Inn didn’t serve dinner or room service and although there were restaurants close by, they were in large shopping malls with complicated parking options. I found an Italian place that would deliver great double shrimp salads with garlic bread and the food showed up shortly after Michael and Mick got to the room. We opened a bottle of wine and toasted day 1. Bon Appetit!

Dotting the I’s and Crossing the T’s

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As part of our 3 to 10 year travel plan, we will no longer have a residential address. As a result, there are a lot of details that need to be addressed – making sure legal doc’s are accurate, changing driver’s licenses, updating voting registration, getting everything possible delivered online, figuring out how to get US mail, etc. We started with legal documents first because we expected they would take the longest. Michael’s and my plan is to leave the bulk of our money to a charitable foundation we’re creating to support the health, education and wellbeing of the children in Grenada. These documents, plus our wills which fund the foundation, were created in Connecticut years ago. We met with a Florida lawyer, Carrie Pearlmutter of Wood, Atter & Wolf, P.A. to help us make sure everything was in line with Florida law, make updates reflecting recent changes in the law and to be sure everything would hold up in court even though we might not be “residing” in Florida. We determined that Florida would still be considered our legal domicile since we wouldn’t be staying in any other location for more than 3 months. With Carrie’s and Helen Atter’s guidance, we were able to get all these documents updated. At the same time, we updated our Power of Attorney and HealthCare documents so legally we’re all set. We now have a beautiful set of estate documents sitting in storage as well as electronic copies.

Updating our mailing address for the most part is no issue. When we moved to Florida we had set up a UPS mailbox as our mailing address because we were both still traveling for work and didn’t want mail piling up if we were out-of-town. We told UPS of our travel plans and that we would periodically give them a new address for forwarding mail. Our agreement is that they would forward anything important immediately, otherwise would bundle up mail weekly and forward after discarding any junk mail. Our role would be to make sure we had a way to receive mail in each location. I called the Key West post office, our first stop, and they said as long as there was a mailbox, they could deliver mail to us so we’re all set for now. Next, Michael spoke to the Department of Motor Vehicles because Driver’s Licenses have residential addresses and we are not allowed to use a mailing address. He spoke with a woman who said in these situations they use the actual license plate as the address. How wild is that? Anyway, of course when we went to actually change our licenses, the person behind the counter had never heard of this. After conferring with a few colleagues he determined that we could do this but it was a long, tedious process to make sure it was completed correctly. We now are officially living in our car!

We still wanted to be able to vote while we are traveling so my next stop was the Jacksonville Board of Elections. I had searched the website but couldn’t find a way to legally vote without a residential address. I thought this was going to be a real hassle but it turned out to be extremely easy. The young woman who fields questions was almost positive that we could do this by using legaltheir address and it happened that the Supervisor of Elections, Jerry Holland, was walking by and confirmed this was correct. He said we could use their address indefinitely as long as we didn’t reside in any single location for more than 6 months – all we needed to do was complete a form and then request mail-in ballots that could be sent to our mailing address. This was one of the most pleasant and satisfying government experiences I’ve ever had. I’m sure a few more items will pop up as we are traveling but for now, we are all set.

The Big Sale

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We hired Emilie back to manage the estate sale for a number of reasons – A. I had no idea what people will pay for our ‘treasures’, B. She would handle all the advertisements and approvals, C. She would tag each and every item up for sale and D. she had the knowledge about how to run the sale, when to discount, etc.  This ended up being a great investment of money.  Because of Emilie’s and her partner Charlotte’s experience in running estate sales and long-term, excellent reputations in JAX, they drew a lot of dealer traffic that probably wouldn’t have come otherwise.  Faye, a friend of Emilie’s and an ace sales person, was a fabulous addition and helped sell a lot of the bigger items.  We sold about $5K between pre sale activity and day 1.  Charlotte’s husband said there were 18 estate sales happening at the same time and we had the most traffic.  I’m sure this was because of Emilie and Charlotte.

It was funny to see what sold and what didn’t.  Some high ticket items that were priced really well didn’t sell, but things Michael and I were planning to throw away sold right away. Emilie had said you never know what people will buy so we let them price everything.  (We figured we could always toss things out after the sale.)  On day 2 we dropped prices by 25% and had another great day clearing about 3K.  A lot of the higher priced items went on the second day and we realized a lot of people came to browse the first day, hoping things would still be there and discounted on day 2.  Day 3 was the big surprise – nowhere as many people overall and most came in the morning to take advantage of the 50% off discount and purchase items before they sold.  We sold another $2K of items and Michael connected with a local charity representative from BEAM (Beaches Emergency Assistance Mission).  They agreed to send a truck on Monday to pick up many items that didn’t sell and then again right before we left to take any items we needed to keep until our departure.

Overall, we were very pleased with the sale. We learned that you need to think about what the minimum price you want for items in case they don’t sell until Saturday and balance that with wanting most things to sell in the first 2 days.  The biggest surprise was that we had a beautiful oriental rug that didn’t sell at all even though the 50% price was way lower than we felt comfortable selling it for.  I then tried to consign it but couldn’t get a guarantee that it would sell (and we wouldn’t be around to pick it back up) so we ended up donating it to charity.  BEAM couldn’t take it (too big) but we got the Vietnam Veterans of Jacksonville to take it and 3 other large rugs that were in good shape.

We set the sale 3+ weeks before we left to give us time to get anything left picked up before we left without pressure.   Michael was originally concerned we wouldn’t sell enough, I was concerned everything would sell and we’d have nothing to live with – in the end it worked well – we negotiated with our friend Janice, who bought our couch and coffee table, to pick them up the day before we left.  Another friend, Dorothy, bought our Adirondack chairs and again left them until the end and Michael negotiated to have the TV stay an additional 2 weeks (although I don’t think we watched it once).  The bed stayed until 2 days before we left and then we slept on a king sized blow up bed.  Note to others – don’t sell your dryer or gas grill without a hold policy!  LOL!

Cell phone images 2014 - 0033By the last night, everything we sold or donated was gone and we had a lovely dinner on our deck sitting on 2 plastic chairs our friends Jack and Carole Varney loaned us and using a U-Haul box for a table.  Sort of felt like when we first moved in together and were starting from scratch.

Next step will be the actual move.

Storage Day

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We’ve spent that last 2 weeks packing and boxing up everything we want to put into long-term storage and today’s the day we’re moving it.  At first, Mick, our Irish Setter was concerned about all the boxing up and then I guess he just decided it wasn’t worth the effort and just watches us pack, and pack and pack.  Michael has rented a U-Haul truck and hired two teenage friends, Asher and Marybeth, to help us get everything into the truck and packed away into storage.

We’ve got 90 boxes, most of them are small so they are easy to carry – 30 boxes have art or photo’s in them, then there’s 20 boxes of inherited pieces – china, silver, crystal, etc., another 25 boxes of pieces Michael and I have collected, plus selected books, our personal photos (4 boxes), essential files, hard to replace tools and winter clothes.  We only have 4 pieces of furniture – hand carved camphor chest, Asian breakfront, large Buddha, and a Chinese altar table.  There’s also my bike and fishing poles that we plan to take to the Outer Banks with us.

Everything I’ve read says don’t store ANYTHING you can replace and we’ve tried to stick closely to that.

Loading went pretty easy – 4 people makes a BIG difference, especially when 2 people are strong and young.  I drove over with Asher and Mick in the car to do all the paperwork and Michael and Marybeth followed in the truck.  It was hot so I brought Mick into the storage facility – his first taste of what will be a lot of unfamiliar places. He did well ‘helping’ with the unloading by lying and looking handsome.  His first trip on an elevator and standing on a moving cart!

We loaded the space pretty randomly other than placing same sized boxes together so we could be efficient with the space since we won’t need anything until everything comes out.  Only had a few boxes earmarked to be in front to be available to pull out later – like the winter clothes and files that might need to be accessed.  When we left, we still had some space, thank goodness, because we know we will need to make a final trip when it gets closer to our departure  date.

Getting home, we have a lot more room in the house but I also see how much stuff we have left that will need to be sold.  I remember when Emilie was appraising our art we talked about doing an estate sale but weren’t sure there would be enough to sell, Emilie said you’d be surprised – and we were!

Next step – plan and execute the estate sale.

We’re Free! Now What? … or Where to Go?

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My biggest concern as we prepared for the adventure of moving to a new place every 3 months was where were the first places going to be and getting locations nailed down with contracts signed so we’d actually have places we loved all lined up and ready by mid May.

Michael and I have always wanted to go see Key West and we thought this  would be a great place to start.  We’re both beach people and it wouldn’t be too far from JAX (Jacksonville) so we could swing back to the storage unit after our visit to make adjustments – was there stuff in storage that we should have brought with us?  Was there stuff we brought that should go into storage?

I began searching for places on  Homeaway.com and VRBO.com (Vacation Rental By Owner).  We figured out how much we could spend by adding our monthly rental cost, water and electricity, cable and internet, lawn care and housecleaning costs together.  The price of the house would have to average to the same monthly cost as renting.  Our other criteria included – fully furnished and well equipped,  at least 2, preferably 3, bedrooms (Michael is a photographer and needs 1 bedroom to use as storage and office space) and that they accept pets – a dog and cat.

I found a few places in Key West that seemed possible, nothing in our price range jumped out and started making inquiries.  At the same time, Michael mentioned our plan to our Chiropractor, John Tender (GREAT doc), and John said a friend of his had a nice place there. We checked out Namaste with a totally Zen setting and it looked perfect – a little smaller than we had hoped (only 2 bedrooms) but everything else looked perfect.  Check out a separate post for all the details.

Michael thought the Outer Banks would be a next great spot and I agreed so once again I started looking at Homeaway.com and VRBO.com.  Searching was overwhelming at first but I started to get the hang of it and created an easy spreadsheet of the places that looked interesting so I could compare and take notes.  Fields I was capturing were website, name of rental, # of bedrooms, price, location, a comment field for info specific to the rental and a check box if/when I contacted the owner.  This made it easy to know where I was in the process and helped prioritize  which properties were the best match. I chose Jessica’s Dune in Duck, North Carolina which is 1 house from the intercoastal, 12 houses from the ocean, has 3 bedrooms, a hot tub, oriental rug in the living room and Duck allows unleashed dogs on the beach. YES! More details on Jessica’s dune in a future post (coming mid August).

Getting Ready ~ Or how to jettison a lifetime of belongings

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Michael and I sold our house in Connecticut 6 years ago and have been living in Atlantic Beach, Florida (part of Jacksonville).  We had a great rental house on a small lake, five blocks from the ocean and we were very happy there.  However, we LOVE to travel so when we retired recently we decided to put our prized possessions in storage, sell off most everything else and begin the adventure of moving into a fully furnished house in a new location every three months.

GETTING READY or jettisoning a lifetime of belongings – in our case 40 years of living together.  We didn’t own a home, so that was a blessing in disguise since the market has been so bad and it may have been tough to sell and probably at a loss.  Still, we had a lot of decisions to make on how to make this dream a reality.  We gave ourselves 2.5 months to complete everything and be on the road.

The first step was getting an appraisal for the fabulous art we have collected and the precious things we have inherited – things we know we can’t replace and will want to have when we finally establish a new permanent home.  I contacted Emilie Paulk, a well known Jacksonville antiques specialist, to inventory and appraise the items we wanted to keep.  This was both fun and educational.  Emilie and her husband, Larry, were great to work with and gave us a polished, professional assessment.

Next was finding a secure place to store our stash. This probably sounds easy but remember we live in Florida where a weak category 2 hurricane would flood almost to the roof of our house and the highest point in Northern Florida wouldn’t even be considered a hill in New England.  After some serious research, we located a climate controlled facility outside the flood plain……

BUT, the facility only offered $15K in insurance so we needed to find a separate insurance policy.  Most companies will add a rider to your homeowners insurance, but we don’t own a home.  Other specialty companies we checked would insure only a portion of the value of our possessions and wouldn’t let us purchase multiple policies for one storage unit.  Finally, I stumbled on Collectibles Insurance Services, LLC who was able to insure all our appraised items.  Whew!  I was getting seriously worried that we would  have to rent multiple storage units and break things up to satisfy the smaller insurance cap which would have been much more expensive for us.

Next up – determining where to go, getting rid of everything we weren’t taking with us or storing, plus all the myriad of details to separate us from our current location.

Our Current Dream ~ Traveling for 3 to 10 years

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Michael and I recently retired.  We stored everything we couldn’t part with (art and prized possessions), sold most everything else, packed a trailer with what we’re taking with us and are traveling for the next 3-10 years.  Our plan is to rent a  fully furnished house, in a place we’ve always wanted to visit, live there for 3 months and then move onto the next place.

Our first location is Key West, Florida and will be here until mid August. From here we will be traveling to the Outer Banks, North Carolina for the remainder of August through mid November.  We plan to travel to Grenada, West Indies for 3 months from roughly January through March.  We need to secure a place to stay that we can afford during high season and figure out how to get Mick, our Irish Setter, there and back (no quarantine, thank goodness).  Once we’ve done that we will fill in the missing location that will be “home” between the Outer Banks and Grenada.

We’re choosing to stay primarily in the United States as long as Mick, our Irish Setter, is alive and then we plan to travel internationally.

The Original Dream ~ a Boutique Villa Resort in Grenada West Indies

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Grenada aerials -9Grenada aerials -11Michael and I love the Caribbean and traveled extensively to find an island to create a business so we could live there full-time.  After much research, we chose Grenada, a lush volcanic island with an unspoiled, original Caribbean feel.  The people are wonderful – welcoming, friendly, open, easy going and always ready to laugh. Through masterful planning, Michael pulled together 8 pieces of property so we could have 50 acres of virgin land that had 2 huge ridges with a sloping valley ending at a sweet, protected beach.  Check out Michael’s photography website for more great pictures of the property.  And let us know if you have someone who is interested in purchasing the property.  You will get a finder’s fee.

Our dream was to build a small villa resort and employ our neighbors from the surrounding  communities to provide an unparalleled local experience of Grenada.  Our vision included creating a artisan’s showplace where local artists could work and sell their creations, farming our own fruits and vegetables, creating a microbrewery and working with local fishermen to provide the daily catch to both our villa guests and visitors who would come to spend a day on the beach and eat in a floating restaurant in our bay.  The thought was that people would be attracted to come to see the art, micro brewery, spend time on the beach away from the crowds, eat in the restaurant and say why aren’t we staying here instead of a tourist hotel?

Fast forward MANY years –  we bought the land, worked with the government on our ideas, created the architectural plans, rough cut roads but we were not able to attract the right investors due the uncertainty and changes in the world economy over the past 15 years.  We never wanted to take out a large bank loan and risk our hard work and investment and boy are we glad we didn’t do that and put ourselves in a position to lose the property.  To make a long story short, we no longer are actively pursuing this idea and the property is for sale.

The new dream, which this blog is dedicated to, is to travel for the next 3 to 10 years – visiting places we have always wanted to see.  We plan to travel primarily in the United States first while our sweet Irish Setter can be part of the adventure. Sometime in the future when he’s no longer with us, we plan to travel internationally.   Please join us as we chronicle our adventures.