Category: Adventurous retirement
April 13, 2022 -- People often say that the most memorable things in our lives are our experiences, and we believe that is really true. You have worked hard to earn your retirement, so why make it really special with some once in a lifetime experiences. Here are 10 fantastic ideas for adventurous things to do in retirement - and we bet you could come up with even more.
10 once in a lifetime adventures:
Hike on the Camino de Santiago or some other famous trail. One of the best is the Camino de Santiago in Spain and France. You hike along a path that pilgrims of St. James have been taking for centuries and stay in inns along the way. You can hike one of its many routes or just a part of one. Or, hike a section of the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine, or another famous trail in England or Ireland.
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Published on April 12, 2022
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Category: Adventurous retirement
February 8, 2022 - If you ask Kevin Hubbard what he does to stay active, grab a railing, you are about to get dizzy. A collector’s collector, the retired executive of a Fortune 500 manufacturer of industrial products has some of the most fascinating retirement interests of anyone we have ever met. Those include visiting presidential history sites, major league baseball stadiums, and his latest - U.S. National Parks. In a recent conversation Kevin was kind enough to share some of his interests. (Don't miss the companion piece to this, his wife Susan's hilarious account of his recent retirement).
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library
U.S. Presidents
It all started with a fascination with presidential history that began in the first grade. That love of everything having to do with U.S. presidents continues to this day. It includes the homes where they were born (museums, or sometimes just a sign on the road), gravesites, and the homes where they lived. His passion also includes presidential museums. The modern era for those started with President Hoover, but before that there were more informal ones - sometimes only a room in a library. He has visited all of the key sites for presidents from Washington to Reagan, and has read biographies for all of them. To keep track of all of this collecting Kevin keeps detailed spreadsheets. We asked him about his favorites, and he suggested Hyde Park, New York. There in one place you can visit FDR’s home, the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historical Site at ValKill Cottage, plus stop in at the Culinary Institute of America.
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Published on February 8, 2022
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Category: Adventurous retirement
January 19, 2022 -- Bob Wells' story seems like the perfect companion piece to our recent article on non-career jobs filling the vacuum for people in their early 60s. This baby boomer used to work at a Safeway, then fell on hard times. Living in his van, he discovered that he loved the nomad life - its freedom and simplicity appealed to him. So then he started a blog and website to write about his lifestyle. While satisfying, it was not renumerative. That's when he decided to switch to videos, starting the CheapRVliving channel on YouTube, where he promotes the "nomadic tribalism" way of life.
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Published on January 19, 2022
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Category: Adventurous retirement
April 27, 2021 -- Nomadland scored a hat trick at the the 2021 academy awards. It won Best Picture. Chloe zhao won for Best Director. And Frances McDormand won for Best Actress. The film is one of the best portrayals of one niche of retirement life we have seen (see reviews of other retirement films at end). It is based on the book of the same name by Jessica Bruder, a journalist who traveled all over the country to document the van-life experience.
Fern, played by McDormand, is a van-dwelling woman who leaves her hometown after her husband dies and the sole industry closes down. Houseless, she travels around the United States, living in her old van that she has lovingly customized. Lonely and depressed, she finds temporary work at a giant Amazon fulfillment center. There she makes friends and ends up getting talked into visiting Quartzite, a convention for those living the RV and van lifestyle. There she meets Bob Wells, the organizer of Quartzite. Wells, vanlife guru and creator of cheaprvliving.com plays a fictionalized version of himself. He has a YouTube channel that is extremely successful.
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Published on April 26, 2021
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Category: Adventurous retirement
(Note: this is the first of a 2 part series on Costa Rica. Part 2 focuses on expat retirement in the country. )January 13, 2019 — Does your retirement include a bucket list trip to Costa Rica, one of the world’s greatest ecotourism destinations? This Central American country, situated north of Panama and south of Nicaragua, has an incredible array of attractions that bring in tourists from all over the world. But unlike more traditional vacation spots where the places to visit are fairly obvious (think Paris or Normandy in France) Costa Rican tourism is complex. The choices of where to visit can be difficult to figure out. This article will tell you what to expect if you go, what your options are, and how to plan and book your trip.
Costa Rica snapshotCosta Rica (CR) has long coastlines on two sides - the Pacific on the west and the Caribbean to the east. The country has a very stable democratic government and a prosperous economy based mainly on tourism, technology, and agriculture. It has no army; that was abolished in 1948. The climate is tropical with a rainy season from mid-September through December. The terrain is quite mountainous with peaks over 10,000'; it can get quite cool in those areas. The terrain goes from very dry areas on the west coast to cloud and rain forests further east.
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Published on January 12, 2019
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Category: Adventurous retirement
This article is courtesy of a recent interview with Nomadic Pilot, a long time Member at Topretirements. His retirement story is pretty interesting, we hope you enjoy it.
November 11, 2018 -
TopRetirements: We understand you are a pilot. Could you tell us a little bit about your flying life?
Nomadic Pilot: I’ve been a ‘recreational’ pilot since 1983. We use the airplane for weekend fun or family trips. My current plane is my third – a Cessna Turbo 210, preceded by a Piper Arrow II and a Cessna 172. I hold private single-engine-land (SEL) and single engine-sea (SES) certificates along with an instrument rating. The 210 is a fabulous cross country airplane. I purchased it in 1998 when we were living in southern CA. While there we used it for trips to Palm Springs, Sedona, Eureka, Napa, Seattle, Spokane and Fort Collins to name a few. We used the plane quite a bit to fly to college towns in the west when our son was evaluating colleges. We’ve also used it to fly to the annual
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Published on November 10, 2018
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Category: Adventurous retirement
July 27, 2018 -- There are some folks who decide the best place to retire is -- everywhere! That's right, there are people how so love adventure and travel that they sell everything and go on the road. Some do it for a few years, while others hope to do it as long as they can. While not for everyone, it is guaranteed to be an interesting strategy.
After we saw a recent NY Times article about a couple who have retired to become modern day nomads, we knew we had to share their story. But as we got into it we realized that there are many different ways to retire on the road. You can live on a cruise ship, buy a boat, travel about in a RV or van, or work as a floating
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Published on July 26, 2018
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Category: Adventurous retirement
June 3, 2018 --- A lot of Americans, including retired baby boomers, are thinking... small. As one example, our last visit to the barbershop was spent listening to the young guy in the next chair talk about the tiny home he is building. Everyone in the shop was fascinated with the unique touches and hi-tech stuff he was putting into it. In mid-May we reported on the boat that John is building for his retirement home, Next Chapter...Afloat. Yet another aspect of the think small movement, and the topic of this article, is the notion of discarding the notion of the RV, and replacing it with a customized luxury van - Vanlife, or Vanliving!
If the mobile lifestyle appeals to you, your thinking up to this point was probably limited to RVs (see our "Living the Mobile Lifestyle" series by Betty Fitterman). Now, enter the customized van, another option with many
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Published on June 2, 2018
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Category: Adventurous retirement
By John Andola
May 15, 2018 -- Just days from my 80th birthday, I am engaging in a major life style change. One that brings both serious stress for the present and potential promise for the future. Leaving our rental house of seven years and ridding our lives of tangible connections with past life, George and I are embarking on an adventure that will literally bring us to the next chapter in our lives. Literally, because we have commissioned the building of a new boat which we will live aboard full time, and that we have named Next Chapter.
At 35 feet, Next Chapter is ten feet longer than our treasured Grumpy Old Men, which we hope to sell within the next couple of months. But more about the new boat at a later posting. Here the focus is on the physical and mental transition through
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Published on May 14, 2018
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Category: Adventurous retirement
September 13, 2017-- The Galápagos Islands are at the top of many people's bucket list destinations. This article will give you a taste of what that experience is like, based on your Editor's recent trip, plus some tips and advice if you decide to go.
Where and whatThe Galápagos are a volcanic archipelago of small islands in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles west of Ecuador, which is near the top of south South America. They are most famous because of the role they played in Charles Darwin's theories of evolution explained in his groundbreaking "Origin of the Species". He visited the Islands in the early 1800's, at a time when its only
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Published on September 12, 2017
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