{"id":19831,"date":"2013-05-16T10:07:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T15:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=19831"},"modified":"2016-09-20T21:11:46","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T18:11:46","slug":"now-i-know-what-a-plot-of-land-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/now-i-know-what-a-plot-of-land-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Now I Know What a Plot of Land Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I bought the property last year, I wondered what a plot of land would mean for me<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The short answer is that it means the Canadian government has won.<\/p>\n

I am exhausted by all the lies and half-truths I have to tell to be a true full-timer in this country. I especially worry about losing my health and vehicle insurance coverage.<\/p>\n

The government demands that I have a truly fixed address, not someone’s yard or a mail forwarding service’s office, and now I’ve got it. They want me to spend the bulk of the year in one location. That’s likely going to happen now that I know the property is going to work out as an RV base.<\/p>\n

But I did capitulate on my own terms. Most people in rural Saskatchewan have PO boxes tied to a lot number, not a street address. So no one will care that I don’t have a proper house on my lot and being a property owner will likely reduce the amount of scrutiny I might get about how much time I’m actually at my place.<\/p>\n

I have a property that will be low maintenance and which I can improve at a slow pace, with absolutely no pressure to develop, so I can keep spending more of my money traveling.<\/p>\n

I also have the peace of mind that if Miranda ever becomes road unworthy, I can park her on the lot, cover her with a heatable structure, and then have a paid home to retire to should I ever need to stop moving.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if I will ever think of Haven as being ‘home.’ I don’t think I have the kind of personality to truly have a ‘home’ as per the conventional mindset. To me, ‘home’ is a place you don’t want to leave. I really don’t feel that I could ever live in one place all the time ever again and be satisfied. Therefore, I don’t believe I ever could truly have a ‘home’ outside of Miranda.<\/p>\n

Growing up, I always had two visions for my life. In one, I was the globe-trotting nomad, in the other I was a homesteader. I thought that RVing had allowed me to find a compromise to those two visions, giving me the freedom to travel while still having a home. But I think that RVing plus a low maintenance property is doing a much better job of merging those two conflicting dreams.<\/p>\n

I am still a full-time RVer; the land doesn’t change that in my mind. Right now, Miranda needs a few repairs that make me shy about taking her back out on the road, but they’ll happen in due time. I do think I am going to slowly start traveling less with her and that a heatable structure is going to rise up in the list of priorities.<\/p>\n

One of the many reasons I wanted a truck was to be able to pull a lightweight trailer behind it. I think the time will come in the not so distant future where Miranda will stay behind in Saskatchewan in the winter and I will travel with just a small trailer. The expense of driving a huge ’97 motorhome is just going to keep mounting and I think Miranda is about to reach the point where she is going to get old and decrepit very fast; comfortable for living in a fixed place but worrisome to take on the road.<\/p>\n

If any of this is a shock to anyone, you haven’t been reading the blog that closely. I had a 10-year plan for traveling with Miranda and I’m already at the half-way point in that plan. Now that I have the property, some parts of that plan are a lot easier to firm up now.<\/p>\n

Of course, I could still meet that dashing American and get the chance to live as a true nomad in the States, but that’s not a sure bet. It’s good to have a backup plan. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I bought the property last year, I wondered what a plot of land would mean for me. The short answer is that it means the Canadian government has won. I am exhausted by all the lies and half-truths I have to tell to be a true full-timer in this country. I especially worry about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,4,635,11,5,807,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-haven","category-north-america","category-personal","category-rving","category-saskatchewan","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}