Lighthouse View Chincoteague Island

Good morning all! It's still a fairly "Fresh" new year, and here we are staying at Lighthouse View! My wife Cheryl and I are now "Officially" California refugees - we are now Virginians! It's been a very long journey for us, and we always had intended on retiring here, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, we simply had no ability to be here until last year, when the Lord made it possible for us to do so. We are thanking him for that!

We've actually been here since Nov. 22 last year, we got here right before Thanksgiving. It was a goal to get here by then, and we managed it. We tried selling our furniture and stuff we didn't want, ended up giving about 1/2 of it away to kids and nephews, and then we packed two PODS full of most of the rest, and we left on Nov. 10 heading for Arizona, where our (new to us) RV was in storage.

We packed up the RV there in Kingman, while staying with friends, and we left there a couple days later. The entire trip was 13 days, learning about RV's, driving across the country through rain, sleet, snow and hail, while towing our CR-V along behind us. It was quite the adventure!

Anyhow, we got here, and have experienced a number of things since being here. First, a friend invited us to a brand new church on the island, Covenant Church Chincoteague, and we started attending there, and have met several wonderful folks there! We've been "Seven times in a row" now, which our Pastor at Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach always said we needed to do in order to "Really see if that's where God wants you". We are sure we are where the Lord wants us.

Our stuff is still in storage in Salisbury, MD, at the moment, and we're kind of just "Staying" at Lighthouse View, until we can find a more permanent "Home" for us. Cheryl's "Done" with stairs, she wants a ranch style house, or at least a home with a "Master Suite" on the first floor. I can live with that. Our house in California went up for sale in Dec., about the middle of the month, and sold 18 days later! We praise the Lord for that as well! It's still in Escrow, right now, of course, so we pray that all things work out according to the Lord's plan on that as well.

Since being here, we have experienced rain, cold (like 0f - zero Farenheit - weather, with the wind factor), gale force winds several times, frozen water pipes (our hot water pipe froze, but then thawed thankfully, with no damage that we can detect as of yet), and we now know about duck hunting season as well. Imagine the sound of your early morning slumber broken by "Bang! Bang! Bang!" at about 6:30a in the morning when it's still mostly dark outside! That's right, hunters like to get out EARLY!

While we don't hunt, we are shooting enthusiasts, we've been to the ranges several times and enjoy target shooting and sport shooting with the best of 'em. So, we'll give the hunters a break, and forgive them for interrupting those smooth slumbers of winter mornings. After all, there's no snow yet, we gotta get some kind of distraction out here, eh?

Our "Plan" is to be outta Lighthouse View by middle of May, if not earlier. At present, we have no reservations until then. Hopefully, we'll be out of here before that, and we can open it up earlier, although there is some heavy maintenance needing to be done. The deck is looking pretty "Tired" (both ours and the communal decks maintained by the HOA). Our dock is needing attention as well, the mud has filled in the area closest to our building, so the HOA Treasurer is trying to figure out how to get it cleared out.

We also have a kitchen sink needing replacement, after a hot water heater replacement last year, and we're probably going to replace our washer/dryer (a stacking unit) with a more modern front-loading set (both washer and dryer being front-loading). The newer models should fit in the closet where the laundry currently resides. We've paid probably 1/2 the cost of replacing the laundry unit over the past couple years which means it's time to replace it. We really like the efficiency of the modern front-loading washers, so that's what we're going to try to get in here.

The shower doors in both showers need rebuilding, the tracks are filled with gunk, and the rollers on the door hangers are probably shot.

We already bought a new TV for the downstairs, Walmart had Vizio 50" TV's for under $300 on Black Friday, so we couldn't pass it up. We bought a Roku for that TV, and then found one in the TV cabinet that someone left here. We'll leave both Roku's here for rentals, but they'll need to be wiped after everyone uses them, for security and to avoid getting charges on someone's account accidentally.

I finally managed to get the downstairs TV hooked up to the stereo with an optical cable, so you can have "Enhanced" sound through the stereo while watching TV, regardless where the signal comes from.

The heatilator stove we put in last year as a replacement for the gas unit is working great! It does quite a nice job of warming the downstairs, with the caveat you gotta turn it off at night to get heat upstairs since the thermostat is downstairs.

I'm wondering what to do with all the kitchen cabinet doors where the melamine is peeling off (on the sides of the doors). I'm gonna have to take one door to local hardware or building supply and see what kind of suggestions they might have. It's very annoying.

The new cookware is very nice. It's also "Induction" compatible, if anyone has an induction cooker. We bought a counter-top model we keep in the RV, it boils a quart of water in under 2 minutes! Amazing.

Cheryl thinks the downstairs couch is "Done" which is a pretty major issue, as it's a sofa sleeper, and will be quite difficult to replace (getting the old out and the new in, they are HEAVY). We'll look into what our options are on that for sure.

During the cold, we "Borrowed" a couple oil filled radiators (electric) to heat the downstairs storage areas. The frozen hot water line was between the floors, somewhere between the water heater and the laundry closet. If we can keep that area warm enough, we may avoid another frozen line. I will also try to remember to leave all cupboards and closet doors open when it's cold, and leave the faucet dripping (dripping, not running, we are on a septic after all) hot water at night and when outside temperature is below freezing.

That's all for now. Cheryl's upstairs sleeping, she ain't feeling so well today. I've been praying over her, and feeding her broth and lots of juice, soup, alka seltzer plus and smoothies. She should be better in a day or so. She had a pretty good headache, and a bit of fever, none right now though, praise God.

We appreciate y'all supporting us and loving this place as much as we do. We decided not to "Live" here permanently as this place is so well loved by so many people. We'll get it open, and get the work done. We're looking forward to hearing from y'all some, and maybe even meeting some folks down the road, as we're now "Permanent" shore residents ourselves. Though, we will be traveling some during the warmer months as well, and we may even try to spend a winter in Florida one of these days, we hear it's very popular with the RV crowd!

God bless everyone. I'll enclose one picture of a sunrise that absolutely WOKE US UP it was so bright and colorful! Lighthouse View is amazing and we love Chincoteague!

So hey everyone! It’s been awhile since we posted an update here. I think I mentioned we are moving, leaving California behind (finally!) and making the Eastern Shore our permanent home. We will stay at Lighthouse View for awhile. We also bought an RV to get out there and see what’s to be seen.

We booked out Lighthouse View for the entire month of November, figuring we'd get outta CA sometime in October. Now, it looks like we won't make it. We have our schedules, and the Lord he has his....

Anyhow, we'll be staying there at LV for awhile, getting our feet under us, getting some REST - all this packing and cleaning and loading and yard work and repair work, it's EXHAUSTING! Oh wait, do I sound ungrateful? I'm not really, just tired and grumpy today because my back hurts.

But, we're gonna try something new, we hope. We are what you'd call "Jesus Freaks", we just LOVE Jesus! And we try to take him with us everywhere we go. In reality, he's ALWAYS with us, it's WE who don't remember that! So, we're gonna become somewhat of RV Missionaries. It's just something we do, everywhere we go anyhow already. We're also gonna try to visit Thrift Stores wherever we go, and keep a blog on those, a running dialog, what we liked and didn't like, people we meet and so on. We'll throw in a few pictures, hopefully, and make it worth somebody's time visiting and learning something new.

We sure are excited though, to finally be getting the chance to get outta here. It's been the plan since we got married, in 2000, to retire out there on "The Shore". It's only become possible just a couple months back, when Cheryl turned 65 and got her Medicare Card. Prior to that, she only had VA Healthcare coverage so we have been tied to the VA Healthcare system here in Los Angeles pretty much. The nearest VA Healthcare facility to the Eastern Shore is in Norfolk / Hampton Roads, and that's across the Tunnel Bridge, about a $35 fee to cross!

But, anyhow, we'll be there soon. A few more things to do here before we get out, and then "Bye bye California!"

You can laugh because we'll probably be back. Our son and daughter-in-law are in San Diego with our Grandson, so we'll probably go back and stay in Mission Bay near them at least part of the Winter months. =)