In 1968 I built my first house and had not heard about location being important. Twenty-one years later I sold that house and it had not appreciated very much in value. I talked to a Realtor and he explained there are three important items in buying a house - location, location and location. My next house was built with location in mind - a large house in a nicer neighborhood that we sold in 1999 for a nice profit. The only problem with that house was it was too large, four bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, large eat-in kitchen, formal dining room, formal living room, family room, den with library, office, 2 car garage, deck, large paved driveway.

There were problems with owning that house as there was work to be done. I got tired of mowing the grass, staining the deck, cleaning out gutters, trimming shrubs, raking leaves, shoveling snow, painting and all the other work that goes with home ownership. We had rooms we only entered to dust the items we no longer wanted. The house was on a fixed foundation so every time we looked out the windows we saw the same scenery - boring. When we decided to sell the house and buy a motorhome to live in fulltime many people thought we were crazy. In September 1999 we sold our large three story house and moved into a new Dutch Star motorhome that contains 358 square feet of living space. That is one-third the size of a small apartment. Were we crazy?

Now let us look at location again. Since we have been traveling we have lived on the beach with waves a hundred yards from our door and palm trees swaying over our home. We have lived on mountain tops with beautiful views of the valleys below, then lived in the valleys with beautiful mountain tops in the distance. We have lived by rivers, lakes and streams and watched ducks from our picture window. In Canada we viewed a glacier from our home, lived near snow covered mountains and had elk for visitors. In the desert stately cacti stood guard over our home and in Oklahoma canoeist waved as they paddled down a river. In Montana we lived by a beautiful trout stream in a National Forest and in Langtry, Texas we stopped our home by Judge Roy Bean's Saloon and Opera House.

From our home we can walk to the beach and let waves splash on our legs as we pick up shells. We can tour nearby abandoned gold and silver mines and take home some ore samples. We ride our bicycles through tree lined streets, across the desert and to visit neighbors. Outside our door we watch squirrels play and see snow-melt run by our home to form streams, then rivers and lakes. Our picture window affords us views most people never see - oceans, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Badlands, Stone Mountain, moose and mountain goats, Mexico, deserts, glaciers, the Continental Divide and the Third Divide (where water flows to the Arctic Ocean), geysers, volcanic mountains and much more. We followed the trail of Lewis and Clark and from our window looked at sites that were first seen by the famous explorers. The views from our windows are different every few days as our home changes location often and North America is our backyard.

When we visit family and friends we take our home to visit their home by parking in their driveways. We have parked in church parking lots, took showers, walked across the lot to attend church then returned to our home for lunch. Our home contains everything we need, but nothing we don't need. Last December we stayed in a relative's home and found we had to walk through rooms and on stairways just to get a drink of water. In our home everything is just a few feet away.

We do not think we were crazy to trade a large home for a 358 square foot motorhome. Our location is worth a million dollars and if we don't like our view today, we can move to a new location tomorrow.