Back last century (well, 1999 was in the last century) we lived in a house and had many friends. We had neighbors who were friends, friends at work, friends in organizations we belonged to and friends from our hobbies. What made them friends was a common interest in something. I belonged to a Civil War group and enjoyed seeing my friends at monthly meetings and special events. Linda had friends through an investment club she joined and we had mutual friends such as neighbors. Each of those friends was from a unique activity and friends from one area did not cross over to other groups of friends. In other words, a friend from work was not a friend from my genealogy research group.

We have a lot in common with our fulltiming RVing friends since we live common lives. None of us owns a house, we travel in motorhomes, we have mail forwarded to wherever we happen to be, we left family behind, we're always in search of good campgrounds, etc. We exchange information and ideas daily.

Just months after we started traveling fulltime we attended the RV America Rally in Harlingen, Texas and it was the best thing that we could have done because we met friends for life. John and Libby Veach and Don and Liane Holder had just started fulltiming like us and Rich and Diane Emond and Kirk and Pam Wood were in final plans to fulltime. Since that meeting in February 2000, we had received emails from at least one of them every day. That is 5 1/2 years of daily correspondence with friends.

Early in our travels we had many friends who chose to go off the road and settle in houses - Jim and Patty Hammond, Ron and Barb Hofmeister and Frank and Joanne Caldarola. We still correspond with them often and consider them friends for life. Of course we have met many, many, other people we consider close friends in our six years on the road. In November we plan to meet friends David and Sharyl Tholen in Louisiana for a week of Cajun fun together. I recently checked our list of friends that we correspond with and found 215 couples on the list and that is only some of the friends we have made on the road.

But there is something special about the friends we made at that Texas rally in early 2000. They are as close as family and we even consider them "our family" and we share "family secrets." Any time our paths are close we change plans so we can meet and we often plan our travels together. This winter we'll travel with the Emonds from Alabama, across Texas, to Arizona and then into Mexico. We look forward to traveling with them again because they are family to us.

RVing friends are the best friends in the world and we sure found some special ones.