See the USA, the Mystery Shopping Way: Intro

Everyone has dreams and goals. Ours is to truly SEE the USA. We've dreamed of doing it "when we retire" all of the 36 years we've been married. Thanks to a bad economy my husband found himself suddenly "retired" in March, or as some put it "he became unemployed."

We spun around on our heels for about two minutes, going UH OH! Then we went, "Yippee! It took us just a blink of an eye to realize that we could truly "See the USA" now. I know that sounds crazy, no income and we are going to travel right?

Well wrong, sort of. Not exactly, no income. You see I am a Mystery Shopper, a merchandiser, and a vendor. You can Mystery shop anywhere in the US except Nevada. In Nevada you must have a Private Investigator license.

Are you starting to see my plan? No? Let me explain it.

The job my husband was "retired" from is in a field that hundreds of others were let go at the same time, my son being one of them. That means the pickings for a new job are pretty slim.

In today's age everything is done via the Internet. You file for unemployment on the web. You apply for jobs on the web. You network in your chosen field on the web. I get my mystery shopping assignments and file my reports via the web. So we do NOT need to be tied to the house. So why should we?

OOPS! There is a little thing called the Rock ‘n Tree Ranch, with its large flock of free ranging birds that need to be watered and supplemental fed. That's a pretty big anchor. Only, there is my son who is also unemployed, and job hunting, who lives in our home while the home he was building is put on hold until he finds a job.

So...he becomes zoo keeper and rancher while we hit the road pulling our fifth wheel behind us. Mystery shopping as we go. Camping, boondocking, and exploring the US. Bills paid, and a dream fulfilled. We've been doing it for a on and off for four months now. Testing the waters to see if it could be done. We have been home about every two weeks.

This trip out we going to try not rotating home, but string shops together to keep us moving from place to place. . I've decided to blog and scrapbook our travels.

The blogs will include the sights we see, review the places we camp each night, give traveling on a shoestring hints, recipes, photos and whatever else pops into my mind. I hope you will "See the USA with us."

Jan who always signs her posts with whatever she is doing in or away from OK