About Us (Excursioneers)
Our goal on this blog is to post things that would be handy for YOU. We’ll give you tips on gear, repairs, places to go, and things to do.
Hello. ‘About Us’ pages are awkward when you’re writing about yourself. So let me see if I can push through this without sounding self-centered or pretentious. We are JR & Connie Fent. (can we be done now?)
Okay, a little background. We’ve been entrepreneurs and into sales positions for all of our adult lives. I (JR), have been working in jobs and business related to computer and defense technologies. Connie has owned companies and her last company was an insurance agency that specialized in employee health insurance and benefits packages. Connie walked away from the health insurance business since it had been drastically changed by Obamacare.
We’re not fully retired. We own a couple of businesses that we manage remotely. So, even though we’re hanging out with mostly retired people, we still work 40-60 hours per week from our coach. We do marketing support for great companies such as Las Vegas Epoxy Flooring Pros and Best Hood Cleaning Sacramento.
For nearly 20 years we had a ranch in Northern Nevada and we raised one son. Our son is a successful software engineer. He is married and has a great life with his wife and son in Oregon. Part of our travels are to go to Oregon and spend the summers and fall near them.
A few years ago, we really felt that we needed to change things up. We’d always been adventurous and enjoyed travel and excursions. We traveled and truly had adventures that would shock most people. But, we kind of settled into our lives in Reno Nevada for a few years. So I threw out the idea of getting a motor coach so that we could do land based adventures around the USA.
We found a gently used coach that met our requirements and purchased it. We were ‘first time RV buyers’ and we made several mistakes in our purchase. By the time we had our rig for a month, we realized how sleazy the salesman and the dealership truly were. I’ll be writing a blog post about the sleazy dealership soon.
Anyway, for the first 4 months of owning our bus (rig, coach, motorhome) we were fighting repair issues to make sure that we could continue our adventures. For most of that time, we were stranded in Austin TX. Now, I’m not saying that Austin was a terrible place to be stranded, because it wasn’t. We enjoyed the area and the people. But, after we made it through those months, we needed to travel.
Our first trip from Austin was to an RV Resort in Hammond, LA called Reunion Lake. It was perfect for us. Upon arrival, we had a knock at the door before we even had our leveling jacks on the ground. “Y’all here for the season?”, she asked. We told her that we would be staying for at least a month. She then informed us that we had to go to cocktails/fire-pit that night. Soon, we met and made friends with a great bunch of southern snowbirds. Our Hammond trip really solidified our decision to be full-time RVers.
When we left Hammond, we headed down the Texas Coast on the Gulf of Mexico. We stayed in a couple places in Louisiana. Then we went to Galveston Island, Corpus Christi, and South Padre Island (all in Texas). We were really enjoying ourselves and we called a Realtor friend back in Reno to put our last home up for sale. (our burning the boats moment).
So, that’s how the Excursioneers started. I have many stories that fill in on that first part of our adventure. We’ve had good and bad things happen. But the journey is awesome so far. As I write this ‘about us’ page, we’re back in Texas. The adventure this month was to see what it would be like to stay at a nudist RV resort in Edinburg. Neither Connie or I are lifelong nudists. So this was more of a silly thing to do to see if we could get out of our comfort zones socially. I will absolutely will be posting a blog about this!
Our goal on this blog is to post things that would be handy for YOU. We’ll give you tips on gear, repairs, places to go, and things to do.