I leave tomorrow! So excited. I make take a few days to get the blog posts up and running. My biggest job tomorrow is to navigate over two mountain passes between CdA and Missoula. The first pass, east of CdA is July 4th Pass.

It won’t be snowing, right?

Once I get to Missoula, I will have some warranty work done. The following photo shows where I bought the camper. Wonder if Half Moon ever sold?

The mobile lifestyle is awesome, except for the address thing. Except for the “where will I get mail” thing. I have gone paperless for nearly everything, but some things insist on coming via USPS. And, banks insist on a “domicile” address, a street address, not a PO box. Thanks, Patriot Act.

As I have written many times, my inaugural 3 months as a full-timer has been marred by this particular stress, and the learning curve is steep. After obtaining a street address, I decided a post office box would be a great option. It was. Now, I need a new solution since I will be traveling then doing volunteer work/living in RV. In fact, I need a permanent solution to this craziness. How do people who volunteer and/or work overseas get mail? Peace Corps volunteers? Doctors Without Borders volunteers? Surely there must be a way to get all your mail held at one central location until you can have it boxed up and sent to a convenient, albeit temporary address.

Of course you can! This is America, the land of creativity and free enterprise. Clever people in FL, SD, and TX have created mail forwarding services just for mobile folks like me. For $130-ish per year, I get a street address, not a PO box.  I can have my Idaho PO mail forwarded there and use it for packages (Amazon!), catalogues, etc. Friends, family, and people I do business with will use this address. I can check online and see who sent mail (for an additional fee I can have the mail opened and scanned).  When I am ready, I can give an address to the mail service and ask for certain or all mail to be forwarded to wherever I am at the moment (I pay postage, but a flat rate envelope for $5.25 will hold 30 pieces of mail).  Moving on to a new area? No problem, it will get forwarded to wherever you ask.  In other words, my mail will now go to one address, and I can be anywhere else I want. They hold it until I ask for any/all of the mail. Whew!

You may wonder why the services are in FL, SD, and TX. FL and TX have no state income tax and large populations of snow birds. Clever people in those states responded to their need for a permanent address/mail forwarding service. SD does not have a state income tax either, and someone there created and marketed a mail service for mobile people. A review of full timer blogs shows that many went to SD, obtained a mail/domicile address, and obtained plates and driver’s license. This made them residents of SD, even though they never live there, per se. Every five years, they must return to renew their licence. Plate renewal can be done via mail.

Voila! My mail service is MYRVmail.com, which is in FL.  I will remain a resident of ID, but now have a permanent street address in FL. If I want to, I can switch to FL residency, even though I will spend time up here, too! Such a switch has lots of advantages, but, for now, I am staying with Idaho.

Too good to be true? The mail service will forever solve my mail problem. However, the ability to use the street address as a domicile address (for a bank) could change. Apparently, the Feds are looking at these services and wondering if they would benefit terrorists, the reason for this drama in the first place.

If you travel or live in an RV and still own a residence, you won’t have this problem. You have a street/domicile address already. All you need is the mail service as you travel full-time.

Complicated? It is getting easier to navigate now. In the meantime, I have changed addresses with banks and others several times. I have ID driver’s license and ND plates on the van and RV. I look quite flakey on paper. The IRS seems to be holding up on my tax return for a reason I don’t understand. Slowly, though, I am getting things worked out and I AM NOT A TERRORIST, just a young-ish/old-ish lady minister trying to live mobile. Why is the learning curve so steep? Why am I—a lifelong tax payer- a terrorist suspect until proven otherwise?

While we were living in fear of another 9-11 (remember the red alerts, orange alerts), the Feds took away certain freedoms. While we were snoozing, some of the provisions were recently extended. Besides the domicile address dilemma, there is also the matter of all those “traffic” and “security” cameras everywhere I look. Each time I am at a red light and I look up into a “traffic” camera, I steam a little around the edges and it has nothing to do with hot flashes.

Anyway, onwards to my next adventure, with one problem solved–a permanent mailing address— and with one outstanding — my tax refund. Maybe it will catch up someday.

And I will catch up with ya from the road or the beach!