We seem to dividing our days three ways: working, hunting for houses, and lying in bed. Actually, I'm doing most of the lying in bed since I seem to have the worst of the virus. (I can hear all you women saying, "Oh, men are such babies when they get sick!") But really, Emma seems perfectly fine and Eleanor is bogged down a little but pretty functional.

I've shaken the cold but the sinus congestion hasn't cleared, and I'm afraid it may be another week before I can fly, which means there's a good chance I'll have to stay here and miss the Florida State Rally. E&E should be good to fly, and their major worry is snowstorms in the northeast.

The house hunting is going well, perhaps too well. We've found two houses we like. Now the problem is deciding to commit to one or keep looking for something even better. That's a hard call.

View of the Santa Catalina Mountains from one of the houses we are considering

It's also hard to face coming off the road. I was exchanging email a couple of days ago with Leigh of www.63flyingcloud.com and she made a similar comment. Leigh and Brian are preparing to build a house after 600 days of full-timing. Leigh said, "The problem with 2 years on the road, is the idea of being stationary anywhere for more than 3 months is pretty unappealing."

We could make an offer on a house tomorrow and be in it next month. But obviously we're not driven to that, because we haven't made an offer despite having found good houses. It's interesting that the full-time lifestyle is so appealing -- even with its many compromises -- that we find ourselves hesitating to re-enter the traditional world.

But it is inevitable. We need to establish a base camp. The compromise will be that we won't settle down fully. We'll be on the road, and in the Airstream, for probably 4-5 months a year, including all summer.

On our way back from house hunting the GPS suggested a shortcut. This should be a good lesson to those of you who trust your GPS a bit too much. Sometimes they don't know what's best. In this case, the GPS sent us to a road clearly marked "DEAD END", but we decided to pursue it anyway because the road did continue in the form of a very bumpy dirt trail down a hill into a wash.

Hey, what's the point of having a high-clearance vehicle with 4WD if you don't have some fun with it once in a while? The road eventually bottomed out in the wash and we took a short drive in it, and then continued onward. The GPS was right, it was a shortcut ... but not one I'd recommend without plenty of ground clearance.