Livingston Texas is where we are planning on setting up our domicile. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done these days.
We got to the park yesterday afternoon.
As far as parks go, it's pretty nice. It has wide, paved streets with no overhanging trees. The sites are level with gravel and grass and have 50 amp plug ins. What's different about this park is that it is mostly residential. There are permanently parked RVs, park model mobile homes, and some small homes, and then there are the daily RV spots like we use. If we want to, we can settle down in the RV park.
Back to the domicile saga. To be a full time RVer, you need to choose a state for tax reasons, license and registration, and voting. We choose Texas because it has no state taxes and truck license and registration are much cheaper. We did all the easy domicile steps. We sold our house and left California. We set up a mail service with an address in Texas. Our mail service is here in Livingston, so that's why we are here. We moved our insurance and banking to Texas. Now, the hard part. Dealing with the government.
Today was the truck and RV registration and license plates day. I went online and found instructions on what I thought I would need. I filled out the required form and went to the tax office. They verified all my documentation and said "Sorry, you need to fill out one more form". It had to be signed by Jan so I had to go back to the trailer, fill it out and have her sign it. That done, I went back to the tax office for visit number 2. The truck documentation was fine, so I did that. For $200, I had a new license plate and title. In California, it was $800 for the registration. They then told me that I still need more documentation for the trailer that they forgot to tell me about. They wanted pictures. I had to go back to the trailer and take a picture of the trailer, a picture of the sticker with the vehicle dry weight and hitch weight, and a picture of the sticker with the cargo capacity. I also couldn't email the pictures, I had to print them out. Trip 3 to the tax office was a success. I got the registration and license plate for the trailer.
We are almost done now. We next went to the department of public safety for our drivers licenses. This is where everything broke down. Because of Covid-19, they do not accept walk-ins. You must make an appointment and they have no open appointments until October.
Major road block. We spent the afternoon on their website looking for an office in Texas that has any opening. The earliest we found was August 13 in Lubbock. We took that appointment and now we have to rearrange schedule.
I don't know if any one noticed, but I added a members only page. If you sign in to the website, you will see a 'Where Are We?' page. This is intended to have our itenerary. Everything on that page is incorrect except the entry for where we are now. I will update it this weekend once we have new reservations.
My excitement for this weekend is to get a haircut. My second one since the Covid lockdown. Jan has hers scheduled for Wednesday.
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