- Goodbye and Godspeed RV-103 Discovery. 09-2009 to 12-2011
What can I say, but that it is an end to a major chapter in our lives. Today I turned over the keys to our great and intrepid ship RV-103 Discovery to a young family and closed an extraordinary chapter of misadventures our commander and crew had lived with great joy and wonderful exploration. Now Discovery will be renamed and give this new crew a set of misadventures that they will share with their family and friends as we had done with you all.
It is bittersweet, but as with all good things, they must and do come to an end. We have traveled this great nation east to west, north to south, and many points in between. We have visited primeval forests with trees older than Christ himself, stood in awe at the night sky in the desert, walked in the footsteps of historical characters of likes of Mark Twain and Dr. Mary Walker, traveled the Pacific coastline, panned for gold where the 1849 gold rush began, and much more. The misadventures would not have been half as good if it wasn’t for the company of the love of my life Gypsy and our fearful leader Commander Merlin.
As this chapter closes, another one comes with the turning of the page. That new chapter will have its own series of misadventures for us all and I do look forward to it. New careers, new paths to walk, new experiences, new goals…the list goes on, but there will always be a special place in our hearts for our great ship RV-103 Discovery. There may be other RV’s in the future, possibly an RV-104 or RV-105, but RV-103 was and always will be our first.
I want to thank the nearly 50,000 readers who have made this series of voyages with us on RV-103. Your emails and messages have entertained and inspired us all. Don’t worry though, the RV-103 blog will still be here and I will still continue to post to it from time to time. But for now, feel free to relive our previous missions starting with our first post when we went to pick her up and name her.
Farewell Discovery. You were a fine ship to Commander Merlin and our crew. We will miss you. Goodbye and Godspeed.
