Don’t Fence Me In!

WAI T SBURG - When they bought thei r Keystone Montana 5th wheel in September, Lynn and Paul Mantz-Powers knew it would be months before they'd retire.

But they were so excited about the prospect of hitting the road and adopting a new nomadic lifestyle this summer that they practically moved out of their adjacent family home on Bolles Road and into their 400-squarefoot travel trailer.

"Trailer" doesn't actually captures their new abode, which comes with a shower, bathroom, living room, dining area, bedroom, washer, dryer, central vacuum, double fridge, television, stereo and 40 square feet of storage space.

" This is home," Lynn Mantz-Powers said during an interview inside the 5th wheel Tuesday as she waved her hand at the homey space around her. "We want to see America. Not just drive by it."

The couple retired simultaneously on June 30. Lynn Mantz-Powers, 67, had a send off Thursday at the Waitsburg Clinic, where she worked for three years as a receptionist and clerk. Paul Mantz-Powers , 68, a contract coordinator for the state's Child Protective Services in Walla Walla, retired from his job after 18 years.

On Tuesday, they were busily cleaning out their home to make room for her son Josh Wood, his wife Nichole and their two children. With one foot out the door, they planned to start their new journey - an anticipated dozen years on the road - on Wednesday morning.

"We'll probably come and "dock" here two or three times a year," Paul Mantz- Powers said. "But we want to spend a lot of time traveling, see all the national parks. We won't do more than 200 miles in a day and try to stay a week in each place."

Their first destination is Lacey near Olympia, where they'll meet up with one of the two RV groups to which they belong, "Many Waters." Then, it's a gathering with their second RV group, the Elks' 287 Wheelers, and a family reunion in Shampoeg near Portland.

From there, it's onto the country's great highways and byways network with two bicycles for local recreation, recipes for healthy living, lots of books on the computer tablet and plans to self-publish a second cookbook using the Dutch oven as a culinary vessel.

Oh, yes, and Lynn Mantz- Powers is planning to bring her sewing machine and stamping supplies for scrap books and to send mail messages home.

In turning over the home to the Woods, the 1940s house will have its sixth generation of homesteaders on the land, following in the footsteps of the first, William E. McKinney, Lynn Mantz-Powers' great great grandfather.

She grew up in the house, built in 1948, and graduated from Waitsburg High School in 1962. After she graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Education and Sociology in 1969, she returned to Waitsburg and founded a preschool in the basement of the Presbyterian Church on Main Street in the early 1970s.

"They didn't have Kindergarten back then," she said.

Then, she began her long career in clerical work that included jobs with Dr. Randy Pearson, Dr. Roger Hevel, the Express Personnel office in Walla Walla and Columbia County Health Systems, her most recent employer for the past eight years.

"I've always done this kind of (medical clerical ) work," Mantz-Powers said. "I always made it fun. I'm a people person."

Paul Mantz-Powers, her second husband who knew her in elementary school in Waitsburg only to lose touch for many years after his family moved to Moses Lake in 1955, graduated with an MA in Social Work from Portland State University in the late 1970s.

He had a long career as a social worker, serving families, the elderly and the developmentally disabled for public and private-sector entities.

The couple got married in 1993, shortly after neighbor and former classmate Bert Aylward invited them back for a reunion in Waitsburg.

Mantz Powers said it will be strange to leave the rolling country between Bolles Road and the Touchet River, now leafy and fragrant in the summer sun. She said there isn't any place with quite so many songs in the air.

"It's amazing," she said. "I never saw or heard birds like we do here. I'll miss that."