“Journey or Destination” or “How I got into RVing”

My friend, Carolyn, who I credit for some marvelous health improvements (see bioflavanoids in previous post this morning…) made the following comment about travel after having perused my recent travels on this blog:

“For me travelling is simply a way to get from A to B. I LOVE to go places but the getting there is not that fun.” 

The classic “Journey or Destination” paradox…  It really made me think – which I LOVE by the way!  And as a side note, if you want to read about some young women who are living – and I mean LIVING life and being thoughtful, world-caring, world-changing people – visit Carolyn’s blog and then her blogging friends (links from her site) – and their friends….  These are people that give me hope – they have committed to God, marriage, family, people in need, the environment – and they have committed in LOVE – not necessairly huge “in the news” things – but simple daily acts of thoughtfulness, random acts of kindness, “doing unto others as we would have done unto us” lives…  Sharp contrast to the “me-me-me-ness” that seems to make the news. 

 

So, back to topic… Before I had the motorhome, I would have said that the same was true for me – “the getting there is not that much fun.”  Somewhere/somewhen after much business travel and a few cross country car trips my travel philosophy changed a bit.  It was so gradual and sneaky that I didn’t consciously see it happening.  The last car trip in 2000 – Montana to Maine to Nova Scotia and back – that was the first conscious thought of RVing.  I spent 7 weeks “on the road” and except for one week in a Maine cottage, I was in a different hotel every night – with a dog and cat and their respective beds, food, dishes, litter box…plus my computer and my stuff.

 

There were many times that trip when I fantasized about being in a little rv… and that’s where I started – looking at camper vans – mini-motorhomes.  It wasn’t just the in and out of motel thing, it was also that I realized that I really LOVED “road” travel – wandering around the country on the highway, listening to local radio and at night, tv – talking to people – What’s important to people here vs there?  What’s life like in this place?  It was realizing that I loved the journey.

 

Fast forward to summer, 2005.  I had off and on looked at vans, travel trailers, truck campers, motorhomes – everything!  They each have their plusses and minuses and I dithered.  But in early summer ’05 a number of things happened – I had sold a house I loved and did not find another, a relationship ended, I had a 1-2 year work committment with a long-standing client, i.e. didn’t matter where I worked from – short story, I was “footloose and fancy free” and somewhat in need of a distraction… oh, and I turned 50…

 

In true mid-life crisis fashion, I went to an RV dealer and bought the Winnebago.  As it turned out, it was perfect for me and the boys (Karl and Bob).  At the time, buying the RV was a “means to an end” – a way to look around the country and see if there was somewhere else I’d rather live – while having the comforts of home and ability to take my pets easily.  I never expected to like the “rv lifestyle”…I thought – I’ll look around, decide where I want to live and then sell this thing and get back to “real life”. 

Ha!  Turns out that I love travelling in my “300 square foot 1 bedroom/1 bath home on wheels”.  The pets adapted beautifully and now I can’t envision traveling any other way and additionally the whole rv thing has become a hobby and the travel an addiction of sorts.  I haven’t really had a hobby before – it is incredible to me that I have become so enamored of all things RV and in the process, I hardly care WHERE I go, I just enjoy the going – with the paradox of loving Montana, my little house and the beautiful forest I live in.

 

So, maybe it is more than the RV journey – the journey of life and of discovering my place in it – on wheels or on ground.  Either way, now, for me, it is the journey.

Breakfast on the front porch and THE blender…

Berries

I’m still in my VERY early morning wake-up pattern – 4 a.m. this morning, but it works with the heat wave. After coffee and a few quiet moments it is starting to get light and cool enough to do outside stuff… this morning checking the strawberry patch was on the agenda.  You can’t see in the photo but there were a couple of raspberries also!  I also messed with the motorhome as it is driving me crazy that I can’t get to the fuse box which I think has the fuse which I think blew causing the hydraulic failure – shop appointment next Tuesday and I guess I have to wait as this morning’s attempt was unsuccessful.  The last morning chore was a bath for Karl as he spent some of his morning finding something horrible to roll in…

While I’m on a food topic… a short story about THE blender…  A young woman that I worked with briefly and since have kept in touch with – now via her blog – took a nutrition course and then wrote (with the help of her new husband) a really great and fun poem about bioflavanoids.  And since bioflavanoids help with some minor problems I was having – I paid attention and did some more reading and started adding whole citrus particularly to my smoothies.  However, an older “regular” blender left things pretty thick and pulpy and not all that appetizing and to get things smooth I had to food process and then blend which left a lot of cleanup.  Then, oh darn, the blender gave up the ghost – quit, kaput.  So – great excuse to now buy my dream blender – a Vita-Mix – mondo, 5 hp blender said to liquify most anything – and it does!

Drinks

Pineapple

In goes lemon-ginger green tea, pineapple (which I learned how to cut at my Mama’s), swiss chard (fresh from my folks garden and transported home), cabbage, ginger, parsley, jalapeno (NOT very much jalapeno!), beets, orange (peel and pith – the bioflavanoid), some lime also, blueberries, stevia extract (natural plant sweetener), protein powder, plain yogurt – I know how it sounds – it tastes great!  Fills me up between meals and I get rid of a couple of the annoying problems!

The thing whirs so fast that there is enough friction to heat things up so soup for one is a breeze.  I love the darn thing and it is now on the load list for the motorhome – yea, I try to have the motorhome stocked so there is not much to load/unload but I can’t swing 2 of these – however, said young friend who got me going down this path just acquired one of the magic bullet blenders – similar thing just smaller – might work!

TGIF! – this weekend through Tuesday – high (100-102) heat forecast, plus very low humidity and possiblity of dry thunder/lightning storms – I dearly hope we come through it without a fire start(s) – now until September rain/mountain snow is always a scary time.

Electronics, water and weather humor

Several weeks before I even thought about the Colorado trip I spilled a glass of wine and a bit splashed into my 2nd/backup notebook computer…  Now, I have spilled liquid in every computer (all notebooks) I’ve ever owned and feel that I have the dry out/clean up sticky key procedure down.  Ha – this one apparently splashed on some very sensitive something as it is well and truly dead.  It was due for replacement but I was trying to drag it out as I’m not really ready to go to Vista.  So much for “my” plans… 

BUT – if you happened to read a few posts back of my washing my Bluetooth headset – and I mean fully submerged – through the first rinse cycle even!  By the time I realized I had left the thing in the shirt pocket of a shirt I knew was in the wash, it had gone through the wash WITH detergent and the first rinse and I opened the machine which was full of water and had to find the shirt at the bottom.  Anyway, I let it “dry” for 24 hours and then plugged it into the charger…it’s little light came on indicating it was charging – huh….  The light starts at red, goes to yellow and then green when fully charged – it did all this.  I turned it on – got it’s blue light – the DARN thing is fine!  Well, I’m glad but it is a mystery to me how the headset could go through all it did and recover and a splash of wine wiped out the notebook computer.

Headset

Weather humor… it is HOTTTT!  90’s – that is HOT in MT – upper 80’s is hot in MT.  We had upper 90’s and even 102 last Friday – then some normal and now on our way for another heat wave.  I’m kind of a weather junky – one of things I like is the Forecast Discussion on NOAA.  This is where the meterologists write about what the various models say and what they (the people) think and how they are coming up with their weather guesses – serious weather lingo usually…  So today:

 NOAA:  “Sunday there is another small change to the pattern as a disturbance rides the west side of the ridge and brushes northwest Montana.  Areas South and East of Missoula (NOT ME in Kalispell area) will see only minor changes in air mass.  North and West of Missoula (ME) will feel a more noticeable drop in temperatures.”

 here is my favorite part… “(Most valleys still in the 90’s – so you can leave the parka packed away)” – VERY funny…

Straawberries, Raaaspberies, Chee-eeer-ies!

Planters 

Straawberries, Raaaspberies, Cheee-eeer-ieees! – that was the cry of the street vendor who used to sell from a cart when I was a little girl.  You have to say it sing-song and draw each word out. 

Back to present time and my own garden – well, one raspberry, but it is early – they are August fruit here, no cherries – they did not recover from last year’s neglect – BUT, strawberries…

Bowl of Berries

The sunroom and a million morning miracles

Winter mornings it is dark until after 8 a.m. and I have my first coffee and some quiet time in the reading chair which sits in the corner of my sunroom.  The sunroom is also home to my desk and computers, i.e. office space.  It is a very pleasant room with more windows than walls and has a wonderful variation of light filtered through the trees that surround the room and house.

I go through times when I wake up even earlier than my normal early wakeup and now is such a time – I’ve been waking at 3:30-4 a.m. in the last week.   There is no one but Bob and Karl to disturb and I work from a home office so have some flexibility in my work hours – I get up when I wake up.

This morning I was up at 3:50 – too early for the front porch – well, too early for Karl and Bob to be out and about and I can’t get away with going out without them.  After a short heat wave we are back to near normal for July – 80ish days and 50ish nights.  In the sunroom, with all of the windows and the slider open, it is almost like being outside – even at 4 a.m. there is a hint of light in the eastern sky – I am nearly up against the Swan Range to my east so I don’t actually see the sun until much later but he’s there, turning the sky over the mountains from dark night to a deep, dark blue and gradually to a light blue, then a rosy sky and finally to full light.  The birds and squirrels and turkeys are up and about and it gradually gets “noisier” as everyone wakes up.  The final night cooling happens just before sunrise and that fresh, cool air finds it’s way in even though it seems like there is not even a breeze outside.

I sat down in nearly full dark with my coffee and just watched and listened to the change from night to morning.  A million morning miracles (ok, I didn’t count them!) happen – It never fails to amaze me.

Sunroom

Slider

There’s no place like home

“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” – Dorothy, Wizard of Oz

Home in MT or home on the road – both are “home” to me as they have their comforts in space and amenities and “family” in the form of my pets, but Montana and my little corner of it are truly HOME to me and it is good to be back.

There is also that poignant sadness at having completed a trip – the “adventure” is over, the challenge of travel done.  I find myself reliving in my head all of the trip – each moment had it’s own flavor – humor, frustration, beauty, disappointment, joy, difficulty…special people and special family the highlight!

This trip had it’s challenges as well as it’s delights.  Neither will be forgotten.  It is the challenges though that make the fun retelling … I don’t think that I would have enjoyed Rving as a younger person.  We have a choice when things go a bit or a lot awry…we can make the best of it, look for solutions and resolutions, laugh (after a few tears) or just get angry, frustrated, down….  It is all perspective as far as I’m concerned and as an older adult with some experience in things not going as planned, I’m better now at “going with the flow” than when I was younger.

My mother’s words to me as a child and young adult ring in my ears often, “You can bend like the willow or stand like the mighty oak which can break in a storm or strong wind”… I like to think and dearly hope that I have learned (mostly) to “bend like the willow”.  And I hope that is as true for me in my everyday life as it is to me in travel.

So, this homecoming – different than any other.  I’m still thinking about it.  This is the first RV trip that I’ve left my house (vs rental, i.e. temp house) and been gone some time and then returned.  A couple of things – I was gone 24 days and from the first night gone until the last night before returning I was in the company of other RVrs or friend or family – then abruptly back to the solitude of the woods, mountains and my little house.  This coupled with I haven’t yet been a year in this house – June-mid-Aug are always tough for me – hating heat and the busy-ness of summer… 

Also abruptly comes the loss of the need to manage power – I’m in a house again…I can turn on the microwave and the toaster and the blender and the fan is runnning…  power management in my motorhome is somewhat constant and tends to govern what I will fix to eat and if I’ll run the vacuum, etc.  Not huge in the scheme of things but tending towards over-importance as I “manage” comfort.  Suddenly, it is all different – easier but I “miss” the routine that was part of travel.

Now, I do NOT miss not having my washer and dryer – I like clean, fresh clothes and bedding and I tend to overdo according to every RV park I’ve ever been – at home, no one knows but me! 

However, downside to this habit – I accidentally washed my bluetooth headset L…  It is charging and has the lights that say so – maybe it will “dry out” ok…  It is the 2nd headset I’ve washed – same situation – stuck it in a shirt pocket then threw the shirt in the washer forgetting….  Oh, well – I do have a couple of spares and I’ve been getting Motorola email offers – maybe it is just time to upgrade???

For the record, this post IS from the front porch – it clouded up a bit, temp dropped to 87 and there is a breeze – warm/hot, but manageable…   And another thing – I gave the spiders a respite – tomorrow is soon enough…

Bob and Karl’s version of “there’s no place like home”…

Bob

Karl