I am a planner.
I have loved planning and organizing things since I was a child. When I was in middle school I labeled the drawers on my dresser. My favorite time of year was back to school because I got a new planner and got to plan out my schedule, and practices, and rehearsals, and all of the parts of my new school year.
My wife proposed to me using post-its. Yes, really.
I also happen to be married to a planner. Thankfully, our styles of planning complement one another. She is a spreadsheet person, and I am a label maker person. She is a researcher of all things travel, and I am the star packer in the family.
This means that we have somewhat excessively planned every trip we’ve been on. So, in our planning to take the camper across the country, our methods have been no different. We have researched, and called ahead, and done the calculations for gas and driving time, and stopping for snacks, and walking the dogs. We’ve researched which places have laundry, and full hookups, and shade, and good food. Add in the fact that we are embarking on this when half the country has ALSO bought campers and decided to explore national parks, and … well, you should see the spreadsheet.
Right about now we should be staying at an adorable place on the coast of California.
Instead, we are at a campground in rural Pennsylvania.
Turns out, you can plan, and plan, and plan, and something will inevitably go awry and you’ll have to pivot. I know, I’ve come to dislike that word too!
Pivot.
We’ve all been doing a lot of pivoting in the last 18 months or so. You probably have been too! The COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in all of our plans - for school, for weddings, for work, for sports, for all of the things. And, still, if I could explain our journey thus far in the camper, I would use the word pivot.
It has been just over 2 months that we have been in the camper full-time. If we had stayed on track on our spreadsheet, we would have already traveled through 11 states and be en route to our 12th. Instead we have traveled back and forth from New York to Massachusetts, briefly down to North Carolina, and back again.
Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia.
The slide out … it’s not supposed to look like that.
If I were to outline all of the issues and complications we’ve had to deal with in our short time in this camper, it would take up at least a half dozen other blog entries. So, I’ll make a list for you - since I love those too.
Our dog, Bader, tears her CCL (a ligament like a human ACL - painful and requires surgery), and no veterinarians are available for a consultation until August (this was in June).
Our dogs, Checkers and Bader, decide to somehow break through the two secure containers in which we have stored their flea and tick medication and eat an entire year’s worth between the two of them in one night. They spend the night in the doggy ER after seizing, and we wonder if we’ll ever see them again. We install a lock on the medicine cabinet, and still wonder if they’ll bust through it despite their lack of opposable thumbs. We are all still working through the trauma from this experience.
We stay in a campground in central New York when it proceeds to rain torrentially for 11 days straight. After purchasing rain boots to slog through the mud to walk the dogs, contemplating building an ark, and having our camper slide off its blocks from the mud, we decide it’s time to leave.
As we are driving (still in torrential rain) to Massachusetts to see family, the “check engine” light comes on in the truck. Nearly $1,000 in repairs later, we are the proud new owners of one brand new variable cam shaft timing component and the knowledge that the other 3 of them might go at any minute. Yay Ford.
We get a brief reprieve from drama while visiting family and friends, Bader seems stable for the time being, and we make a brief trip to Virginia on our way to visit more family in North Carolina.
We get to see the Shenandoah Caverns (which are stunning, by the way), and make our way to North Carolina. On the road, I look in the side mirror to see that the slide out of our camper is bouncing in a strange way.
When we arrive in North Carolina, we realize that the slide out is held in by a series of tiny screws, most of which have pulled out of the side of the camper. Basically, our dining room could have landed in the middle of I-81 South at any moment. When the roadside tech comes to check it out he tells us, “I’ve seen a lot of things, but never something like this.”
Awesome. Just what you want the person who is going to fix your house to say.
He can’t repair it, and only secures it well enough for travel up to New York (five states away) to be repaired. We couldn’t get an appointment in North Carolina, so back to New York we go! Our dealership was willing to take a look if we were able to get it back to New York.***
***Insert two days of bliss while I get to stay in a hotel with long showers, HGTV marathons, and tasty snacks in a king size bed until the camper is fixed.
So, here we are. On the other side of all of this. Bader had her surgery last week and is healing beautifully. We are looking into buying a different truck that (hopefully) won’t have all these issues, and I own super cute rain boots. Plus, we got some bonus time with family and friends that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Some people have wondered if this is all a sign from the Universe that we aren’t meant to go on this trip. Some days we’ve wondered if, and how, it could possibly get worse.
Will we ever catch a break???
The Last Resort aka Leah’s house.
Our spreadsheet now has nearly a dozen new itinerary tabs with adjustments, and cancellations, and potential new journeys to take. We’ve gotten really good at hitching and unhitching the camper, driving in bad weather, and going with the flow.
Our friends have been invaluable with their generosity (shout out to Leah for letting us squat in her front lawn for weeks on end!), visiting us in the mud pit (Jessica), offering us houses to stay in, and keeping us laughing through it all.
Some people would look at this list and say “when it rains, it pours.” And, to be honest, until writing it all out in one place I hadn’t really seen this as a piling of bad upon bad.
We are looking at it as a series of unfortunate events, or life, or an episode of that show from the early 2000’s, Punk’d.
Some have said that “everything happens for a reason.” I do not like this phrase, for many reasons - maybe enough that I’ll write a whole other post on it. I prefer the approach of the brilliant writer Kate Bowler. “Everything happens” (check out her book - it is amazing).
All of these things happened. Things happen. And, because we are human beings, we make meaning, or take meaning, or avoid doing any of these things.
In the end, what I have come to realize is that this isn’t a trip - it’s a life. We aren’t just doing this as an extended vacation, but as a way of simplifying our lives and having the ability to have new experiences we wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s not about visiting however-many states, or hiking so-many parks, or always seeing new things and places.
It’s about shifting our perspective and seeing things in a new way.
I was going to wait to start writing this blog until our adventure began. And then, I realized that we are having a huge adventure. It may not be what we planned, but it may just be what we need. A chance to pause, to pivot, to reset, and to explore this world in a whole new way.
And who better to share this journey with than a person who makes me laugh from the deepest part of my soul; who supports and loves me; who inspires me with her ability to do hard things. There is no other person I’d want to be stuck in the mud with more than my spouse. Thanks for living in this tiny space with me.
This week’s Invitation to Deepening: How can you deepen your ability to “go with the flow” or let go of your plans? How might this serve your deeper purpose?
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