Reality Check...

Finally, we have been able to catch our breath long enough to start this blog!

It’s so funny (not funny) how different what I imagined this trip would look like compared to the reality. As I sat in my kitchen or office at home back in Boulder, coffee cup in hand, daydreaming, I pictured myself shopping at local organic farms in small towns across America, cooking up creative and scrumptious meals to sustain my lovely family, speaking Spanish several days a week to enhance their linguistic experiences, lovingly helping a grateful Eli with his online homework, climbing, mountain biking or paddleboarding every day, sitting in front of beautiful views, glass of wine in hand, happily tired at the end of a day full of outdoor play….ahhhh, life on the road. Why doesn’t everyone do this?

Instead, put these images in your head: We’re pulled over at a gas station in sweltering heat in Montana with rubber gloves on, sweat dripping everywhere, hooking up a tube filled with our POOP, wondering how in the world we filled that tank AGAIN. Or …we’re woken up in the middle of the night with BOTH dogs throwing up, one, inside his cone, which he now wears almost constantly because he refuses to stop licking a sore on his paw completely raw. Picture said dog banging around the camper (he’s a 3-legger so he literally heaves and hops around) knocking things over, jamming into your knees, making a hell of a ruckus. And now put this image in your head: there is throw up everywhere as he shakes his cone all over the place. Or….I’m yelling at Ray “how am I going to teach my class? It’s in 20 minutes!” We’re driving south through Montana, there has been no phone service for hours (something I thought would be quaintly old fashioned when I was back in my kitchen googling remote places…irony not lost on me here), which means we are relying on our primordial skill of following the sun’s angles to get us to the dispersed camping on the Clark Fork of the Flathead River. In 20 short minutes we are hoping to find our camping area, find an actual spot not already taken by the folks who were smart enough to download their map on their phone before losing service, park the camper, level it, then get the Starlink out, point it north, cross our fingers and hope I can connect to teach my class. “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?” I’m yelling? Ray is doing his best not to lose his cool as well. I can tell by the veins in his throat. He points to a pullout along the road and says “well, if needed, I guess we’ll pull over right there and set up your Internet and you’ll teach from the side of the road. Good news is there are no trees to block the Starlink.” Or how about me driving the camper into a gas station, not realizing that our 33-foot home cannot make it around to the outer pump and getting completely gridlocked/jack knifed with several people from the convenience store and pumps coming over and all trying to yell at me that I need to turn the wheel to the left, NO! to the right! Wait, you’re going to hit the car behind you…WAIT, no go forward, ok now back one inch. I’m literally about to cry like my 7-year-old self who just lost the state spelling bee with the word “flippancy.” (did I spell that right?) All the while, Ray is a mix of mortified (they are ALL judging his manliness on his wife’s RV-driving skills) and terrified, picturing me crunching our brand new camper in half and knocking over a gas pump to boot. Ok, perhaps a bit of hyperbole here. But not much.  

So, this is life on the road! Yippee! These stressful moments have been many and often; however, we agree to stay with it because there have also been these occasional moments that keep us going…

Sitting right on the Clark Fork at dusk having that lovely glass of wine and watching several bats swooping and catching bugs above a crystal blue river with a blood orange backdrop of a sky.

Paddleboarding on Mackintosh Lake in Glacier National Park at sunset with the only sounds being the rhythmic swish of the paddle and the cry of seagulls.

Talking lots of smack in our cutthroat family 500 rummy tournament nightly in our camper, keeping score on mom’s organized whiteboard that no one thought we would need because…well, technology! (which never works. curse? blessing?)

Getting thoroughly cooled off after sweltering poop dumping incident and watching our jubilant dogs (sans cone) frolic and fetch tennis balls in the most crystal clear water we’ve ever seen in Flathead Lake, Montana, as the copper sun sets over the lake.

Going to sleep with windows open and more crickets than we’ve ever imagined as the musical backdrop.

So…we stay on the road, trying to figure out our many systems, trying to figure out how all 5 of us are to survive in a small space while working and schooling, trying to figure out how to find camping that will fit our behemoth camper, trying to figure out how to plan out grocery shopping, RV dumping, getting water, finding internet and cell service, trying to figure out where to store our stuff and what we actually need.

The lesson in all this? Wear gloves when you empty the poop tube.

We said this would be an adventure!