We are in Ocean
Shores, Washington. It’s lovely, the beach is a few hundred yards away, down a
grassy path. I am explaining, yet again, to our new neighbor, why we have Colorado plates but still
this 32-foot can is our home. I am telling him that we are here, caravanning with
6 other families and he says, “So you are gypsies!” That makes me laugh, in the
year we have been out here no one has said it but I am sure plenty have thought
it. I have grown up with the nickname “gypsy”, or gypsfelia, having a father with an
intricate vocabulary and a strange sense of humor. (I have also been lovingly
named moosedrool at times!) So I am happy to embrace this man’s interpretation
of the situation. He is staying in a tent next to us, behind his sister's
Airstream. He is a Vietnam vet who lives at the foot of Rainer Mountain. This
weekend he is visiting his sister, who travels with her two dogs, one whose back
legs don’t work and must be carried out to enjoy the sun. She hauls a gorgeous
Airstream around, a solo traveler.
They are but one
of a hundred stories I have heard as we move from place to place. That is half
the fun of this journey. The people we meet are amazing and many of them attest
to the kindness of “RV” communities. They are often very open-minded. And, to
be fair, they can afford to be. These are not their grandkids out here on the
road, we are not their kids forsaking stability for experience. Each time
someone tells us how much they admire the choice we’ve made, I wonder if they
would feel the same if we were their family?
The follow up questions are always the same, “How do you support this
lifestyle?” And I tell them of my amazing husband who spends all night tucked
into a little desk in the corner of our slide, working on the computer and then
trying to sleep in the daytime while we do school mere feet from his bed. Thank
god for earplugs! They ask about school
and I tell them we homeschool, which has become so commonplace it seems that
people rarely bat an eye. Once these formalities are out of the way people
begin to tell amazing stories that detail how they got to this point. And more
often than not they give us the best ideas for what to see, and where to go.
The ebb and flow of this traveling community is so unique!
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| Barbra...Where have you been all my life? With your crab... |
And yet, there
are pieces that are so classic. I love that most mornings my friend Kimberly
and I wake before the rest of our family and meet for coffee. We aren’t much
for gossip so we talk about kids and husbands and laundry and dogs and
educating on the road. It is so much like the picture I have painted in my head
of the idyllic home of the fifties. Women meeting for coffee or talking over
the fences about the home fires. I realize I am getting to be a stay at home
mom, finally! Three of the men meet in one of the rigs to work during the day,
on their computers. Or they go into town and work from coffee shops if the
internet signal is too low.
We meet for
cocktails and card games at night while the kids live the idyllic lifestyle we
so wanted for them. They are running in packs,
(or maybe herds?) between the campers and the playground. Today, they
are digging holes two feet in diameter and nearly as deep, all around the
volleyball court. There are 8 families here this time, we are all members of
Thousand Trails so we move from TT to TT in groups as it suits people.
Many of us are able to do 2 weeks in before we
spend a week out of the system, others are able to do three weeks and move from
park to park. We become a traveling neighborhood. Each month the houses are in
a different space, the view changes but everything else is pretty much the
same. We take the kids on homeschool fieldtrips, walk all our dogs together and
engage in “village” parenting. The families here are varied, from un-schoolers,
to road schoolers to people like myself with an (overly) strict curriculum.
Some are computer programmers, some sell natural oils.
Many are gluten free, some are paleo some are
vegan. (there is never a shortage of Almond milk to borrow.) And, just as in
the suburbs, some have amazing rigs, others have installed a residential fridge
and there is a constant one-upping of gadgets. In our circles there is a clear division
of people who own vitamix-ers and those who have not yet succumbed to the
seduction. I won’t even go into the Great Berkey debate of 2014. (Clearly the Berkey
is good and right.) We have heated discussions, on the weekly radio show, about
whether or not one should have a washing machine in their rig or take it to the
laundry mat and do six loads all at once. All in all, traveling in a village mirrors suburban life to a great degree. In fact, it's time for tea and a lesson in Dutch from Pieter and Clementine next door! (Yes they do have a vita mixer... We won't discuss the Berkey...)
(Picts from our field trip to Pike Street Market..)
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| Kimberly, Dominick and husband Christopher |
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| This is Just THREE of the families! |
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The GUM wall! Chewed gum, oh Yum!!!! |
(For more information check out my friend Kimberly’s group
Fulltime Families. She is the sole reason we are able to find each other and
build these relationships, an extraordinary woman, she has taken a virtual
community and made it a physical reality!)
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| Brand new on the Road family of 8! Welcome! |
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| Our Very First Beach Fire!!! |
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| My peeps! |
