Everything for a reason!

Disaster…

    Un-mitigated disaster is the only phrase I could come up with to describe the scene that was about to unfold. As we rounded the last of the three loops it became abundantly clear that yet again, all of the spots that might have conceivably allowed a 32-foot trailer were occupied, often by a tiny tent, or possibly two. “They have the right to be here too,” I reminded myself.  Meanwhile the 9 year old in me screamed, “Get out of my spot! What the hell are tent campers doing in Glacier National Park anyway? Don’t they know this place is chock full of Grizzly bears, waiting to drag them out of their puny little tents and eviscerate them while they sleep????”  Happy campers took all of the spots that we could have possibly fit into. Alan confirmed this with the camp host who suggested we drive out to Browning to find a place. And, yes, she conceded it was crazy that the park filled up by 11:30 on a Tuesday when the website so CLEARLY stated that it hadn’t filled until 9 pm the previous two weeks. 

     I shook from head to toe, my body wracked with childlike sobs as I could no longer contain my bitter, bitter disappointment. For weeks now I had envisioned taking my children to the same idyllic spot where I had spent blissful weeks during the summers of my childhood with my best friend, Julie’s family in Two Medicine, Glacier. I had planned each moment in my mind. First we would find heart-shaped rocks along the beach, playing in the glacial waters. Next we would hike across the tiny bridge and maybe catch the Sinopah boat tour. We would catch Brown trout and eat them with Mac and Cheese, prepared just the way Don did, butter, lemon and onion wrapped in foil. Finally, the pinnacle, desert at the camp store, piping hot Fry bread and huckleberry milkshakes. Oh the campstore, smelling of cedar, permeating every membrane, every article of clothing and each memory. The smell filling my dreams for weeks now. I was bitterly, bitterly disappointed. Unable to hold out a second longer I gave in to the sobbing 6 year old inside and crumpled in the passenger seat. My oldest son, Jacob, reached around the seat, patting my shoulder and saying, it’s alright Mom, everything is okay, everything happens for a reason.

Hidden falls

     I couldn’t hear his sage advice at that moment. “Everything happens for a reason” was the kind of crap I would spout when he was disappointed. That certainly wouldn’t hold true in this case.

We retreated down the mountainside. I had remembered a small family owned place just outside the park, the Lazy Y. The rates quoted on the website were astronomical but, Alan assured me, it would only be for one night, then we would be up at the crack of dawn, stalking people until they left a site. Now two days down, we would still have two nights to enjoy the park.

As we pulled in to the unattended park, we noticed a hand written sign on the door of a tiny office. The rate would be a mere $25 a night for full hook-ups. That means not only power but sewer hooks ups were included as well. Only $5 more than the spot I had so sacredly held at Two Medicine, with NO water, and NO sewer.

The place where Julie and I hid a time capsule at 12 years old!

In front of Sinopah Mt. At Two Medicine Lake

But, what about the view of Two Med Lake I wouldn’t be getting from my campsite? From our little spot amidst the trees I was able to see the sweet Cliffside chapel of my best friend Julie’s wedding 14 years prior. And below that, a draw in which we were privileged to see three deer eating breakfast while a coyote crossed the ridge above them.

"Julie's" Chapel

And what of the camp store? It had been taken over in recent years by a larger corporation. It smelled, faintly, of cedar. The Fry bread was gone, the huckleberry shakes, once made by hand, had been replaced with a frozen yogurt dispenser. They had Huckleberry flavor there. It tasted like soap. Soap and disappointment. Instead, the boys and I played in the lake, went into town and met an amazing Lithuanian couple working at “Brownies” serving exquisite Huckleberry Ice Cream. We talked to them for an hour about traveling and world citizens. We met a girl with her new puppy and went to the lodge to listen to Gospel, sung in barbershop style. The next day we stayed at our park with our wonderful host and chatted over coffee while watching the ravine. We spent the day exploring parts of the park I had never seen, and re-visiting old sights too. Things I would not have done had we stayed at the lake. Jacob, of course, was right. “Everything works out for a reason.” And, more clearly to me now than ever, we are right where we are meant to be.

Hiking, when you have Aiden, bear bells are not necessary....

 

Getting their Glacier Badge, Proud Mamma!

Going to the Sun Highway

Where we've been up to September 2014 in the Wildcat...

visited 38 states (76%)
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Washington, the traveling village....

     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!

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..)

Kimberly, Dominick and husband Christopher

This is Just THREE of the families!

   

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!)

Brand new on the Road family of 8! Welcome!

Our Very First Beach Fire!!!

My peeps!

    

Steamboat Lake

             We NEVER get to go camping anymore! Isn’t that odd? We live in a camper but never camp! So it was wonderful in Colorado to go camping with part of our “old” camping crew! We spent a week up at Steamboat Springs lake and had a wonderful time! We got to meet Jenny and Joel’s wonderful parents, the Chavira’s joined us and we had a great time! We also got to see Marcus Chavira in action as he figured out his first pop-up crisis! Yay Marcus! So love our camping crew, thanks guys!

            

                   

                         

Lord of the Flies.....

     

A mini version of Lord of the Flies is playing out on the playground. While unnerving to me, it isn’t going unnoticed as a ring of parents nonchalantly stroll around the perimeter. It feels like a 1960’s spy movie. We are lurking, I am pretending to walk the dog, that one “looks” like he’s taking out the trash. Another parent seems to be intently inspecting the tailgate of his truck. A mom pushes her daughter on the swing but all of us are really just observing the unfolding mele. Why is this noteworthy? Because none of these parents are rushing in to stop it. No one is calling anyone else’s mom because someone made fun of their child’s hair. No one is calling the teacher because their daughter was pushed over during tag. No principals are being involved because they are pointing nerf guns at each other. It is unmitigated, childhood bliss, with all the dirt that accompanies it. Skinned knees because someone didn’t use the slide appropriately, 3 seconds of a hurt feeling because someone experienced defeat. Stained t-shirts from falling down “dead” on the grass over and over, no adults needed to call fair or unfair.
             

    My heart skips a beat as my son points a gun at another kid, pulls the trigger and yells BANG! This is exactly the behavior we have been trained, and in turn, trained kids not to do. I wait for the other child to scream and run home, instead he falls down “dead”.  Just as the unspoken rules dictate, a pow or a bang and your dead. You have to lie down for 1 minute. No adult told them that, they worked it out on their own, just as they picked sides, and boundaries and created the intricate plot to go along. Kids from 6 to 13 are playing together harmoniously. No one telling them they can’t play, it’s not right, or it’s inappropriate. I am torn between what is “right” and what is healthy. 

     I call Jacob over and ask about the game. "It's great, one kid didn't want to be a zombie, so we told him he could watch or be some other thing. He sat down with a gun for a minute and the next he was up playing. Now he's a Zombie too." Totally self regulating. 

     Don’t misunderstand me, I am still your good ‘ol bleeding heart girl. Gun control, anti-bullying, don’t hurt each other’s feelings girl. But, having spent the last 13 years writing up reports for the most asinine childhood offenses has made scenes like this a bit refreshing. Where is the line, have we crossed it? How far back? When do kids get to be kids?

And then, Aiden comes over.

“Mom, we are playing cowboys and Native American’s! I got to be a Navajo, I got em all!”  The paradigm has shifted. They have found a way to make the inappropriate appropriate. Until tomorrow anyway.  

     

You tube movie from Fulltime Nomads

We had an amazing time at home in Castle Rock! So much fun, we made a little movie of our adventures! 
Enjoy...
Castle Rock Movie