When The Last Nerve Rears It’s Ugly Head – Getting Back to the Happy Camper Mindset

This post is inspired by Victoria, who after reading my last post about backing the trailer and staying married suggested I follow up with how to get back to the Happy Camper frame of mind when communication goes south.  Thanks for the inspiration!

Let’s face it.  You’re spending hours on end in a car or truck hauling a big box of some kind behind you.  Then, you have to set up said box.  Once the box is set up, you’re climbing into it with the same person or people you’ve been on the road with all day.   It’s not going to always be happy camping bliss.  It is inevitable, you’ll get on each other’s very … last … nerve. The trick is to not let it ruin your trip.  Here are tips I’ve learned from almost 28 years of marriage, 23 and a half years of raising kids, always a having a dog or two, and 15 years of RVing.  If you’re into math and look at those numbers, the laws of probability will tell you, there’s a pretty good chance that things have gone sideways a time or two.

First the easy one– When the dogs are on your last nerve.   Usually, when our dogs are driving us nuts, they need to have a walk.  Their annoying behavior is usually cured with a walk, potty break, or some food.  A tired dog is a good dog.

Now for the trickier things.

The kids– Our kids, now 23 and 19, went through all sorts of annoying phases along with times of being super travelers.  We used to say they were either adorable or horrible and that there wasn’t really an in-between.  Here are some things we found helpful:

• Prevention– It’s probably some kind of bad parenting to not make your kids look out the window when you’re driving all over the country.  We sold out! We bought a tow rig with a DVD player that they could also hook up a video game console to.  It was a Godsend!   There was one trip where we were traveling down I-5 toward Sacramento from the Seattle Area.  It was the morning of our second day.  We had seen about 752 farms and about 5 million cows (writer’s embellishment – maybe).  My daughter looks away from the video screen and out the window and says, “Hey look!  Cows!” like that was the first she’d seen of them.  We felt like bad parents, but also sane parents, which, in the end, prevents further horribleparenting!  
• Leg stretching – Don’t only stop for gas! Sometimes stopping someplace more interesting like, dare I say, Walmart, where they might pick out a new movie for $5 can help.  We liked stopping every now and then at those giant strip malls that have a Starbucks, Target, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, etc.  You can pick up all kinds of things that were maybe left out of your packing, get a snack, and distract everyone from the road for a bit.
• RV Park Scavenger Hunts– When you need to have a little peace and quiet in the trailer, send the kids out (if they’re not too little!) on a scavenger hunt.  Our favorite scavenger hunt was license plates.  We would give the kids a walkie-talkie and keep the other with us. Then, we’d send them out with a clipboard, paper, and a pen and have them write down all of the different states they found.  We’d check on them on the walkie-talkie and get a report.  NOTE:  We only would do this in RV Parks we felt were really safe!  
• Take an hour to take out the trash – It was toward the end of a trip.  The kids were on my last nerve.  I just needed a break from everything.  So, I volunteered to take the trash to the dumpster.  I was gone an hour!  I wandered all over the RV park, looked at all the different rigs, looked at the plants, looked at the pool, etc.  I felt much better when I returned to my trailer having stepped away for a bit.
• Lock the kids in the trailer and go for a walk – Once again, we’d employ our walkie-talkie system and lock the kids into the trailer and go for a 30-minute walk around the RV Park by ourselves.  It gave us a chance to talk without interruption and a nice break.  NOTE: Again, we only did this in RV Parks where we felt it was safe to leave the kids alone.  
• If the kids are old enough, go out to dinner without them on a date – Once our daughter was old enough to babysit, we would occasionally leave the kids at the trailer and go to dinner alone.  We would only do this in RV parks that were very familiar to us and that we felt were very safe.  
• Remember the 8 O’Clock Rule – We all would get along better when we have been well fed.  See my previous blog for information about the 8 O’Clock Rule.
• What my parents did – One summer in the 1980’s, we drove from Long Beach, CA to Michigan.  My brothers and I were piled into the back seat of an Oldsmobile.  We were motel-ing it in AAA 2 diamond or less motels.  I had to sit in the middle on the hump, which, in theory, was supposed to keep my brothers from fighting.  It didn’t work.  My parents decided they’d pay us each a penny a mile to be good.  My mom had a little demerit log and if we were bad, we’d lose a penny  or several depending on the crime.  If we never lost a penny, it added up to about $30 each which we got to use for spending money on the trip.   This plan backfired when my brothers pooled their money to buy a noisy electronic baseball game that they played in the car. It drove everyone who wasn’t playing the game at the moment nuts!  One genius part of this plan was when they would put us on “talking restriction” when were bickering.  They would say, “No talking for the next 10 miles!”  Inevitably, the bickering would stop.  Shortly after that, the snickering would start.  We thought we were getting away with something.  After traveling with kids for all these years, I’m now certain our snickering was part of their end game.
• If someone has a favorite, try to work it in – If there’s someplace that is a favorite, go!  For instance, my son (and my husband) love In N’ Out Burger.  If we can work that into a lunch stop, there’s a lot of contentment after lunch!
• Find the humor in their annoying behavior – My all-time favorite tattle from my daughter, “Mom!  Ben called me a knuckle scratcher!!!”  NO one in our family knows what a knuckle scratcher is to this day! My son made it up in the heat of the moment.  It still makes us laugh!  Kids are hilarious!  Find the humor!

When you and your spouse are on each other’s nerves – This is the hardest one to recover from.  One of the things we have going for us is, we actually really LIKE each other and enjoy spending time together.  It really helps!   Here are some things we’ve learned that help us on any day, but especially when we travel.

• Doing everything together is not romantic – It took us 9 years of marriage to figure out that doing things that the other isn’t interested in alone or with another friend is OK.  It now seems obvious, but we were a little slow on the uptake.  For instance, my husband hates shopping.  I love browsing in little boutiques and shops when we’re on a trip.  He loves golf.  I can’t hit the ball to save my life!  So, he’ll drop me off in town for my browsing and he’ll go hit some golf balls or play 9 holes.  Then, we meet up for the things that we actually like to do together.  In our favorite “default” RV get away, I can walk to town from the RV park.  We meet up for lunch and then, walk around in the art galleries together saying things like, “I could make that!” or “I might buy that if I had $10,000!”  It’s fun!
• Meet Friends– We have friends who we camp with, friends who stay in nearby hotels where we camp, and friends who will drop by for a day in some places we camp.  It’s fun to have extra people and gives us a little break from each other, or at least a buffer.
• Remember the 8 O’Clock Rule– (see previous blog post).  We sometimes have to just not talk until we’ve eaten!  
• Don’t hash it out in the heat of the moment – Sometimes communication goes sideways.   When this happens, we often need a cooling off period before we can talk about what went wrong.   Sometimes it’s a few minutes.  Other times, it’s after we’ve had a meal (because often the poor communication happens when we’re hungry).  Sometimes it takes a night’s sleep, breakfast, and a cup of coffee before we can straighten things out. I have found that doing a verbal autopsy of the whole situation only makes my husband feel blamed and puts him on the defense.  Whenever we have our heads screwed on straight and can actually think out what we say first it’s better to say, “Well, that went badly. What can we do next time to keep that from happening again?”   Of course, on trips, it’s often been the whole backing the trailer and set up process that got us annoyed with each other. And, it’s often been the case where we were speaking two different backing languages.   It’s helpful when he can say, “I need you to say ____ when ______.”
• Only one of us can lose our cool at any given time – Somewhere in our relationship, we came up with an agreement that has worked well for us.  That is, only one of us is allowed to lose our cool at a time.  The other needs to either be quiet, say, “anything I can do to help?” (and not lose coolness when the answer is a gruff “NO!”), or just walk away for a bit.  For instance, this could happen to us after we’ve arrived somewhere and he’s trying to get the trailer leveled and then set up the hoses.  When I hear sputterings, that’s my cue that it’s my turn to be level headed.  He does the same for me when I have a cooking tizzy or something.  I have my fair share!
• Choose your battles– Now that I’m in my fifties, I wonder why I ever got so perturbed by so many things.  In my younger days, I let so many little things bother me!  What a waste of energy!   If, when things are going badly, you can think about the bigger picture of the trip, it’ll make that little thing you’re all worked up about seem less significant and not worth your energy.
• Say “I’m sorry” and move on to something more fun – It seems obvious, but it’s sometimes much easier said than done.  
• Communicate your expectations – Some of our biggest rifts have come from not saying what our expectations were for a situation or a day and then expecting the other person to fall in line with this un-communicated expectation.  For instance, I might expect that the day after we’ve arrived late at night, that we’re going for a big hike.  I’ll set an alarm and try to get everyone rousted and ready to hit the trail.  His expectation might have been to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, and then, plan the day over a cup of coffee.  This could lead to me annoying him and me being disappointed.  Had we just taken the 2 minutes the night before to say, “What do you want tomorrow to look like?”, we could have saved ourselves some frustration.
• Let your gifts shine! – Everyone has a gift that they can use on an RV trip.  Mine is planning and organizing.  Before we go on a big trip, I have a folder full of reservations.  I’ve googled what to do in the area.  I might have reservations for activities, etc.  My husband teases me about being “Julie the Cruise Director,” but also says that he appreciates the planning.  My husband is a really good logical thinker-problem solver type.  So, when something goes amuck or if there’s something to be figured out logically, we defer to him.  I tend to think up too many different ways to solve it and make it much more complicated than it needs to be.  
• Get the Navigation Package! – I am horrible with directions!  I always have been and I don’t see things getting any better as I get older.  My navigating while he’s driving and pulling a trailer isn’t always a good thing – even when I’m using the GPS on my phone! When it came time to replace our 14 year-old Suburban with his truck, we got the Navigation package.  Now, he gets annoyed at the Navigation system instead of me. It’s a beautiful thing! 
• If your marriage is trouble, an RV probably won’t save it – I’m not a professional counselor, but I’d say don’t buy an RV to save your marriage!  Go to counseling and then get the rig!  Or, do it simultaneously.  Our trailer has been a blessing to our relationship and given us some really fun times and special time together.  We had done a little time in the counselor’s office prior to buying our first trailer. The tools we got from counseling came in really handy on our trips and made the whole experience better.
• Keep a sense of humor – I’d say that keeping a sense of humor has been one of the most important ways we’ve been able to get ourselves back on track.  Most of the time, our annoying situation is funny after some time has passed.  

No annoyance is worth ruining your trip over.  When you’re in close quarters with people for long periods of time, there is bound to be some strife.  Don’t ever let it ruin your trip!  Find a way to get over it, around it, or through it!  Then, just have fun and enjoy each other’s company!  You’re on vacation dang it! 

This post was inspired by a comment!  If you have something you’d like to read about, please leave a comment.  If I have an experience that is blog worthy, I’ll write about it!

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