Due to a series of unfortunate events, we took a road trip without our trailer. Our son was getting back from deployment, and we were determined to go to his homecoming. Since it’s the Marine Corps, we were given about 5 days notice of the actual return date. Of course, the actual date didn’t match up with the really great trailer trip we planned to take up to see him according to the preliminary window of return dates we were given. To make matters worse, the trailer was in the shop having some warranty work done, and wouldn’t be ready in time for the actual dates we needed it. We had no choice but to make the trip and stay in a hotel.
The trip was a 10-hour drive. This is much easier to do in one day when you drive a little Subaru and not a big truck and trailer. We decided to make a mad dash for it and try to make it a quick turnaround. And, that we did.
I could end this blog post right here and just say, we missed our creature comforts from our trailer. But, since you probably are looking for something to read while you eat your breakfast or something, I’ll expand. More specifically, here are the things we missed:
Our closets and drawers – We had to pack suitcases! The horror! We are not used to that! In our trailer, everything has its place. It’s the same with my suitcase, but it’s all squished into one suitcase sized spot. First world problem, I know, but I really love my trailer storage.
Our medicine cabinet – Our toothbrushes and toiletries live in there! Getting them out of toiletry bags and trying to share the tiny counter space in the hotel was a challenge. We’re just not used to that!
Our TV – We know how to work it and we know how to stream our favorite shows on it. The hotel TV was fine … if you like reruns of “Friends.”
Our food – When we are on an RV road trip, we don’t eat out much – except for lunches when we’re out exploring. This really helps keep us from getting “road trip gut” (that nasty, bloated feeling like the “Very Hungry Caterpillar” had when he needed to eat through a nice green leaf toward the end of the book). It also is much easier on the budget to cook some of your own meals.
Our bed and pillows – Again, we’re used to them! Hotel beds and pillows are just weird.
The air conditioner vent – This may seem like a strange one, but I find hotel air conditioners annoying. They’re loud, they come on whenever they feel like it, they blow the curtains around … they just bug me! In our trailer, we leave the air conditioner set at one temperature and have it run constantly while we sleep. We have the perfect temperature and some familiar white noise. And, the best part, there’s a vent that I can point straight to my head while I sleep!
Our dogs – We had to board them for this trip. We normally take them on our trailer trips. They love trailer trips, riding in the truck, and exploring new places. It was sad not to have them along.
Really, the hotel was fine aside from the dead bug collection in the elevator (they promptly vacuumed the bugs up when we told them about the collection). It was also during the awkward post-COVID time when the hotels were not sure how to handle things. There was no maid service happening. So, the fun parts about hotels – like leaving your towel on the floor and having a new one when you get back from exploring – were not happening. This made us miss our trailer even more – even though I’m pretty much the maid service for our trailer.
We love our trailer and love exploring the United States in it. We love America’s diversity in landscape – desert here – beach there – mountians there …. It’s awesome! RVing is a vacation lifestyle choice we’ve made 18 years ago and we’re glad we made it! Perhaps it’s the creature comforts that keep us going. When we do the math, owning, storing, and maintaining the trailer isn’t saving us a whole bunch of money on vacationing – maybe even none! We’ve even thought about maybe selling the trailer and traveling like “normal” people. Those thoughts never last more than a few minutes because we remind ourselves why we RV and what we’d miss if we didn’t have it. This year, with diesel prices going crazy, we’re taking shorter trips and are finding lots of new places to explore within three or four hours of home.
If you’re questioning your decision to start or to continue RVing, maybe it would be a good idea for you to think about all the little things you love about it and what you’d miss if you traveled like a “normal” person. I bet your creature comforts will come into play and you’ll love your RV just a little bit more. Happy Camping!
It happened. I never thought it would. I burned out on RV’ing. It was on day 91-ish of our almost 4-month trip. We were on RV park number 18 where we were staying for close to two months. It was hot. I had just made the round-trip walk to the laundry room (also known as the sweatshop for its lack of air conditioning) that was eight campsites away – yes, I counted. I realized I…was…done!
To be fair, we were moving from Washington State to Florida. We decided to take an epic RV trip to make our way there. We had set up to have our movers haul our belongings and our realtor meet them at our storage unit in Florida to watch them off load the truck. On our trip, we received word that our moving truck had been broken into which caused a fair amount of phone calls and coordinating. While we were in our longer-term spot, we found out that, as a result of the break-in and our desktop computer getting stolen, we also had bank fraud problems. So, we were trying to take care of stressful life things from the trailer with two dogs, the laundry room eight sites away in a town we’d probably never choose to live in. Oh, and we had no internet so we were running everything through one bar of hotspot on our phones. It was probably the worst possible way to conduct life’s business.
To be even more fair, the RV Park we were staying in was the best part of the town! It was its own community with lots of great amenities like golf, water aerobics, dog park, etc. The people were great. I was taking golf lessons. My husband was playing and practicing golf a lot. We made friends in the RV park! I’d highly recommend the RV park. It’s a short drive from a lot of cool places.
Nevertheless, I was done. It was after one of my 8-site walks to the sweatshop when my husband walked into the trailer to find me laying on the bed sprawled out and not moving. I was hot, burned out, and soaking up some air conditioning. He asked if I was OK because it’s rare to find me not moving and awake at the same time. I told him, “I believe it’s day 91 and I’ve decided my limit is 90 days for a trailer trip. I’m done.” As it turns out, it was going to be a few more weeks before our house was ready for moving in and I was going to have to suck it up … buttercup… like I used to tell my kids.
I’ve had some time to think about my RV burnout and here’s what I have come to learn and some things I’m going to put into place for future long trips to prevent it.
90 Days is my limit – We will now plan our extended trips within a 90-ish day window. It was really plenty for both of us.
I am not full-timer material – My RV dream was once to sell everything except what we really loved, put the stuff we loved in storage, and take off for a year. I have learned that I probably couldn’t handle that trip. I need a place to go home to after the trip and an itinerary. I have newfound respect for people who do this full-time RVing thing – especially the ones who do this with kids. My kids can tell you, I would have made a horrible homeschool teacher! My hat’s off to you for your patience and perseverance. I’d probably be in jail.
Slow the trip down! – 18 RV Parks? What were we thinking?! We regret trying to get from Washington to Florida too quickly. We thought we needed to be in Florida sooner that we did. In the future, we’ll have a 3-5 night minimum at any stop depending on what’s there to see and do. There will obviously be some stops that should be one-nighters on the way to someplace better. On this trip, we wished we had scheduled more time in most of the places we stayed.
As much is possible, stay in vacation mode – We really had no other choice than to deal with our moving break-in and bank fraud. We were also working on our mortgage process and had to keep dealing with that. This is too much un-fun stuff to do on an RV trip. It’s total buzz-kill! Since we’re never planning to move again, we should be able to avoid the moving fiasco on the next long trip. Life happens and we’ll have to deal with whatever comes up, but we’ll try to find more vacation-fun type things to do to off-set it.
Don’t stay in one place too long – We were in one spot for two months. This was a new experience for us. While we enjoyed getting to know people and getting involved in the activities at the RV park, we really felt the desire to move on and explore someplace new. We are figuring our maximum stay at any one place will be a week. Of course, there will be exceptions depending on where we are, who we’re visiting, and what’s going on in life but, this will be our general rule.
In all reality, our trip was really great! Apart from the moving stress, I’d do it again while spending less time in the last RV park and more time in many of the others. We really had a blast and loved getting to see so much of our beautiful country. We visited several National Parks. We also visited Las Vegas, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Galveston, New Orleans, and several of the top tourist vacation spots on the gulf side of Florida. This blog post is not a complaint. It’s more of a lessons-learned share.
We’ve been in our house for six weeks now. I love it! I Iove where we live! Guess what – I’m ready for another trailer trip! I’ve been bugging my husband about going on a little three-night trip. He’s not completely over his burnout just yet. So, we wait. We’ll go soon enough, I’m sure!
Photo Note: The fussy kid in the photo is my daughter (now 25 years old) one night when she was just done! This is one of four in a photo series. In the last photo, she’s asleep with her head on the tray of the highchair. It’s one of my favorites because it tells the story she couldn’t articulate. She was just done!
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We were on a 5 National Park, two-week (maybe a little longer) trailer trip. We came from the Seattle Area, went white water rafting in Idaho, hit Utah and visited Arches and Canyonlands, went to Durango and met up with some friends and visited Mesa Verde, went on from there to the Grand Canyon, and came back up through Utah and visited Zion and Bryce Canyon. Also on this trip, we had to replace the fuel pump on our tow vehicle and were stuck in a KOA in Kingman, Arizona for a couple days. We were on the last National Park, Bryce Canyon. We were camping in our 25- foot trailer with no side slide outs. It was a LOT of togetherness in a relatively small space.
My husband and I were geeking out on the different rock formations, not that we knew anything about them, but they all looked different. We think it’s amazing how you can travel in the United States and see such different landscapes in a relatively short amount of time. It’s awesome and part of the reason why we got into RVing in the first place. The kids, on the other hand, had seen their fill of orange rocks. They were done hiking and exploring. We weren’t…and that’s how our story begins…
It was the last hike of the trip. The Queen’s Garden hike down to the bottom of Bryce Canyon. Who wouldn’t want to see a hoodoo from the bottom up? Apparently, my kids! We were at the rim of the canyon when we decided we’d make a pit stop. We all went to our respective restrooms and when I came out, I only found my husband. We waited around for the kids at the trailhead and they never showed up. We tried texting and calling them, but the cell service was nil. Since they had done some pretty bitter complaining earlier that day, we figured they went on ahead on the hike and were going to beat us to the end. They were sick of us. Whatever! They’d be fine and we could enjoy our hike without any complaining. Win-Win!
We began our hike, oohing and ahhing over the incredible rock formations. Outside of the Calico Mine ride at Knott’s Berry Farm or the Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland, I’d never seen anything quite like Queen’s Garden. It was amazing! And, it was REAL! God made it out of real rocks! SO cool! I took about 785 pictures! My husband was even getting impatient telling me that the rock formation I was taking a picture of looked just like the last one I took a picture of. It was probably a good thing he stopped me, or I might have 1785 pictures of hoodoos! It was a fantastic hike!
We finished the hike expecting to see the kids at the end of the trail. They weren’t there. We tried the cell phones again. No dice. Dang! We lost the kids! We weren’t terribly worried considering it was early afternoon, it was light out, they were both smart and resourceful, they were 15 and 11 and together, and they probably had eleven dollars between them. They probably wouldn’t starve. They also knew where we parked the car and could take a shuttle back there and meet us.
We got on the shuttle and decided to get off at every stop thinking maybe they’d stopped to get a snack. We didn’t find them anywhere. We stopped and got off near the car. Not there. Suddenly, my phone rang (a miracle considering the lack of cell service!). I picked up and this is what I heard, “Mrs. Lewis, this is Ranger so and so (I can’t remember his name). I believe you’ve become separated from your children.” Yes, indeed! We had become separated from our children! He let us know we could meet up with them at the Visitor’s Center. As much as we enjoyed our complaint-free hike, we were pretty relieved to know where the kids were even though we knew they’d be alright. When we met up with them, the Ranger , mtold us what great kids they were and how they’d done all the right things by finding a Park Ranger to get help. We should be proud of them. I have to say, we were a little conflicted. We weren’t sure if we should be irritated with them for disappearing or proud of them for how they handled it once they figured out they were “lost.”
We look back on this day with amusement. Please don’t call Child Protective Services on us! Our kids are grown up and they turned out just fine! The 15-year-old in this story is now an EMT and can hold her own with the craziest, strung out druggies you’ll find on the street! She has great stories. Her wit and ability to think on her feet is serving her well. Our son is serving in the Unites States Marine Corps and making us proud. Perhaps this little adventure was good training. Who knows?
For the record, my daughter read this and informed me that she remembers it differently. She maintains that the kids were under the impression that we were going on the rim hike (a two mile-ish, relatively flat and paved hike). She also maintains that she and her brother were totally annoyed with their parents for being dorks and getting their hiking poles ready for that flat hike and that they went ahead because we were too slow. So, they hiked the wrong trail. We hiked the one to the bottom of the canyon, where trekking poles came in handy! I know we talked about which hike we were going on prior to getting separated. My husband remembers it like I do. It will go down in our family history as an unsolved debate and probably make for some more funny family conversations … maybe someday with grandkids!
There’s no real moral to this story other than when things turn out OK in the end, it’s much more fun to look back onto the story with amusement. Every now and then, we’ll quote that Park Ranger, “Mrs. Lewis…. I believe you’ve become separated from your children” and get a good chuckle out of it. I hope you got a good chuckle too.
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We live in the Pacific Northwest. To be fair, this is the first season we’ve done the full-blown winterizing for our trailer. In the past, my husband has just blown out the lines with an air compressor and left the faucets open. We only had a problem once. (I’ll tell you about that at the end.) It makes me sad to think that we can’t just take off whenever we want. It’s going to take a little more doing to take a winter trip, and a little more re-doing. It might be hard to talk the guy who has to do all this extra work into taking off for a weekend. You’re probably wondering how I’m even qualified to write this blog post. Like I said, I live in the Pacific Northwest. I moved here from Southern California 25 years ago. It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s wet … YUCK! Trying to keep in in good spirits in the winter has been a challenge since our first winter here. Here are some things I do. Surprise, surprise! Many are travel related!
Leave town! – I try to get out of the area in the winter for a while (sometimes I even bring the family!). I usually use an airplane instead of a trailer in the winter. I’ve been on several mission trips to Nicaragua, visited my brother and his family in Southern California, visited my husband on his business trips to Florida, and this year, we’re going to Hawaii. Warm places and sunshine are good for the winter blahs.
Drink coffee – You wonder why Starbucks is such a big deal in Seattle? Cheap anit-depressant in a cup. There ya go! It helps! Coffee with friends is even better!
Plan our next trips – I usually have our summer trip planned and booked sometime in March or early April. Having this to look forward to is a huge help. I try to plan and book a trip for each month from March through October.
Do fun winter things – A few years ago, we took up snowshoeing. We live about 40 minutes from some great snowshoeing trails. Going up to the mountains for a day of getting out in the snow is fun and makes us appreciate where we live a little more.
Have hibernation days – We sometimes have lazy days in the winter where we hang out at home, watch movies, wear sweats, and just don’t go anywhere. We savor these days a bit because, in the PNW when it’s nice out, we feel guilty if we’re not outside working in the yard, hiking, walking the dogs, or otherwise just getting out.
Catch up with friends – We have friends who we hardly see all summer because our schedules don’t line up. They’re out of town or we’re out of town. They have out of town guests or we have out of town guests. Whatever! Winter is a great time to call your friends and get together.
Try new recipes and make notes about which ones will be good RV food – I love cooking. There’s no better time than when it gets dark at around 5 p.m. to try new recipes. It’s not like I can be outside working in the yard. I might as well cook!
Get outside daily – I have dogs. They make me go outside. If I don’t walk them every day, I pay for it. So, every morning, I get up, look at the temperature outside and complain “It’s stupid cold!”, put on several layers, and take the dogs for a walk. Once I’m out the door and a few blocks away, I appreciate being outside and getting some fresh air. It also gives me time to think about where I might like to go in the summer….
Get enough exercise – There’s nothing worse than hanging out inside and feeling like a blob! It adds to the blahs, messes up your sleep, and generally makes everything worse. If you’re snow-bound, you can probably find an exercise video on YouTube that will help. If you’re not, get out and walk or go to the gym. You’ll feel better, I promise!
Go somewhere in the winter in your rig – If you can get out – go! We have a favorite spot that’s easy to get to. There are no snowy passes to go over or anything scary like that. We’ll go there in the winter sometimes just to get away. One time, we went and we didn’t follow the directions on the sign that said, “If it gets to freezing temperatures, city water will be cut off to the RV Park. Make sure you have enough fresh water in your tank.” That was a bummer … for me! I didn’t get to use my own shower and had to use the RV Park shower that you put quarters in. My son and husband found my getting flustered with the whole situation very entertaining. Now I know better! I’ll be asking about the fresh water tank! This year, we went out in March after our Snow-mageddan to Mount St. Helens. There was still snow in places. It was cold and we ran out of propane and woke up freezing. That wasn’t fun either. Another thing I have to remember to ask about…. The moral of these little stories – make sure you’re prepared if you’re going out in the winter!
We’re considering snow-birding – When we retire, and if we’re still living in the PNW, we’ll probably be on the road most of the winter in warmer places. If you have this ability, I would highly recommend it! We had some neighbors when we first moved to the PNW that were snow-birds. We always knew when they were back because their swan planter showed up in the yard. They wintered in Florida and loved it. I thought they were old and crazy at the time. I now see the wisdom in their choice and plan to copy them in our own way!
Go to RV Shows – Are you thinking about a new rig? Are you curious about some rigs you saw on some of your trips? Go check them out an RV show. We have gone to RV shows as total looky-loos. We’ll go find the most expensive rig and see what kind of crazy things they put in it. We’ll look at newer versions of our own rig. Whatever, it’s always fun to look! My husband was out of town for the Winter RV Show in Seattle. When our trailer was in the shop for our Memorial Day Trip and our trip got cancelled, he decided he owed me an RV show. There wasn’t one going on so, we decided to go look at Fifth-Wheels. In order to make it a little less exhausting, we picked out about 6 different rigs on 3 lots that we wanted to look at. That turned out to be a little dangerous. We ended up buying our Fifth Wheel while our old rig was in the shop! It was a little sooner than we had planned, but we are really happy with how everything worked out!
Get professional help – If your blues are hanging on, please get help. Seasonal Affective Disorder is real. There are lots of ways to treat it. Hanging out and feeling sad all winter shouldn’t be an option.
So, you’re probably wondering about that time when we had the winterizing fail. It was our first trailer and our first winter with it. Sixteen years ago, RVs didn’t have as nice of sinks and faucets as they do now. Most of the sinks were small and the faucets were some version of the cheapest kind you can find at Home Depot. Our trailer was no exception to the crummy sink and faucet combo rule. I really hated the faucet because you couldn’t fit a pan under it to wash it. It was dumb! It was probably set up by someone who ate microwave dinners all the time. We forgot to leave the faucets open on the sink. My husband went to go pick up the trailer and there was our faucet, broken off and laying in the sink. YAY! I got a new faucet that worked much better! If you like your faucet, don’t forget to leave it open when you store your rig over the winter!
Hang in there! There are more RV-able months than months where going out is just too cold or too difficult. Find some winter fun, plan your summer, and look forward to being re-united with your rig!
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Let me begin this blog post by saying I probably have no business writing it. I am in a Facebook group for owners of our rig’s manufacturer. I thought I knew what I was doing until I saw pictures of peoples’ beautiful spreads they put out at the national rally last month. Suffice it to say, I’m a low-key entertainer and I like it that way.
When we purchased our current 5thwheel one of the things we shopped for was more visiting space. Not more sleeping space. We tested the pull-out bed in the sofa to make sure it was comfortable so that we could have over night guests. If it wasn’t, it would have been a deal breaker. It turns out, the pull-out bed is more comfortable than the bunks in our old trailer. Go figure! We wanted more visiting space because we end up camping in places where we’re visiting other people, or people come to visit us. It’s fun!
If you’re still shopping and you think this might be your situation, you might consider something with an island in the kitchen and a living space near the kitchen. It makes for great visiting, snacking, and fun. We purchased our rig in May. Since our purchase, we have camped 20 nights in it on four separate trips. On only one of those trips were we without visitors. Our “rear living” / island kitchen has served us very well! We love it!
Here are some things I keep in mind when entertaining in my rig:
K.I.S.S.– My geometry teacher in 10thgrade always used to remind us when solving proofs, “Keep It Simple…Stupid.” (I seriously doubt he was calling anyone stupid! I think he was trying to get teenagers attention after lunch). Back when my kids were little and before we had a trailer, I tried to be my own version of Martha Stewart. I pretty much failed at it because I turned into a crazed over thinking entertaining machine that my family dreaded. Therefore, they dreaded any party I’d throw. It was no fun for them! Now that I’m older, and wiser (Ha! More like older and more tired!), I’ve realized that no one cares how fancy your party is. They care that the company is fun. These days, sometimes I even leave the chips in the bags! (Gasp!). Really, make it fun for you! Don’t go overboard!
Plan ahead –I really love to cook. When I’m camping, my cooking is much simpler. I marinate meat before the trip and freeze it, make simple salads, make things ahead when possible, etc. That way, when I’m ready to have guests, I can pull things out and go. No major prepping in the rig.
Grill!– Everyone loves good grilled food! You can grill anything. I know someone who grills peaches and says they’re delicious. I prefer steak, but whatever! When you grill, it brings people outside, keeps your rig cooler, and makes less dishes to wash.
Easy clean-up is key –Most rigs don’t have dishwashers. Mine doesn’t. Easy clean-up is a big deal. Use recipes and foods that are easy to clean up.
Whenever possible, invite people who help –So far, we’ve been super lucky this summer with company that helps. On our first trip out in our rig, the people we camped with wanted to cook for us in our rig. It was awesome! We just watched as they cooked. Later, we washed the dishes while they watched. When we camped with my brother and sister-in-law, they were super helpers. My brother loves grilling and cleaning the grill, so he cooked all of our grilled meat. My sister in law likes drying dishes (or pretends to) and jumps up to help as soon as anyone is at the sink. Having people like this over makes entertaining a lot more fun.
Order pizza!– In our favorite place to camp, we love the pizza place in town! We order pizza and bring it back to the trailer. We’ll make salad, have wine and drinks ready, and have a fun, easy, and delicious dinner.
Pot-luck it– We have friends that we camp with regularly. We eat together on the nights that we’re camping together. When we don’t order pizza or do something “organized,” we’ll have a BYOM (bring your own meat) pot-luck. We share sides, salads, drinks, etc. Then, for dessert we’ll have s’mores. It’s fun!
Overnight guests
We are in a new phase of life. We’re empty nesters. For 15 years, we had bunkhouse trailers. Our first rig had 4 bunks and we let our kids bring friends on our trips sometimes. Other times, we parked it in our driveway when we needed more sleeping space at the house and sent some kids out to sleep in the driveway. My brother and his family would come up to visit, but there is no hotel in our town and no room in our house. So, we parked our trailer in the RV park and they stayed in our “vacation condo.” This past summer, we realized that our kids hadn’t come on a long trip with us in years and that we were only using the bunkhouse for was storing my husband’s golf clubs. We decided it was time to re-think the bunkhouse situation. We bought a 5thwheel with a comfortable pull out sofa-bed (Not a jack-knife sofa. Jack Knife pull outs are only comfortable for kids!). It turned out to be a good choice.
My brother and his family have a 23-foot travel trailer. They rarely ever camp anywhere with hook-ups and sometimes tease us about how wimpy we are for going to RV parks. They live in Southern California where he owns a landscape business. Getting away for more than 7 or 8 days at a time is really hard for them. As a result, it’s kept them camping mostly in California, Arizona, and Nevada. We let them know we were planning a trip to Glacier National Park. At the time, we had our bunkhouse trailer that they had used in the local RV park when they came up to visit us. My brother said, “We’ll come! We’ll fly up to Montana and we’ll camp with you and sleep in your bunk beds!” A plan was hatched!
After we hatched the plan, we traded in the bunkhouse and sweated a bit about whether or not having guests on the pull out sofa bed was going to be a good situation. We did our best to make it as comfortable as possible. Here are some things we did:
Got a good mattress pad for the pull out– Even though the pull out is comfortable, it’s still not a mattress. A quality mattress pad helps with that.
Got quality bedding – Nice sheets, comfortable pillows, and a nice quilt made the bed a lot more comfortable.
Found space for them to unpack their bags – Suitcases in a trailer would be a trip hazard! Our new rig has a cupboard that is “extra” for us. We decided to keep it empty so that if we have guests, they can put their things in there. They unpacked their suitcases into the cupboard and we stowed the suitcases in the basement storage of the trailer. It worked great!
Made space in the medicine cabinet – Our medicine cabinet is HUGE for a trailer. We made one side of it empty so it could be just for them.
Find places to hang towels – We live and camp in the Pacific Northwest. It is imperative that we have places to hang wet things inside the trailer. We put some hooks in the “hallway” of the trailer for this. Our guests used them to hang their towels.
Gave them space – We made it a point to go to bed at a decent time and let them have the living space to themselves. We watched some TV in the bedroom. It helped that we hiked almost every day. Everyone was, as my sister in law would say, “knackered.” We were all ready to flop fairly early.
My brother and his wife on our pull out sofa bed. They were great trailer guests! Decor note: Our trailer isn’t this white inside. It’s much more “dirt – beige.” The ability to camouflage dirt was a big selling point. Don’t go thinking I’m some sort of person who can keep white furniture clean while camping!
You’re probably wondering where our airport adventure fits into this post. Well, on this trip to Glacier, my brother and his wife flew into Kalispell, Montana. We had a great plan. We used Google Maps and found a Cabela’s with 40 Acres of parking and a Chick-fil-A in the parking lot. The plan was for them to take an Uber to the Cabela’s parking lot. We had a meeting time. It was a great plan!
We were coming from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where we had spent a night on the way to Montana. We stopped in St. Regis, Montana to buy a Huckleberry Pie (very important to the Montana experience), some jam, and use the restroom. There’s a really great traveler’s stopping place there with a great store, restaurant, espresso, ice cream, etc. We looked around a bit, but not terribly long. When we got in the truck, we were shocked at the time!! How was it possible that we had spent an hour and a half in that store?! I checked my brother’s flight on my phone and it said it was late. Perfect.
We started booking down the road when I got a text from my brother, “Just landed.” I looked at the GPS and we were 80 miles out. So, I texted back, “Crap! We’re 80 miles out! Take your time getting your bags and getting to Cabela’s.” We continued on trying to figure out where the time went. Later we got a text from my brother that said, “Uber says ‘No cars available.’ Now what?” We texted back and forth with things like, “Are you working the Uber app right?” He sent a screen shot of the Uber app. Looked right… “How about Lyft?” Finally, he calls. “I’ve been walking around the airport and I think you can pick us up in the passenger pick up area.” We’re thinking, “Obviously, he doesn’t know how tall we are!” I explain how much clearance we needed and he assured me that since he’s had plenty of time, he’s walked the whole outside of the airport and it’s going to work.
We drove to the airport and picked them up in the passenger pick up area. Of course, this irritated the people behind us and they insisted on honking. So, we were throwing suitcases into the back of the truck trying to avoid the 5thwheel hitch and laughing because the scene was just crazy!
We drove over to the Cabela’s and Chick-Fil-A and had lunch and did some “we forgot__.” shopping. At one point in the store, I checked my watch and it was an hour earlier than I thought. Then, I checked my phone to see the time. Head slap! We didn’t get the memo! There was a time change between Idaho and Montana! We lost an hour!
The whole trip went really well and we decided that we’ll do it again sometime. They stayed with us 7 nights and we had a great time. They reported being comfortable and said they enjoyed their stay. We might have to avoid the airport, but everything else worked out great! We are proud to be able to say we picked up people from the airport with our trailer attached. Not everyone can say that.
Entertaining in your rig is fun. There are lots of ways to do it from tail-gaiting, to pot-lucks, to just having people over for s’mores. I see people in RV parks camping with friends and sharing meals. I never really considered when we bought our first rig how social it could be. We have been happily surprised at how much fun we’ve had entertaining in our rig!
Enjoy your rig and entertaining at your own speed. You don’t even have to entertain at all if you don’t want to! It’s your rig! It’s your vacation! Enjoy it!
Feature Photo note: This photo was taken in our backyard at a barbecue with my grandparents. The kid with the big bow in her hair is me. That was our trailer when I was a little kid. My brother and I figured out that it had been about 45 years since we camped together in a trailer by the time of the Glacier trip in this blog. My parents sold it and we were tent campers after that … until we had kids of our own….
Next Trailer Girl blog post – Why I’m Banned from Barstow
Trailer Girl's Guide to Happy Camping 