Happy Campers.

We are campers.  I’m not sure when it exactly happened.  We’ve lived in Colorado for 20 years.  At first we scrapped and scrapped to make it.  We found 9 to 5 jobs and had vacation.  10 days. It is not a lot of time when you live 800+ miles from families that you love and cannot wait to see again.  Therefore, we would leave our new home and visit our old home; that was our vacation. 

 

Before we had children and we were young, really young, less than 30 young, we would take these CRAZY road trips.  I worked in a bank.  If we had a Friday off, we left on Thursday after work and drove late into the night. We spent Friday and Saturday being weekend warriors and then we drove all day and late into Sunday night and then back to work on Monday.

 Then we started our own business.  We worked while we were traveling.  I still had my bank job but by then I was commuting to Denver.  I got up at 4:30 AM, left at 5:30 AM, worked all day and then arrived at home by 6:30 PM, bed by 8:30 PM and then did it again.  2 years.  20 days vacations.  We made a sweet income but we were exhausted people.  We traveled on planes, stayed in hotels, on beaches and traveled more often. 

 

Next, we both worked for our business.  No more, commute.  However, we spent 2 years trying to have babies; stressed and sad.  I know we traveled more but due to all the stress and drugs of infertility, I only remember 1 trip clearly.  We took a two-week road trip with my parents to Oregon and Washington.  This was the first time we took all my vacation days at once.  My husband and I were both hooked on extended travel after this trip.  We had to do more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead, we had babies.  Well, these awesome, amazing selfless birthmothers had babies we adopted over a 6-year period.  Shane and I took a trip and met my folks in Yellowstone in September of 2002.  We thought it would be our last “hurray” until our kids were old enough to travel.  Who knew that hindsight was not only 20/20 but also ironic!  “B” was born in November.  I remember we flew to Missouri in February (yes 3 months) to surprise my Mom for Valentine’s Day.   In April, we went to Oklahoma for my husband’s Grandparents Anniversary.  Just before B turned 1 we went to AZ to visit my brother in-law.   We went to Moab, Newspaper rock, Monument Valley, Sedona, Grand Canyon…all with a baby less than a year old.

We’ve never slowed down.  We camped in a tent with B and bathed him in a giant plastic tote that stored our dishes.  There were diapers and wipes everywhere and it was a lot of work.  However, it was worth every exhausting moment.    When our second child arrived, six years after B, we had a travel trailer and we put down the dinner table each night to make room for his playpen.  Our second son was sleeping under the stars before he was 9 months old.  His first trip was Glacier National Park and included a 15-mile hike in a backpack, which ended with a thunderstorm, and a short ride in a stranger’s car out of the torrential down pour. 

 

 

Somewhere after our children arrived, we became campers, nomadic people.  Hard core let us sell it all and live on the road kind of crazy campers.  When I repair my dishwasher, dryer or car I calculate the cost in number of nights camping…$150…that is 2 to 4 days of camping.  Some day we will live on the road full time…maybe even before our kids leave the nest.

  

 

Some folks will read this and think we have wasted our time and money.  Some will think of how many boat trips our camping might mean to them. Others will calculate our travels in days at Disney for them.  Those of you that think, where will they go next…you are my people.  You are the folks that understand the call of the road the pull of the heartstrings to jump in and just go when the smell of grass fills the air.