“Home Is Where We Park It” Visit any campground and you are likely to see one or two signs saying something like that, identifying full-timers passing through or maybe in a camp host site. The reality of that casual statement really hit home with us this past weekend.
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Champ and his brother Steve. Both old retired guys now[/caption]My brother in law retired this past week and the celebration took the form of our old camping group bringing our RV’s to their acreage north of Ames and making a big camping weekend alongside the other visitors who came on Saturday for the party. We were not far from Saylorville for the weekend, so we drove the car instead of trailering it.
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Steve and Sue's place turned into a weekend RV Park. View from the roof of the house[/caption]I drove the motorhome up and got it parked on Friday while Champ followed in the car. It was a good experience for me to drive it solo and turns out I was completely comfortable doing it. Our old group consists of about half family, and half friends who may as well be family. One of the things we have really missed since starting this adventure is camping with our group through the summer months. Going to visit them when they are camping is nice but not the same by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing takes the place of sitting around on a Saturday morning, slowly waking up around a smoldering fire ring and eventually cooking a huge community breakfast that would make most cardiologists see dollar signs. The first mental slip for me happened a couple of nights before we pulled out. I was laying awake doing some 3am planning and started making a mental list of things I needed “to put in the camper” before going camping with the group. Wait a minute…. after 2 years of this I had caught myself thinking like I still had a house and the camper was in the back-yard needing stocked for the big weekend. For a fleeting moment my mind was back in my old life. Pretty weird.
We spent the weekend reveling in the atmosphere that we miss so much. It was our first time immersed in the old group without Deb. No one is used to it, but it was really weird for Champ and I. Her passing is very much an elephant in the room. Everyone feels the presence of her absence, if that makes sense at all. No one talks about it.
The next weird moment was on Sunday morning. We were all standing around, each couple getting ready to pull out. Small talk about yard work, little projects around the house and other things calling them to their homes was being discussed. Champ drove the ‘house’ home on Sunday. He leaned out the window and asked if I was going to follow him to the station, to fill the LP tank or go on home. We both realized instantly how weird that sounded. I laughed and said “you have the house, what am I going to do if I get there first?” We got back to volunteer village and set up quickly. Back at home but not in a different dwelling. It hit us. Home is indeed were we park it. After two years we are finally wrapping our heads around the idea that we are mobile in every sense of the word. I’m doing laundry just like I always did after a camping weekend. We’re happy to sit on soft furniture instead of lawn chairs but we are still in the RV.
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Our summer volunteer family[/caption]As we talked about how much fun we had this weekend, we looked forward to a luau- style village cookout last here in our little neighborhood. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
Until next time…
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