Full-time RV people seem to have one common thread, we crave variety and a change of scenery. We also hate extreme weather. However, we also share a common human trait with everyone else. A deep-seated need for routine and structure. It is a difficult thing to come by in this lifestyle but, I am finding as we move through our third year that it is very necessary to strike a balance between routine and variety lest, we lose our minds.
Champ and I have found it work camping. We have settled into a nice routine of coming back to Saylorville each summer season to work in a familiar place we both love and be near our family and life- long friends. We satisfy the desire for variety by going to a different location and job each winter season. As tempting as it is to return to some of the places we have worked so far, we are not quite ready to quit dabbling in new corners of the country.
Even the veteran couples I have talked to who don’t work camp and simply travel about lapping up all the United States has to offer, often say after a couple of years they got tired of the constant upheaval. Many gradually settled into their own routine of sorts by splitting their time each year between a few favorite places where they visit kids, friends or other family and in general feel they are in a familiar home-like place. Some have even found themselves in a network of reunions with other travelers they have come to know on the road. Others chose that time to start work camping at places they particularly like and want to revisit for extended periods of time.
As work campers, Champ and I are noticing we have indeed found our stride. I sew up our job for each winter along about December the previous year. When we arrive at our winter destination, we have established a routine of checking out the area, seeking out the preferred places to shop and the nearest hospital. I go to the town library to get a visitors card and pick the librarians brain for info about the area. They are a wealth of information as they tend to be long time citizens and eager to share the finer points of their hometown. We find a route for our daily walks, I send the kids our mailing address for the park where we are working, and we go about getting to know our volunteer counterparts. Then, of course there are video chats home on the holiday’s and the winter birthdays that we miss each winter. Routine.
This spring, like the two previous, we arrived back in Central Iowa and promptly made the rounds seeing the kids. We have gotten in the habit of picking up our daughter’s boys from school one of the first days back and bringing them out to our place at the lake. The first week is filled with reunions. Soon after our return, we host Mother’s Day Breakfast and then the regular interval of summer season birthdays begins. It is punctuated each year by a handful of graduations, usually at least one wedding and, we hope, no funerals. Regular overnight visits with grand kids and babysitting dates, little league and soccer games fill our summer when we are not working for the lake. By now we have settled into a nice routine of our three-day work week for Saylorville. This year Champ is able to manage his time and duties pretty autonomously. I have eased into a nice rhythm of working for Natural Resources Monday’s and Wednesdays with Tuesday set aside to finalize the newsletters that I write for the park and submit each Wednesday morning. I sit on the patio in front of my motor home and watch the birds go about their spring nesting and breeding routines, that include nesting in the home made wren house that I hang up in the tree in front. I smile as I watch my two cats start to remember their summer home and lay in the same places and scratch on the same tress and stumps as the previous year. Even animals need routine.
Mother's Day with the kids 
Spring Welcome Back Happy Hour at our place 
Loading the mowers for a full day of work 
Building her new nest
People who travel all the time tell me they build their needed routines around making calls home at regular times, planning their time in the area within a sort of framework that develops over time. Planning their next few stops and of course things like grocery shopping and laundry give them a sense of normality in this very unconventional lifestyle.
It’s a funny thing, when we were static, living in our house and going about our pre-retirement life we were stifled by our routine. It was mind-numbingly monotonous. We craved the variety that this life promises. After three years we still love the adventure and change of scenery and have learned to incorporate just enough routine to make us feel secure and normal.
Until Next Time...
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