How it all started.
It all began as a sort-of-joke.
Several years back, I told Sandi that we should take off a whole summer and travel across country in an RV. The look on her face was priceless.
Sandi grew up in Philadelphia and had only camped with her daughters for a couple of (miserable – sleepless) nights years ago. To her, camping meant agony.
She knew that I had grown up camping my whole life, being raised in West Virginia. I had experienced camping from one extreme to the other. When I was much younger, I had slept in only a lightweight sleeping bag – no tent – while spending the week fly fishing or along the river with my fishing pals, many nights camping in my personal canvas wall tent (no floor) or on the many scouting campouts, small travel trailers with my parents (a Serro Scotty, borrowed from relatives, then a home-made hard-sided pop-up I helped my dad build), moving up to a large family tent, and on to a large Coleman pop-up tent camper as well as travel trailers, fifth wheels and motor homes owned by family or friends,
…..My canvas wall tent and the Serro Scotty. …………………..The home-made hard-sided pop-up.
….Our Hillary canvas family tent set up. ……………………………….The Coleman pop-up.
Sandi asked how this would work and I replied that we simply point the RV West and go. She could not handle such a simple philosophy for travel: “What if we are driving along one road when there is a beautifully scenic road parallel that we did not know about?” I realized I had left a lot of details out and explained that we would wisely educate ourselves on the areas we would be heading through and all the options they might present but that we basically do not set up any detailed plans. We would, naturally, have a list of things we definitely want to do and see along the way, with a list of things to see if we can, and a list of things to see if they are on our path. She liked that idea.
That was about four years ago. We talked about the idea but were not burning to get started. I am retired but she still works part time during the school year so we simply started discussing the idea while she dug in and started learning more and more about RVs and camping.
