Lighting Out & the Homestretch

Nick Woodland April 16, 2023

We all handle the stresses and anxieties of this trip differently. I’ve had shingles rashes popping up in different places for the last two months. Ava picked up a severe case of strep and could barely swallow for two days (we were 120 miles away from the nearest Urgent Care center at the time and could see the telltale ribbons of white in her throat with a flashlight). We finally got her to a doc and got her antibiotics but not before she passed it to Wendy. I’m hoping that now it is gone. Sienna has had to deal with eczema that sometimes burns at the slightest touch. As luck would turn out we have a dermatology PA in the family and she hooked us up with some topical steroids to finally deal with it. Teagan has growing pains. Wendy has had bouts of vertigo and has been dealing with a tweaked knee for a couple weeks.

Seeing doctors, as you might imagine, is not easy when you don’t have primary care. Parking the rig in Urgent Care lots while we try and get ourselves checked out is a fact of life. Watching receptionists look at our insurance card and gives us blank looks when they can’t find it in their systems is also par for the course. 

We only have 8 weeks left before the real world will call us back. That’s pretty hard to believe. We have stayed in 75 different locations so far (campgrounds, public lands, harvest hosts, houses, hotels, etc). We’ve never stayed longer than 12 days in one location. We’ve met up with 17 of our friends and family members. We’ve driven 10 different vehicles and taken 19 different forms of transport (think ferries, golf carts, boats, subways, kayaks, trains, etc). The stats continue with 39 national parks and 19 state parks and 27 different kinds of gas stations!

Wendy and I had a date night recently thanks to my family in Joshua Tree. We visited a sushi place and had tonkatsu ramen and a dragon roll while talking, of course, about our trip. We thought all the way back to our very first stop in Glendo State Park in Wyoming and the almost-impossible-to-relate feeling of freedom and self-sufficiency and incredulity at the remarkableness of our situation. (How’s that?) You know the story, we’d sold everything and moved into an RV and hit the road. Nothing will ever compare to the way it felt at that first stop, though. Wendy and I would look at each other and share this electric feeling of amazement at our circumstances. There was a lightness to our steps. I can remember big smiles and lots of laughs as we used our inflatable paddleboards for the first time on the reservoir, or as we threw a frisbee in camp at sundown, or while cooking our first meal outside on our new stove. Or the awe at the power of the thunderstorms that rolled in so fast you barely had time to duck into the camper. The feeling of camaraderie was tight and strong amongst us as we realized what we were in for. The world was truly before us and open. We could go anywhere, do anything. Maybe there was a feeling of invincibility and no small amount of pride at the fact that we had made it happen.

It’s not that those feelings have faded or weren’t present at the next stop, or the stop after that, or even at the 35th stop (North Beach Camp in St. Augustine, FL BTW) it’s just that the first stop was special and will always be special in its very own way. Glendo, for us, will now and forever more be synonymous with adventure and with that rare feeling of suspense and exhilaration you get when lighting out for new lands and new experiences.

After two months in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of southern AZ and CA it is a shocking transition to be in the lush, green rolling hills of the central California coast. Is there a country as diverse in its landscapes as ours? As diverse in its cultures (Euro colonial settlers and old money on the east coast vs. pioneering can-do homesteaders out west), foods (NYC Bagels vs. San Fran sourdough), accents (Boston vs Savannah), roads (don’t get me started), climates (FL humidity vs. NM high desert aridity), stereotypes (CO: fitness-freak capitol, WI or IL: shootin’ the breeze over beers, NY: hospitality is not our strong suite, TX: cinch that bible belt tight, FL: here we are driving past yet another retirement development, AZ: oh, you’re a snowbird?, CA: prices stink, politics stink, but the weather sure is nice). The dichotomies of this country and our travels through them have been fascinating. 

I hope some of that fascination stays with my kids as we approach the point of living our new life – a whole new journey on its own – beyond this adventure.

So now we approach the end of this journey. We all have mixed feelings. The girls talk more often now about what they want in a house. In fact, they talked more about what they want in a house than they did about the majestic redwoods soaring overhead as we visited them for the first time in Muir Woods. The redwoods had been something they had all wanted to see back when we started this adventure. I guess the novelty has worn off and they don’t care if they are looking at the Mona Lisa itself. They just want a house with 4 bedrooms (yeesh) and two floors (seems bigger) and perhaps a community pool.

I don’t know if I want this to end or not. I do…and I don’t. We are all, undoubtedly, sick of this RV. It’s been 302 days! We are tired of being in each other’s space and desperate to just have something of our own and our own space to do it in. Our kids want to go back to school and make friends. They most certainly need a break from their parents. We are desperate for some routine and, oddly, a break from our routine.

So, to that end, we are going to change things up for the last chapter of the Wandering Woodlands. The camper is going into storage for a month. We will jump in the Tahoe and do an old fashioned road trip up the coast to Seattle staying in hotels and rentals along the way. The cost we will save in gas by not towing will go toward lodging (presumably). We’ll be able to move quickly and dash in and out of every nook and cranny we see. No more dealing with Dad and his stiff arm on the wheel as he refuses to pull in somewhere for fear of getting stuck with the trailer. That’s how we missed the World’s Largest Pistachio.

After our time up in the corner-pocket of America we will head back to this area, pick up our camper and head east on I-80 into Nevada, through Utah, into Wyoming and back to CO. Wendy will update everyone soon on our plans for when we return to CO.

Thanks for reading!