Our First Week

Where to begin? How about with the highs and lows. First the high.

On Friday, the 16th of June, at Glendo state park we paddleboarded, mountain biked, swam and then did it all over again. We watched an incredible sunset and then headed back to camp. We opened up the awning, finally turned on our outdoor speakers and streamed a good Spotify playlist through them (Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Blues Traveler, Traffic, Marshall Tucker…you get the idea) and got our frisbee out and threw it in the dying light in the grassy area in front of our camp spot. It was a moment of happiness and just plain fun the likes of which we hadn’t had in a long while.

This trip was difficult to prepare for. It was hard on everyone. Scary when we thought about the implications. Exciting when we thought about the opportunities. Sad when we thought about what/who we were leaving. It was all consuming and left us little time for each other and moments like the one above didn’t really occur for the first half of the year. So to see our kids just laughing and running and being silly and fully engaged with us was great.

Now to the low:

On our first night at Devil’s Tower after our second long travel day I watched the raw emotions this experience has stirred up rage through our kids like wildfire. One of my children is very passionate and has strong emotions which come and go quickly and I think she is frustrated with the lack of personal space and the difficulty of organizing her things. She needs more space than we can give her. Another one is actually doing better than I would have guessed since she was so against the idea for so long, but she is easily beat down when something doesn’t work as she expected and she crashes and burns. And the other is doing very well at trying to keep the peace but she is tired and needs more sleep than we are getting. All of this causes huge swells in the sea of their emotions and I’ve seen larger crests and deeper troughs than ever before. I feel for them and hope that they can adjust and that they can find a foothold among the vast ocean of their feelings (sorry, the ocean metaphor is just too good).

In between all this we are constantly learning. Learning how to organize our things and keep the small space tidy (currently failing, but not for lack of trying). Learning how to home school and find the time for it. The girls are doing really well with it and Wendy, of course, is excelling at having material for them and making time for it. I am using my skills from tutoring to help Teagan with reading and am trying to give some insight about the Lakota tribe who are so prominent and important to this area. We are learning about all the systems and components in this RV. I have already broken (and repaired) a cabinet door (crushed when trying to close my outdoor kitchen door before shutting the cabinet inside), troubleshot a faulty sewer tank sensor, used a flexible cutting board to fill our fresh water tank with a jug (we now have a funnel), superglued a broken TV frame piece, adjusted the door since no one but myself could open it. And on and on. I do hope this thing can last our constant usage. These RV’s (at least the ultralight ones) do not seem to be built very stoutly.

We leave Devil’s Tower for Custer, South Dakota today. It was stormy last night and is now blustery and like autumn outside. Two days ago it was 92 degrees. The weather is dynamic in these parts. The tower dominates the landscape. It stands up on a pedestal of sorts which puts it up high and if you don’t look up you can’t see it, but you can feel it. I can see why people are drawn to it. It is like a beacon and very unusual and other-worldly. Amazingly, geologists have differing opinions of how it was formed: volcanic plug, laccolith, etc. It is a mystery and that makes it even more remarkable. Visually, it is absolutely stunning, like a sculpture.

Time to get started packing. We are moving on today.