RVing during a Pandemic

Several friends are dealing with major life events at the same time as this Covid-19 pandemic (and the recession): I’m watching as friends replan weddings, deal with hospital stays amid germs, and simply feel the stress of life changes in the midst of major societal changes.

Our situation is complex but not life-threatening.

Between Now and Taking Off

Let’s say one of us gets sick before we take off in the Airstream. We do still have ten days; Tracy must sign the closing papers on the house on a certain date, and we have to finalize insurance and yadda yadda with last-minute items. So what if we get sick during that time?

Because the event that launched us toward the road, Tracy’s early retirement, was so sudden and recent, I haven’t yet practiced driving the truck, much less learned to tow the trailer. So, we need Tracy to be healthy in order to set off. If Tracy is sick and can’t do this challenging process (hooking up, towing, parking at a campsite, unhooking, leveling, and setting up), then we can’t leave.

This will be okay … until the builder who bought out house signs the closing papers, and that can be anytime before the end of April due to a complexity in the contract. When he signs, we need to be out of the house. And we can’t live in the Airstream where it’s parked now in storage.

So that’s a situation we need to troubleshoot.

Once on the Road

If one of us gets sick while we’re on the road, I am guessing the situation will be a little less complex. I am hearing from other full-timers that fewer people are traveling right now, so perhaps campgrounds will have more room in them, and thus we’ll be able to just stay put at our campsite while we’re sick.

I’ve also heard that some people are getting in their campers and hitting the road to get away from society, which would mean we’d be competing for camping spaces (plus diesel, propane, etc.) with even more people. And if we’re sick we’ll want full hook-ups (electricity, water, sewer), so we’d have to be at a campground, not boondocking out in the wild as we’d prefer.

Right now Plan A is to stay healthy and hit the road in ten days, going to Richmond to a state park for a week. Then after we visit friends and family, we’ll head slowly to Texas.

Happy Things in the Meantime

Here are images from the Airstream to end on a happy note.

I’ve mounted photos of a few people we love 🙂 in the bathroom. Plus I have a photo slideshow on my iPad mounted by my bed with pictures of many more people I’ll be thinking about while on the road.

Oh, that lamp in the bathroom has a motion sensor so should turn on when we walk in there in the dark in the middle of the night. Fingers crossed it isn’t more of a pain than it’s worth.

Our new handmade cutting board/sink cover, and the black wooden dog (hard to see above my hat) that my grandmother had on the wall of her sewing area with her scissors hanging on it. I love that I can take this with me.

Plus a photo of Jackie Boy in the snow to remind me of snow … because BYE BYE WINTER.