While We Wait

The country is opening state by state, which—terrible for the health of the people—in our little world is a mixed bag.

Opening Consequences

Lifting of restrictions is great for the owners of this campground: they’d just bought it in October and have been investing in fixing it since then, but with the influx of spring campers delayed until now.

Conversely, it sucks for us here because RVs are already descending on us. According to comments on the campground’s Facebook posts, tons of people are going to be lining up to get in once more restrictions are lifted, and I expect the campground to be full before we leave.

Tracy and I only half joked that if we become surrounded by RVs with loud kids and dogs, we’d pull the shades, turn on music, and just never leave the Airstream for the next two weeks. Already there was a party last night down the path, which Tracy could hear while walking Banjo and this morning I can see the evidence of as trucks line up at the dumpster to throw out bags of beer cans. Seriously.

Not that I’m against camping or drinking beer—ha!

But, had we been able to choose where we camped during the lockdown, we’d have picked a campground with more secluded camping sites. As it is, there are two open spots right in front of us and one behind, ready for who knows who to be partying it up now that they’re out of their houses for the first time, and just feet from us.

On the other hand, the opening of the country (at least this wave) is good for us in planning where we’re going. If we feel confident we’ll be able to find a place to camp, find a grocery store and a laundry mat, then we’ll be able to take off knowing we’ll have options should the shit hit the fan.

In the meantime, we took a day trip.

Finn’s Birthday

My son’s been very busy finishing his fourth year of college quarantined at his dad’s house only a few hours from here, so we drove up to see him for his birthday.

The day was cold and raining, and I failed to plan enough ahead to buy ingredients to make a Key lime pie (I’m grateful to Paul for the substitute). Still, I got to see my kid, and that’s all I wanted.

He’s had his nose to the physics-and-music grindstone (there is such a thing) so closely that I haven’t been bugging him beyond a couple of FaceTimes a week, but as of next week he’ll be done with the semester and back to full-time research work (again, from his dad’s house)—which means maybe he can visit me! I declare us a double bubble, since he and his dad have been secluding themselves so well, and that being near my kid is okay.

Putzing Around

Otherwise, we just wait. Two more weeks in this campground, with at least one week of cold weather before it starts to feel like spring.

I keep rearranging things in the Airstream, which is starting to drive even me nuts much less Tracy. I’m a natural organizer anyway, and living in this small space lends itself to constant revisions on what goes where.

Still, it would be nice not to care so much what’s going on inside the trailer. Outside should be much more interesting.

To Do before We Leave

We’re making lists of all the things we should do before we hit the road, embarrassingly things we should have done when we got here. You know how you get things done when you’re busy (“Okay, next item on the list, bring it!”) but when you’re in downtime it’s hard to get motivated to do that one thing you know you should do?

We have a bunch of those things, including these highlights:

• Wash and wax the Airstream.
• Order one last shipment from Amazon before we lose a mailing address.
• Schedule our final trip to do laundry and final grocery pick-up.
• Measure the dimensions of our rig (clearance height and full length) and write these on a post-it note for the dashboard—DUH, we should have done that before we left.

Like I said, we have two weeks left here with nothing else to do, so we should knock out our long list fairly easily. That is, if we ever leave the Airstream. The other morning while walking Banjo, I actually ran into someone else on the trail! What is this place coming to?

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading this in real-time!