We're Off

Picture this. It’s 8:15 on Saturday night. We are finally ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Two very weary grandparents, an exhausted mother, two hyperactive, excited grandsons, and a reluctant, nervous grandcat (aptly named Demon). And off we go!

The 33 foot RV is packed to the gills with all the clothes and equipment we would need for a 4-season trip – think tennis, pickleball, skiing, biking, hiking, tent camping, and sightseeing in such diverse locations as Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Labrador and Newfoundland, Colorado, Washington DC, and Mexico (and points in between). You get the picture! Then throw in enough food to feed five for 2 or 3 weeks, all the clothes, toys, books, car seats, and paraphernalia needed by a 4 and 6 year old, an old cat, litter box, and food, plus piles of stuff that needed to be hauled off Sandi’s boat to make room for crew members (for the voyage to San Francisco), not to mention the things that arrived too late to be loaded on the boat, and you have a very cozy (read chaotic and messy) living space, to say the least.

But off we went! We chose to leave at night to avoid Seattle traffic, which I suppose was light, since the packed freeway was moving at 60 mph. But there was still traffic to navigate, which Lew did with ease and self confidence, and I survived with only a few outbursts of “slow down”! Through Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia we sped, reaching our destination – a rest area south of Olympia – by 11:20 pm.

Then we faced a spatial conundrum. The interior of our RV was a puzzle with moving pieces. In order to transition from function to function (driving mode to sleeping mode, for instance), we had to figure out where to put the cat’s food, the bag of toys and books, the shoes, the fruit basket, the blankets, the pillows, the car seats, and 9 stuffed animals (including a 4 foot ORCA), not to mention 5 people. But with a flurry of activity, puzzle solved, and we settled down for a long (no, actually very short, noisy) summer’s night on I-5. The adventure had begun!