The emotional side after two month of travel

Today is Monday, October 1^st and we are on the road for two full month! Wow! It actually feels like a lot longer… The life where we had a large house, lots of space, a dishwasher, washer and dryer, heated bathroom floors, many, many rooms and own space for privacy seems to be ages ago!

I do miss my Hilton Head friends, the socializing, the hanging out, the lunches, the good conversations! I realized that I do not miss the heat or humidity though J. We are in Central Oregon right now,: the towns of Bend and Klamath Falls and Crater Lake. Every day the sun shines, the air is very dry and nighttime temperatures are in the low 40s. That is quite nice but Ben and I do have very dry skin and lips (which is bothersome).

By the way, since we started the trip 8 weeks ago we have not had one full day of rain! It rained approx. 3 nights and two half days! That’s it!!! Isn’t that amazing?

Even on the Olympic Peninsula, where it supposedly always rains, we had nothing but sunshine! Most days we eat outside at our picnic table…which makes life in our RV so much easier! If the weather is nice and the campground in beautiful nature then life cannot get better! Unfortunately we do not always find RV parks in beautiful nature; especially when we plan to visit cities.

Right now it seems week 4 and 5 were the toughest ones (so far), after quite some fighting, miscommunications, frustrations and some tears and then finally some good, creative communications we are on a better path. We try to stay longer in one place, try to give the other ones more space and team up in pairs so the 3^rd person is off for some time alone. That seems to work much better! Each one of us misses different things and we also need different things to be happy, so compromising is a huge effort in our family J. But it seems we all settled in our own way into the new way of life. While I think life cannot go on like this forever, Benjy and Manfred want to go on and on and on and on. Interestingly they are not bothered by the extremely tight space. We will see how this ends?!

Tommy interrupting my work!

Tommy found a place in our family! He settled right in, like Manfred had predicted. That is a huge relief for Benjy. He finally has a friend, someone to play with! And Tommy does like to play….he is young, energetic and demanding and keeps Benjy (and me) quite busy! 

Too big for the scratching post :-)

Helping with home work!

Now we travel with a cat! By the way, Tommy does not really like to drive. I guess he did so well the first week because he was still all mixed up from having been neutered. He obviously needed more rest and sleep and did not mind the driving. However, after he became his old curious, energetic self he did not care for driving in a car anymore…we tried 100 different ways but he would not settle down. Finally we left him locked into the bedroom in our trailer (I traveled with him, laying on the bed, reading a book) and sure enough: that was his home, he knew the room and settled right into looking out the window and even falling asleep for a bit! He is still alert and easily frightened but he does not really seem to mind. Whenever we arrive at an RV Park, he loves to be back in the living room, playing with his toys, hanging on his favorite places and going for walks on his leash. 

Yes, he even accepts being leashed! Naturally he would love to run free and I am pretty sure he would not run away…..but we are afraid he might get lost. Too many different campgrounds in such a short amount of time!

We stayed one week in Bend, OR and in that RV Park we met 5 other campers with cats! On the leash, walking their cats…..so we had talks between “cat people”. Benjy absolutely loved it! First thing in the morning he walked Tommy over to meet “Kitty” and “Ranger”, two tomcats living/vacationing in our “street”.  I am still amazed about the surprising turn our RV life took! Even Manfred walks Tommy on the leash!!!

Like always, the nature we see is mind-boggling!!! Crater Lake is majestic! I absolutely loved it! The campground we stayed in was in a National Forest at a lake…so, so beautiful! Hard to describe! It is not hard to feel close to God in this kind of environment.

So on the one hand we have the incredible beautiful nature, the perfect weather and many times great RV Parks and on the other hand all the things that do not work: like internet, that seems to be an ongoing challenge! Even having our own internet with Verizon and our own network with …those machines, they never seem to work. Something breaks, we have to send it in and having it send back is the big, big problem!!! So many times we went to the post office or an UPS office in some town to pick something ordered and expected up and it is NOT there! Frustration!!! RV water pump broke, hitch plate comes loose every time after driving, air mattress of Ben’s bed deformed and shows weird, uncomfortable bumps, one of our three gas burners on the stove broke….there is always something! After 2 months we learned that this is the name of the game! We are NOT on vacation! This is real life! Like when you own a home, there is always something…owning and living on an RV is not much different. Except that you can move your home to wherever you want to J!

Ben exploring a pumice desert

Ben after a grey jay (camp robber) stole half of his lunch!

grey jay or camp robber

 In conclusion I can say we do better than 2-3 weeks ago! Probably because so many dear friends are praying for us…! Keep doing so, please !

In 9 days my parents will arrive from Germany! We are going to pick them up in Las Vegas and then we travel together for 2 weeks! But they will sleep in motels or cabins. That will be another challenging experience!