Life on the Road, Week 1: A Whole Lotta Learnin’
Our new lifestyle is no vacation, and that's the point.
Ever since we bought our trailer, I’ve caught myself thinking the same thing over and over again: “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
The emotion behind that thought largely depends on how the day’s going. Sometimes it’s followed by a grin. Other times, it’s followed by a sore back and sunburnt hands wiped across a sweaty forehead.
The second one tends to occur when we’re at a dump station, in case you were wondering.
We did a lot in our first week on the road. We drove over 500 miles. We visited our first national park of the trip, then our first state park. We spent a day at Pebble Beach Golf Links, watching some of the world’s best golfers play at the U.S. Women’s Open.
But when we weren’t out and about, when we were back home with Catsby and Holt (the trailer), we were learning—a lot.
And I had many moments when I thought “I can’t believe we’re doing this” with a sweaty forehead.
Our biggest lesson: We are awful at time management.
On our past road trips and vacations, we didn’t devote much thought to this topic, because frankly, it wasn’t an issue. We sometimes—okay, often—would head out for the day’s adventure a little later than intended, but usually that just meant we would be tardy for breakfast.
Things are very different now that we’re on the road full-time. This isn’t a vacation, after all. It’s our life now.
That means we have to make time to do all the mundane tasks that life requires of us when we’re not on vacation: cooking dinner, washing dishes, doing laundry. That realization settled in on our third or fourth night on the road, when I was washing dirty socks in our sink and hanging them out to dry at 10 p.m.
(For those wondering, it’s a small trailer. We don’t want the laundry to pile up too fast, so we take care of it in small batches when we can.)
There’s also driving. Going into this trip, we knew that our driving time would stretch significantly longer than whatever estimates Google Maps or Apple Maps threw at us. That’s just inevitable when you’re towing an 8,000-lb trailer behind you.
But one factor we didn’t fully anticipate was heat. On our first drive from my parents’ house in the Mojave Desert to Monterey, CA, we were rolling through some areas where the thermostat read 108°F. My pits sweat just thinking about it.
Steve (our truck) had no problem powering through those temperatures, but we were reluctant to make Catsby do the same. We took frequent, lengthy breaks so she could have some food and water, and to ensure she was staying cool. We also wanted to go easy on her; she’s traveled with us before, but it had been almost six weeks since our last drive together. We wanted to ease her into things.
Altogether, that turned our estimated 6-hour drive into an 11-hour drive. We ate dinner at 9:30 that night, and then we crawled into bed, exhausted. Thinking “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
Things got easier after that, though. We had dinner at 8 the next night, then at 7 the night after that. Progress.
We have to keep reminding ourselves—this lifestyle is new to us. We’re still learning. That’s why Jason planned for us to visit places we’ve already seen during our first couple weeks on the road (minus Pebble Beach—crossed one item off his bucket list with that one). This way, we can get into the swing of things without feeling the pressure of getting out and doing as much as possible in this new, exciting place.
It turns out, right now the truly exciting place is wherever we’ve parked our trailer for the night. And as many times as I’ve wiped my sweaty forehead, we’ve also had a lot of great moments in our new home. Making a fresh lunch in Pinnacles National Park. Watching Catsby run out her zoomies within a 176-square-foot space.
Moments when I grin and think “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”