Airstream Life

One of our road trip reads has been The Martian.  I listened to this on audiobook a while back and loved it, absolutely loved it. The science, the problem solving, the suspense.  It’s like MacGyver on Mars. Just awesome and I knew the kids would love it.

Trouble is, it’s about a guy stuck on Mars…so a lot of swearing, as would be expected for a guy stuck on Mars. It’s not exactly appropriate for a kid to read or listen to the audiobook.  Which left me the option of reading the book aloud and using my mama censor to cut out the cursing.  The idea of yelling an entire book while driving was not very appealing, so I problem-solved like Mark Watney and found a solution: the portable voice amplifier. You know, the things that tour guides and docent at the museum use?

It’s perfect for reading in the car, and I’m looking forward to pulling it out in public some time. Like, in the mall or some place horrifying like that.

The kids are loving the book so far. Most of our camping on this trip has been boondocking, so living off of limited power, water, and sewer. As such, the kids have taken to calling the Airstream…the hab.

 

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Probably the last thing we should be doing is heading out on a road trip, but seeing how we’re already homeless…might as well be homeless somewhere interesting. So off we go, for a month out East and hope everything moves forward smoothly without us.

Leaving Grand Rapids.

Taking the Airstream internationally.

Kids had another month of school left after knockdown, so we decided to live in the Airstream at a local campground for the month. This was our first real exposure to the subculture of residential camper folk. We’ve never stayed very long at any campground, and most always at state or national parks to boot. This is a whole different story.  Especially off season.

On the upside, it’s a world away from our uptight neighborhood that polices everything from the length of your backyard lawn (no more than 6 inches, or you’ll get reported) to how loud your dog is. Camping people really don’t mind anyone else’s business.  The downside? Yeah, I saw far too many pit bulls, men’s cracks and Bud Light than I really prefer. There’s gotta be middle ground somewhere and this is probably why I haven’t gone full libertarian. I’ve seen humanity.

But for the kids, it was a blast. Imagine coming home to a campground every night: playground, gaga ball, pool, inflatables, tractor rides and new little friends setting up camp every day.  They loved it. I guess that’s all that matters.

My sadness at Justified finishing out its final season is somewhat blunted by watching an episode unfold outside my window at the trailer park.  It’s 80 degrees out and we watched two adult males and a female go into that shed and shut the door. For 15 minutes.

Raylan would go knock on that shed door. No way I’m knocking on that door.

Probably find Dewey Crowe in there.

Long day. We’re now officially homeless nomads. The house is gone. I thought our house looked small during knockdown, until I pulled into the driveway of the campground and looked at our tiny new “home”.

What have we done…

It doesn’t help that the Airstream is utterly packed to the gills with random stuff. We successfully moved out of the house before it came down, but didn’t take time to move into the camper. I didn’t exactly oversee the kids’ packing as well as I should have, and they’ve squirreled away far too much stuff for Airstream life.

Seriously kids, you don’t all need your plush robes. Or three stuffed animals a piece. I’m still trying to figure out how to manage the cello, viola, and keyboard.