Will our adventure ever start? (Naomi’s version)
Dec. 13: Our adventure is about to begin. On the weekend we had loaded up the RV with tons of our stuff, and the remainder is in boxes in the living room. The RV and the car are in Milroy (way, way down the next valley) at a dealer, getting a tow-hitch. Our renter has let us know that he has started the drive from Oregon and that he expects to arrive on the agreed upon date of Dec. 15.
Chuck goes for a last dental check-up, and gets home 3 hours later, swollen and despondent. He ended up having oral surgery, and the dentist has let him know that he is going to feel a lot worse before he feels better. As well, he will need a post-operative check-up in January.
Our plan to move to the RV on the 15th, drive to Connecticut for Christmas and then start our trip no longer seems so feasible. We start looking for a place to stay in State College (with our dog Rumple), and Naomi moves all the remaining boxes to a friend’s basement. She checks her email when she gets back, and discovers that our renter has had car trouble. For us, this turns out to be a stroke of luck — we got to stay in the house until we were ready to leave on the 20th, and miss several cold and wintry nights in the RV.
Dec. 20: The tow-hitch was ready and Chuck was feeling much better. However, since Chuck needed to return to State College for a post-operative check-up, we decided to leave the RV in storage and the dog at a kennel and head out to Connecticut for the family Christmas and some sightseeing en route. By the time we got to CT late in the evening, Chuck was suffering from a bad cold. Sightseeing was taken off the do-list and we were grateful to be at his parents’ house and not in the RV
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Fortunately, by Christmas, Chuck was feeling better. Jonathan, Elisabeth and Amy all joined us with Chuck’s family and we had a wonderful family celebration, enhanced by side activities such as a crafts afternoon, movie night and enough good food to last for a month.
Dec. 31: We spent a day sightseeing in Connecticut and visited our friends Maddie and Yuan who are at Yale. We are now back where we started in State College. Although there are 3 local RV parks, one closes after Thanksgiving, another had no space for an RV our size and the third requires a left-hand turn onto a highway with no merging lane — our survival instinct is too strong to risk it at our level of inexperience. So, we are at the Days’ Inn, which is pet-friendly and right downtown.
Jan. 3 (the future): All going well, we should be on the road!