Van life dreaming becomes our reality

Road trippin

  August 23 we celebrate 30 years of marriage. We have this special opportunity to travel for a few months. We love Europe and almost went there again but with the Delta virus taking over the world we didn’t want to get there and have everything shut down again. Actually we would have gone to Greece but I’m sure glad we didn’t since its sadly on fire right now. Driving cross country has always been a dream of mine so it seems the perfect opportunity. Last year we bought this little Winnebago travato van. We’ve had great little adventures in it so far but now we will be calling this van home for the next two months. I’m a vagabond at heart. There is no better way to commemorate 30 years of marriage than to lock ourselves up together in a tiny Rv for two months and see if we make it to 31. 

  Actually this passion for van life goes back to our early years. Our first car was a 1979 Volkswagen bus. After a few months of married life Jimmie said lets go on vacation ,I have 3 weeks paid vacation. I said “how are we going to do that? We have no money, like not even an extra 10$”. He said “that’s okay, I have a credit card”. Made perfect sense to an 18 and a 21 year old. So off we set in our van for a 3 week adventure. To this day we both think back on that trip as one of our fondest memories. We charged everything, even the cooler to store our food. We would buy canned chili beans and cook them over and open fire and it tasted like the best gourmet meal we ever had. We slept in our van and just cruised. We found ourselves on the Umpqua river in Oregon. We were hungry and we had a fishing pole. Jimmie hadn’t yet learned the art of sharing and he was hogging the fishing pole. The water was so crystal clear you could watch the fish come bite on his fish bait which was some sticky pink stuff we bought that attracts fish. He would impatiently try to pull the fish in but they kept getting away. So I rigged up a hook, a weight and some of that pink bait on the spool of fishing wire. I would cast it out and wait till the fish would swallow it good, then I would swing the line over my head. The poor fish would crash on the rock behind me and I’d finish him off on the rocks. Pretty soon we were both catching fish like crazy. After We had a plethora of trout we hiked back to our van. We stopped somewhere just down the road maybe for some butter or something and saw a sign that informed us only fly fishing was allowed. Not only that, but you could only catch and release the native fish. Our eyes got really big and we ate those native  fish up right quick so we didn’t have to bail ourselves out of jail with our credit card. I mean we already had smashed them on the rocks so we may as well eat them.

  Our favorite adventures are those in which we make it up as we go along. So our plans are really to have No plans. We hope to make it to Florida, but with world conditions as they are we know any plans could change at any point. Right now Florida is an epicenter of Covid, so we will keep an eye on that. The world is on fire or flooding or being banged up with golf ball sized hail. So we will do our best to stay safe, find joy in each day, make new friends and see some old friends on the way. I have had the best 30 years with Jimmie and my hope is these next few months will fill us both with minds and hearts full of good memories. At the end of life that’s what I’d want. Good memories, not things, just good memories.

   So let the travato travels begin!