Hold on to your hats, folks, we're off for a ride and it's a long one!
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Never did I ever imagine myself living in an RV, oftentimes in what I consider the 'middle of nowhere'. But that's exactly what happened a few years ago. I should've known...when I met the man who became my husband, he often rhapsodized about his younger years when he'd lived in a converted bus and drove here, there and everywhere, exploring, hiking and having adventures. Being über traditional in my living habits, these tales left me staring at him in consternation. He definitely has a wide streak of the unconventional in him. However, he eventually built a nearly normal house (powered by wind machine, solar panels and the occasional fire-up of the generator) and he seemingly left his gypsy leanings behind. Often accusing me of 'luring him back onto the grid', his reminiscences were so infused with enthusiasm and notes of longing for those 'good 'ol days', I would find myself alternately shaking off a frisson of alarm, assuring myself that those days were over for him or fantasizing about what that kind of life might be like.
A few years after I met Patrick, he was diagnosed with severe COPD. If you're not familiar with it, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is an umbrella term for a group of progressive respiratory ailments, including emphysema, that make it increasingly hard to breathe. It's incurable, but manageable with medications. By 2010, though, he was unable to work any longer and we had to face the future, which was looking pretty grim without his income. He also said he didn't think he could live through one more northern Indiana winter. As we cast around for some livable solutions, one kept coming back to us repeatedly and looked better and better the longer we looked at it.
Now let me describe northern Indiana to you. We were located a couple of miles south of the Michigan-Indiana border and about 90 miles due east of Chicago. This area is subject to the infamous 'lake-effect' snow in winter. If you've never heard that term it means 'snow falling on the lee side of a lake, generated by cold dry air passing over warmer water, especially in the Great Lakes region'. The counties lying in the path of the lake-effected fronts can expect to be freezing by Halloween (I vividly remember making my kids' Halloween costumes big enough to pull them on over down coats), and getting progressively colder as the winter months wear on. It was not unusual to wake up to two feet of snow at least once each winter. I remember someone once giving us a roof rake so Patrick wouldn't have to climb up on the roof to shovel the accumulated snow off. (Thank you, Cindy S.)
But mostly the snow just keeps coming periodically until the piles at the sides of the roads are high and filthy by March. At the very least, we'd wake up to freezing fogs. And the ice storms! I remember an ice storm one year that had me looking out the door to try to figure out what the loud bangs were I was hearing. Instead of the shotgun toting lunatic I expected, it turned out to be electrical transformers on the power poles bursting from the weight of the thick ice forming on them. In northern Indiana, the sun disappears in November and doesn't return until April. There is rampant vitamin D deficiency in 'Michiana' due to the lack of sunshine for so many months along with Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's gray and depressing five to six months out of the year.
By January and February, it is bitter. The insult to the injury here is the heavy humidity prevalent to the area. In summer, it's hot and steamy and winters are cold and wet--an ideal breeding ground for illness. People get sick very frequently, as did we when we lived there. There always seems to be some bug or virus making the rounds at everyone's workplaces with great regularity. We could no longer afford the exposure to the constant colds and flu going around as any such malady went immediately to my husband's lungs and we have an inordinate fear of him getting pneumonia. He's had it at least 12 times over his lifetime and he feels certain one more bout will be the final one for him. We had to get away from what felt like to us a dangerous climate for someone with a compromised immune system and weak, impaired lungs. The wild, wild west with its low, low humidity beckoned with a hypnotic and seductive finger. Climate-wise, it was where my husband needed to be if he were to have very many more years before succumbing to the end stages of his illness.
We don't have tons of money, so the best solution seemed to be to take up the fulltime RV lifestyle. Having been enamored of the notion for years, my husband poured himself into research about the lifestyle. Several times a week, he'd regale me with his online discoveries about seniors on the road, RVing clubs, areas to be explored, and so on. I was pretty amazed at what he revealed...there were thousands of graying nomads rolling along our highways and byways. He promised to take me places where I could see firsthand where 'the finger of God carved and painted the earth'.
He talked longingly of parking on BLM land, 'dry-camping', using a generator only when we had to, storing potable water and employing all sorts of thrifty living habits. It was scary as all hell to me...but intriguing at the same time. Could I do it? I'd never even been camping! I'd never set foot in an RV in my life! I'm a town girl! In some ways, I guess I was sort of a princess; an earthy one to be sure, but a princess nevertheless. Well, we weren't really going to have a lot of choice; this was the cheapest way we could find to live. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the perspective, we found we would not be able to live quite as 'rough' as my husband dreamed of. He's dependent on an oxygen concentrator which requires electricity. Thus, we'd have to stay in RV parks. That was fine by me; I didn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to adapt to dry-camping (i.e. no water, electric or sewer hookups). I mean, how would I run my hair-dryer?
So after much preparing, we set off. We headed straight for Rapid City, South Dakota, a state known to be 'fulltimer friendly'. What that means is that when you live on the road full time, like we do, you still have to have a state of residency. Texas and Florida are two other states that many fulltimers use for residency purposes. We chose South Dakota primarily because there is no state income tax. We hooked up with America's Mailbox, a business that offers mail forwarding, vehicle plate handling, and they also have an RV park where you can stay while you're in the state obtaining your driver's licenses and establishing residency. All that's required for that is that you provide proof that you've been in the state for 24 hours and return every five years to renew your license. Your hotel, motel or RV park rental receipt is sufficient proof. The state sends us our voting ballots and we even got a plate for my vintage mini-camper (acquired in 2012) long distance. When my husband got called for jury duty, he called and told them we were full-timers and the state said 'Oh, ok. We'll take you off the list." They are so laid back about this unconventional lifestyle.
Thus began our journey. In South Dakota, we saw the Badlands, Wall Drugstore of countless billboard fame, Custer State Park, the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. After driving through the Badlands in the passenger seat of an RV my intense fear of heights was sent into a fever pitch. Nothing like being perched up high in the front of a rig on a road built on the edge of a cliff and seeing the earth drop away below your right shoulder. Our plans were to go from South Dakota to Yellowstone in Wyoming but my acrophobia had escalated to the point of nausea and terror. I begged him not to take us there. Things got very chilly for a few days between us, but he capitulated and after South Dakota, we headed south for the Grand Canyon.
South of Rapid City, we began to have trouble with the RV. We had our second (our first happened as we crossed the Mississippi) flat tire on a lonely highway where there was nothing as far as the eye could see. Nothing! After five hours, a sweet Navajo man sent by our road service plan showed up with a replacement tire for us and we were on the road again. As we crossed the state line into Nebraska, the rig began losing power. We could barely make it up any hills, our speed often dropping down to 35 mph. We crept from small town to small town looking for someone, anyone who could help. Nothing. We made it to Scott's Bluff where we spent a week taking the RV to several different places in search of repair. No one could even say with any certainty what was wrong with the thing, but we sure got charged for all the tinkering around. The last place we'd tried seemed like they'd found the problem and away we went, still heading south. Not fifty miles out of Scott's Bluff, the issue returned. We decided to soldier on, so we unhooked the car we were towing to relieve the rig of its weight, which I then drove, following the RV as we limped to Cheyenne, WY. By the time we reached the city limits, Patrick could not get the thing to go faster than 25 mph. The repair place wanted us to spend a ridiculous amount of money getting things replaced that didn't really need it on top of fixing the actual problem which turned out to be one of the fuel pumps. Hubby stood fast, refusing to cave to the up-selling. In retaliation, they made us wait for days before putting the thing up on a hoist and getting down to business.
But FINALLY it was fixed! We pulled out of Cheyenne, and thanks to the rude repair place, the very name of that town left a bad taste in my mouth. From Wyoming, we drove through Colorado, spending a couple of nights, then on to Utah, where we visited Arches Nat'l Park, spending a couple of nights there, too. Then we headed to Arizona.
In our initial planning stage, we'd decided the Sedona, AZ area was where we wanted to end up. Artsy-fartsy as I am, this place seemed to be calling me. But research also showed that Sedona had become a major tourist trap, thus very expensive, even at RV parks. Cottonwood, however, was only 17 miles from Sedona and much more reasonable. We would go there.
But first, we had to stop at the Grand Canyon. I'd only seen pictures so I was wholly unprepared when my husband escorted me to the rim and I looked out over Desert View for the first time. I was so overcome by the sheer vastness of it and the splendid array of color, I was moved to tears. I had to turn away so the other tourists didn't see me standing there crying. Indeed, the finger of God had been there working away for millennia and I could feel Him standing next to me, showing me His artwork.
We spent nearly a week there, taking the trams every day visiting this viewpoint and that viewpoint, drinking in the glory that is the Grand Canyon. By about the fourth or fifth day, neither of us felt very well at all and soon realized we had a touch of altitude sickness. We were, after all, at around 7000 feet. It's much more common at 8000 feet plus, but it was an elevation I'd never experienced and that Patrick had not been at for decades. Considering his wonky lungs, it was no surprise he was ill. We decided it was time to pack up and head south to our first winter destination, Cottonwood.
Researching RV parks online, we found a charming park that featured plenty of trees and was situated right on the Verde River. The price seemed reasonable, so we called and booked a week. We planned to try the place and see how we liked it. The photos online were very attractive and I couldn't wait to arrive. This was our first lesson in taking the online images posted on RV park websites with a BIG grain of salt. The 'charming' park turned out to be an worn out old fifties era trailer park that had been converted into an RV park. The first night we were there, after we settled everything into place, Patrick stepped out to have a cigarette. I finished up a few things and stepped out after him...to find a police car parked smack in front of our rig, several more off to our right, lights flashing and cops galore. Wait, what?!?! There was much yelling and scuffling going on a couple of sites over. Turned out the fellow in that site, thereafter known to us as 'The Criminal', had a fondness for getting drunk on Friday nights, bringing home a girl he'd picked up in the bar, then beating the crap out of her. Well, that night's girl wasn't putting up with it, ran off and called the law. All the yelling was 'The Criminal' being pulled out from underneath his rig where he'd hidden, crying "Ow, ow, you're hurting me, you're hurting me!" Patrick and I turned to each other, eyes big as saucers and said simultaneously, "Think this might have been a mistake..." (referring to the park we'd chosen.)
It actually quieted down after that, but that was not a good first impression. Sadly, this was one of the better parks in town, so we tried to stick it out there. It didn't take long for me to get bored out of my mind, despite our little day trips to sightsee. In addition, I was very depressed, thinking of the family I'd left behind, the job I hadn't been quite emotionally ready to leave and a myriad of other things. One of those things included the news of my daughter's pregnancy and I wasn't there to be with her! Wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.
When December rolled around and my previous employer needed some help with some reorganization, I couldn't return to northern Indiana fast enough. So in January, after the holidays, my husband drove me to Flagstaff and put me on the train (because I'm too afraid of flying). In 36 hours, my sister and my son were picking me up. Home again, home again!
Stay tuned for Part 2...
Till next time,
"The Road goes ever on and on, Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can..." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Fellowship of the Ring
Waiting for Part 2!
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