Nesting . . . Can’t Wait to Get this Rig on the Road

Since the weather has started warming up lately, Michael and I have been spending more time in the RV, albeit parked in the driveway. I sit out there on sunny afternoons, what few of them we’ve had lately, and we sleep out there some nights. (My parents live with us, so the kids are supervised.) But it’s just more economical and convenient for us to do most of our living in the house rather than to run the generator a lot. 

Sleeping out there, listening to the crickets chirping at night and the birds chirping in the morning, well, it’s just about more than I can bear. We’ve been planning our summer trip to the Smokies. Erv (that’s the RV) and the family recently went off and left me to go to Louisiana for a weekend while I stayed home and worked. I keep reading all these wonderful full-time RV living blogs, and well, the travel bug bit me when I was just a little kid, and basically the road is calling my name so loudly that I just can’t take it anymore.

The last time I felt this much anticipation was when I was in my last trimester of pregnancy, and instinct made me start nesting then just like it is now. This week, I’ve pulled our dishes, pots and pans, towels, extra sheets and the shower curtain out of the attic. I spent hours re-washing everything and now all that stuff sits in the RV waiting for us to start using it again.

Sadly, all I can do now is count down the days ‘til June gets here and we make our great escape.

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Our RV's First Big Trip

Sure, the Erv (that’s what I’ve been calling the motor home lately . . . you know, Erv like Ervin, or Erv like how I would pronounce “rv” if it were one word instead of two letters) has been on a couple trips down the road since we got it. The first trip was a couple hours drive when we brought it home. The second was about an hour down the road to a festival, more of a trial run for when Erv starts traveling more extensively.

Last week, the Erv made its first big trip. Michael and the girls and our friend Kool K, who does Elvis impersonations, and his kids all traveled down to Louisiana, while I stayed home and worked to fund said trip. (Nooooo, I’m not bitter. Does it sound like I’m bitter?)  So, from our home to Louisiana and back, Erv traveled a little over 1700 miles. 

One of the criteria on our must-have list when we were looking for an RV was that it would be dependable. I did a whole lot of praying while my family was on the road, praying for safety of course, and also praying that the RV would be as dependable as we hoped it was and not break down. God was listening, and the whole crew arrived back happy and healthy with a grand, happy adventure behind them and no catastrophes to speak of apart from hitting rush hour traffic in Nashville on the way home. 

Erv did a great job and came back looking and feeling as good as it did when it pulled out of the driveway, other than one of its arm rests being somewhat broken. I guess either it was like that before they left and I just didn’t notice it, or passenger Kool K had a heavy left arm on the trip, but either way I can live with that. The trip reporters concluded that even the refrigerator that we could not get to stay cold in the driveway worked perfectly when it was level and hooked up to shore power. Erv held up just fine and proved itself to be a dependable mode of transport. Best of all, Michael reported that it used considerably less fuel than he budgeted for, coming in at a record unheard of 14.8 mpg with mostly all interstate miles and no toad. I’ll have to do my own calculations on the next trip to verify . . . I was always better at math than he was. :)