This question may of may not have entered your mind: "How different can RV-ing be?" I've covered our indoor life in the RV and how it's different from living in a house, but I haven't covered many differences of out-of-the-RV activities.
We have definitely had to adapt on a lot of things and one of them is social life. As you know, we are physically disconnected from family and friends other than by social media and the occasional dinner out or meet-up with someone. This has drawn us as a family closer together, and it also forced us to approach people with greater assertiveness. Through this, I think we've all grown less socially awkward. I don't believe we ever were considered such, but we've certainly grown more assertive. For example, Nate has become very confident in approaching kids at playgrounds to ask if they want to play, while a year ago he was pretty shy in doing such things. Another adaptation for us has been eating out. When we eat out, which is about 5 times a week, we have limited choices of familiar restaurants since we're in an unfamiliar part of the country. Some of our familiar places are Chick-Fil-A, Chili's, and Cracker Barrel. (Whoa! They all start with C! It's a sign!) Because of this, we've had to try many new restaurants. I mentioned this 2 posts ago, so I won't linger on it, but I will say that 85% of all restaurants we've visited have earned an "A" in the Merchant Restaurant Ratings book. Something that I personally have found difficult in recent months is getting in and/or around groups of trees. I have grown up where trees are everywhere. You can drive down the highway and see hundreds of trees on the sides. You can see trees in the parks, in the city, in the country. But out west... We've traveled through a lot of barren lands and desert terrain, and I've missed my trees! I'd also like to note that we've had some destinations that are experiencing (to quote the locals) "unusually cold winters" ever since November, and we've had to find forms of entertainment different than going outside. For example, we may play a board game, watch a movie or merely sit by ourselves and play/read. Have you got any fun "rainy/cold day" activities? A unique adaptation for us involves our truck. As some of you may know, it's a "dually", which means it has 2 wheels in front, and 4 wheels in back. This makes for an interesting time for my dad when he's driving, and especially when we're parking. My dad has accurately named the truck the "Beast". We've spent a lot of time finding a parking space large enough for us, and more often than not we'll end up taking 2-3 spaces anyways. Lastly, we have adapted to our ever changing outdoor scenery. We can't really ever set up a long term outdoor patio, so we've bought an outdoor rug, and some outdoor chairs. This makes set-up and tear-down easy. Sometimes we have no space whatsoever (like the campground that we're about to leave.), and we must make do with the park's common areas. A park like the one we left last is an inverse example of this. We had a ton of room in our campsite, and we enjoyed hanging out right outside the RV. As you can see, we've adjusted to RV life in a lot of ways, and it's been a real adventure in and of itself. The one thing that we haven't adjusted very well in is the "rainy/cold day" activities. So tell us, do you have any good ideas for us? -Woodsman Will-
4 Comments
Susan Van Valkenburgh
3/10/2019 06:19:59 pm
We feel for you with the rainy day boredom.:-( Something that keeps Jake, Josh and Matthew busy lately are stop motion cartoons. There's a free app you can get for a phone and they draw cartoons and take pictures to make movies, add sound etc. It takes a while, so it's a good time filler.
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Will Merchant
3/15/2019 10:08:22 am
That's neat! We'll have to check those out. Hope everybody's good on your end. :)
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Michel
3/11/2019 09:16:18 am
We've gotten into the NY Times FREE daily mini-crosswords. They're not too hard, but a cool daily routine.
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Will Merchant
3/15/2019 10:09:53 am
I'll have to look into that. We haven't done crosswords in a while, so that'd be a good "new" activity. Thanks!
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AuthorWill is 15, and enjoys running track, writing, Archives
January 2021
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