A Schooner, Not a Speedboat, Please

And so here we are, finally wandering!

Six years of planning, and we are on the road! Every day, I wake up, look out of this RV window, and think, “This is it. My life now.” 

View from our window, first night on the road.

Leaving was hard. My lovely family brought donuts and mimosas to see us off, and if there was ever a doubt that any of us had not perfected the Long Minnesota Goodbye, we put that doubt to bed right then. It was excruciatingly drawn out. Like a good hour or so of “Welp. I think we are ready.” “I guess we’ll be off now.” “Do you have everything?” “I think that’s everything.” “Are you ready?” “Time to go.” And I never wanted it to end. I watched our family out the window as they ran from our backyard to our front, waving and crying. It doesn’t seem real that we won’t see some of them for a year. But also, it’s only a year. Minnesotans. 

On our first night out, we slept in an apple orchard—Connell’s Family Orchard in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. We slept right in the middle of the raspberry patches and fields of pumpkins, apples, and pears, and I felt overwhelmed with the most profound gratitude for this life. 

Connell's Family Orchard. This is actually where we slept!

I told Travis that no matter what happens on this trip, I hope I have this same feeling of gratitude on the very last day. It’s something I miss in my everyday life. We take so much for granted. Or worse, we resent so many things–the daily drudgery, the negativity, the work we must do, the anger we feel at the world, politics, all of the daily injustices, the terrible, terrible news every day. We forget to stop and feel our good fortunes and just be. We have the opportunity to do this now. And I hope that we don’t lose that. 

Sampling raspberries fresh from the vine.

Our girls rode their bikes through the orchard and laughed with their heads thrown back. They ate raspberries right from the vine and plums from the tree. We explored a corn maze in the still morning air before the orchard opened to the public, and I thought, “How am I this incredibly fortunate?”

On our second night, we slept next to mini-horses, micro-highland cows, roosters, and guinea fowl beside a dreamy little pond at Acres of Joy, an equine therapy farm in Little Suamico, WI. The owners opened their land and hearts to us and spent time with us, discussing their mission to heal hearts and minds with equine therapy.

 Aela whiled away hours in the horse pen, petting those mini-horses. She was struggling the most with leaving and had spent the previous night sobbing. Now she was lit from within while she brushed a tiny horse named Kiss, who had a heart-shaped spot on her butt. I could practically see her heart rate slowing down. The girls played frisbee in the wide open field and sat telling stories to the horses and cows until the sunset. 

Acres of Joy. The girls got to know this mini-horses.

On our third day, we were off to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, where we settled for a few days to explore our first national park site, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, go to Mackinac Island, and start our first week of road school. Later in the week, we crossed The Mighty Mac Bridge into Northern Michigan and explored Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  

I’ll write about all of those things in another post. They deserve more time than I can give them right now. 

Because as amazing as this has all been, I am also deeply, deeply bone-weary, dead tired, exhausted. 

We jumped right into this life with both feet and so this one week has been kind of like going on this crazy hectic-fast sightseeing journey on steroids while dragging your entire house along behind you. Well, I guess it’s like that because it IS that. Now I know what snails feel like. Or turtles. But turtles with three other turtles huddled on top. 

I am reminded of this time on our honeymoon in Iceland when Travis and I went to Husavik, this insanely gorgeous little town on the northern shore where we wanted to go whale-watching. We got to the harbor and found out there were two choices for getting out to the whales: a leisurely sail on a wooden schooner where you could wander to and fro across the deck, taking pictures and gasping at puffins and humpbacks while drinking hot chocolate and whiskey, or a quick zip on a speedboat, harnessed down into a seat, six across, with all the other people who also have no time in the day for such nonsense as leisure. 

Trav and I picked the schooner. 

Later that night at dinner, we were unfortunately seated across from a group of obnoxious fellow Americans. We tried to become invisible, but they realized we too were Americans when we ordered our grilled puffin (sorry, I had to try it). Immediately, one of them leaned across the aisle and asked us which ride we took to see the whales. We politely told them all about our lovely afternoon aboard the wooden schooner. 

They scoffed. “What a waste of time,” one man said. “We zipped right out there, snapped some pics of a coupla whales, and were back here in no time.” His wife proudly told me that they had this whole Iceland thing down. “Get in the rental car, zip to a spot on the Ring Road, get out, snap a pic, then get a move on down the road.” She was delighted that they were going to be able to mark off all of the most important sites in such a short amount of time. 

Trav and I stared, uncomprehending. Being subjected to these people describing their Icelandic "conquest" was worse than trying to choke down the puffin on our plates. Besides the fact that these people reminded me of the cast of an off-off-way-off Broadway run of My Cousin Vinnie, we were dumbstruck by this approach. Was this what some people think travel was supposed to be? Marking off the sites as quickly and efficiently as possible? Perhaps. But we figured it was just as much about the journey. It was just as much about the sound of the waves against the wooden boat and the taste of the hot chocolate and whiskey on our tongues as it was about the sight of the whales. We didn’t want the speedboat. We definitely wanted the schooner. 

This trip so far has been an Icelandic speedboat.

We have been racing from place to place, jumping out of the rig to take pics and then jumping back in again. In just over a week, we have moved five times so far. During that time, we have been trying to find a place for all of the things. I have been trying to figure out this school thing. We have both been answering work emails, trying to meal plan, organizing our underwear drawers and winter gear, and planning ahead to future stops. 

This is partly because Travis has a week off, and we want to make the most of it before he starts working on the road. We want to do and see so many things together before we settle into the “real” rhythm of work and school. So we have been doing a ton of sightseeing. We also want to get to Maine by a certain date and Florida by a certain date, so we have a timeline and schedule to keep.

But damn, this speedboat is going so fast!

On top of that, we are hitting some speedbumps here and there. Like--we have a tire that leaks air and needs fixing. We have a fruitfly infestation. Argh. (Damn raspberries from that dreamy farm.). And we have had erratic sleep schedules, long drives, and packed days, and, therefore, periodically crabby girls. One of whom actually told me she was disappointed in my teaching style. I am not as magical as she had hoped, I guess. Sigh. 

Oh, and let’s be honest. We are crabby sometimes, too. 

I keep reminding myself this crabbiness is normal. When I was teaching in an outdoor education school, we used to take teens on camping trips for days at a stretch. The first 48 hours or so were always delightful. And then, by day three, the testiness and homesickness set in. In small group communication, it is the “storming” phase of forming, storming, and norming. You would think that, as a family, we would have all this storming and norming stuff down. But everything is new and different. We have very little space away from each other, and moving five times in eight days is stressful. So yeah, we need to "renorm" completely. This is normal. Annoying af. But normal. It will calm down. 

Next week, we are starting the big “settle-down.” We will be hitting a rhythm of moving only once a week. Travis will start work. I will figure out a routine for school. And I will finally figure out which cupboard holds which thing. 

Before long, this will be our normal way of life. 

But no matter what happens, I don’t want to lose that feeling of gratitude I felt in the orchard that first day. I want to slow down and savor the whiskey and the sound of the waves on the side of our "boat." 

For now, we are still speeding along, marveling at how incredibly crazy lucky we are to be on any kind of “boat” at all. 

In the meantime, what a ride. What a crazy, lovely whirlwind ride.