Our New....Everything

Settling In

So, we've been in the same campground for one week, and have been living in the RV for almost 2.  You would think that we have it all figured out by now.  Let me tell you, just yesterday I got all of our clothes put away!  Just like living in a regular house, there is always something more fun to do than house work!  Like having gym class...  

Some things are different living in the RV. This is what we use our new shower for.

The bath house uses solar power to heat the water. As Mae would say, it gets as hot as Beezle Nut Stew!  It's pretty awesome.  So we use the campground's showers (why use our propane gas, when we can take advantage of free hot water from the sun!)  This is the sign on the bathroom door.  Luckily, the biggest wildlife we've encountered in there has been a lizard.

This is how we baked our pizza...because we can't figure out how to work the oven yet.

So we put it in a saute pan for the grill that we lined with foil.  We covered the top of it with some more foil, to help melt the cheese.  It was a little bit black on the bottom, but hungry campers will eat just about anything!  I want to try out our solar oven soon.  I'd imagine in the Florida sun we can cook just about anything in a few minutes.

There's been a lot of learn, and a lot of opportunities to work together since we started this adventure. I froze just about all the groceries in the fridge this week.  Apparently the refrigerator is much more efficient that I'd thought!  I was worried that the food wouldn't stay cold enough. Yesterday, Daddy fixed the leaky kitchen sink.  Maybe today we'll figure out how to turn on the oven.

"I'm not going to eat dinner, anywhere where we get gas." -Mae

Lessons Learned on the Road

Having campground reservations pre-booked has been very helpful. It took many, many ,many more hours each day, than we thought it would, to reach our destinations   Without a campsite waiting for us, we would have been sleeping in Wal-marts all week, and it would have taken us 12 days to reach Florida, instead of 6.  I can remember when making the New England to Florida trip in 3 nights and 4 days seemed like a leisurely pace!

Our first night at a campground- a locked back gate (which the GPS directed us to) and a 19 point turn (conducted in the pitch black) later- we were all going to sleep at 12:12pm!  Note to self:  pack a flashlight (where you can find it), and make sure you see a sign for the park off the highway!

So far, traveling in the Spring, we have found that we have the state parks mostly to ourselves. It has been wonderful!  After a full day of rest in Georgia, the last 10 hour leg of the trip only felt like 5 hours!  We will definitely be changing our plans to 4-5 hours of planned drive time. Having a 2 night minimum stay in each park will give us enough time to enjoy the journey.

A moonlit climb in Georgia

Making Memories

As we pack up and get ready for our big change, I'm thankful for
memories.  As Mae will tell you, I'm Forgettery Girl.  So knowing that
about myself, I take lots of pictures, to help me remember.  I'm glad
that I do, it's such a sweet surprise to scroll through old pictures
and rediscover a special moment that I'd forgotten.  

Her first beach day

We have made a lot of wonderful friendships in the past 4 years, and

I'm so grateful that we will be able to maintain them, even as we
travel, because we will return every summer to our homebase.  Despite this
fact, I feel the need to create more memories, special memories with
our friends that we love before we depart.  I have made sure that we set aside
extra time to spend with our friends during our last few days here.

Doing joyful things with friends embed them in our heart. 

Sharing the beauty of nature together, makes our souls sing.  

Learning with love is something you never forget. 

Stuff, Stuff, and Less Stuff!

I feel like I've been packing and sorting for weeks, because I have!  I was amazed when I posted something online to sell, how often I wrote "we only used it a few times," "hardly used"  or "like new."  It was eye opening really.

This learning system that I bought last spring, is a very good example. I loved it and thought it would be a great learning tool.  Knowing that we wanted to RV in the next year or two, I liked the compactness of it, and the ability to grow with the child.  In my mind, it was a perfect purchase.  Ha!  I can't tell you how many times I put it out as one of Mae's workbox activities, and it was left untouched and forgotten by both of us (and the routine, is that every workbox is done each day before school is over.)  Needless to say, I gave it away while downsizing our stuff.  It will work great for some child, just not mine.

I guess I can admit it here.  I'm a teeny, tiny, eensy, weensy bit of a hoarder.  I've been saving- and packing and unpacking every 10 months for 4 years, a LOT of school and craft supplies!  I would save extra supplies at the end of each school year, for the next year (all teachers do this, trust me!)  The problem started when I stopped teaching, and brought all my extras home.  I was saving them for the day when my child would be old enough to start doing school- at home, in a house, with lots of storage in the basement.  Well, let's just say that I could have started up my own private school with all the supplies I've been hauling around all this time.The joke is on me, as we are not even done with our first year of homeschooling, and we are hitting the road.  Yesterday I packed up all of our school and art supplies to bring with us, and here it is.

In all areas of our lives, in order for an item to make the cut for this move. It has be something that we actually use on a regular basis- not something that we wish we did, or think we should, or know is good for us.

Getting Ready to Live the Dream

The Allee's had a Dream

Before we had our daughter, we dreamed of traveling- on a sailboat.  Once Mae was on her way, I felt the need to make sure we could get to a hospital if need be, and I didn't want to worry about drifting at anchor through the night. So we switched gears and started to think about RVing.  We went to our first RV show in Tampa about 4 weeks after Mae was born.  She happily attended in her Bijorn, on Daddy's chest.

I remember talking to my mom on the phone just as we were leaving the show, and telling her that we were planning to hit the road in an RV when Mae was 5 or 6.  Well, here we are, Mae is 5.5 now, and we'll be leaving to start our adventure in a week!  

We have been busy sort all of our belongings.  Its amazing how little of what you have, you'd be happy without.  When we moved from Florida about 4 years ago, we packed a 26 foot moving truck- and had to leave some things behind, most notably a play house and a kayak. I honestly thought we'd have room to have a dance party in the back of the truck after it was packed when I saw how huge it was. We had yard sales, donated and threw away so much stuff after 9 years in Florida.  We have been storing 75% our stuff at Papa's house in NH all this time, thank you!  I'm pretty sure I don't need Mae's excersaucer anymore, time to donate the rest of it I think.  

From the over-packed 26 foot moving truck, we now will have moved into our RV with 2 pickup truck loads of stuff....pretty impressive if I do say so myself.

We are doing it!  We are living our dream.  We will travel the country for 8 months of the year, and then come back to our home base for 4 months every summer.  So as I think about it, this is the last week that I'll live in a regular house for the next 5 or 6 year and I only feel excitement!