"We parkschool our kids."

Have you ever watched Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report?  Now there is a guy with some nerve!  During the intro to his show there are words that pop up on the screen around him. Words like authoritative, honorable, strong, bold, all-beef and uptrodden.  Uptrodden? I looked it up – uptrodden is not a word.  Here is another one – Häagen-Dazs.  I bet you thought that was something fancy.  Nope, just a made up word that sells ice cream.  I don’t know why it has taken me 38 years to realize that people really do just make up stuff.  You make it up and then make it happen! 

And so I am taking this opportunity to coin my own term.  Parkschooling.   If all goes as planned our oldest daughter will go through 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th grades and our little guy will go through kindergarten, 1^st and 2^nd grades while we are on the road.  We hope to stay primarily in National Parks, and so our kids will be parkschooled!  Doesn’t that sound fantastic! 

Close Quarters

When Jeff and I first married, I moved into the house Jeff had been living in with his two older children.  My lifestyle coming into this was very different from theirs; I lived primarily alone in a house that gave me more space than I needed indoors and all of the space that I could possibly love outdoors.  I did not have television.   I had a wood stove and did almost all of the work to heat my house myself.  I loved the hard work and the rolling hills and fields of the farm and the pond over the hill where my dog and I swam almost every day in the summer. 

Jeff’s house with the kids, on the other hand, was small, in town and had three TV’s which, to my ear, sounded blaring and invasive.  The kids sprawled on the small couch and I had no space of my own.  Needless to say, it was a shock for all of us. 

Some years later, we have all adjusted fairly well.  At times we now have 4 kids, a dog, 2 cats, a guinea pig and two adults all in the same small house. Even still, considering the move to an even smaller RV is intimidating to me.  Originally we thought we would be looking for a 5^th wheel that would have a small room in the back for the kids to have their own space.  We have now learned that a smaller RV is necessary so that we can really enjoy the places we want to see – many National Parks for example, don’t allow RV’s over 35’. Last weekend Jeff and I had a long, heated and emotional discussion on this topic that nearly drove us to scrap the idea altogether.

I am trying to come to terms with this floor plan.  Instead of their own space, the kids will have bunk beds in a slide, each with their own small shelving space.  Any desk, tabletop or storage space will be shared with toys, books, schoolwork, Jeff’s work and any projects I may take on.

While it will be a challenge for me to deal with living with 3 other people in a 35.5’x 8’ space, I want to make it work.  The experiences we will have outside of this RV will make up for this loss of indoor space. And while the challenges that present themselves in this lifestyle can be overwhelming, we both agree that the benefits are worth the sacrifices we might make.  

Full-Time 5th Wheel Manufactures

Wow, my last Blog entry was almost a year ago! Way back in March 2011 I finished with the promise of more to come on manufactures of Fifth Wheel Trailers that would fit our needs. As I said back in March, it was surprising that so few manufacturers offer true “full-time” 5th wheel trailers (products that can hold up to daily living). In fact in my opinion there are only five (I’d imagine the industry might argue though). In our investigations and study these are the manufactures on our list: NUWA Industries, DRV Luxury Suites, Carriage Inc. (they just went out of business actually), New Horizons and Teton Homes. Carriage Inc. may be out of business but their 5th wheels are still available so they remain on our list. All of these manufactures warrant their trailers for full-time living (or at least as far as I know, this RV business is a tricky thing to figure out).

Now that we know the manufactures it becomes our task to pick a particular model from one of them that has a floor plan we can live with. And this is no simple matter. As I said in my previous post we want a floor plan with a 2nd bedroom. Several reasons of course, biggest being so we have room to live sanely! 2nd bedroom floor plans are available but at a price it seems, length and weight. More on those two issues in my next Blog (and I promise it won’t take 10 months for this one).

Children and Nature

The best days I have as a mother are the days that I can get my children outside, releasing them of the boundaries and rules that games, play structures and toys create and allowing them to revel in their own sense of wonder. I become a child again during these times when I also renew my own sense of wonder and truly enjoy these adventurous, carefree moments in nature with these little people who depend on me for so much. It is such a wonderful feeling.

And so it is through relating these moments to Jeff that I have come to realize that our RV life can help others reconnect with their own sense of wonder with their children playing outdoors, free of societal constructs. It is with this inspiration in mind that we move forward with our tentative plans.

The last entry I wrote had to do with budgets. Jeff has done a great job reviewing and planning ahead in that regard and now we know exactly what we are dealing with as far as depreciation and such goes and that makes it much easier to wrap our heads around, and while the loss we will incur is still not easy to stomach, we think we can get to a place where it will be manageable and worth it.