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Thomas Fuller
3/29/2013 01:30:36 pm

The Long and Winding Road - The Introduction

Before diving into Day 1 of our adventure, a bit of background is in order.

Instead of traveling overseas for the next couple years, we decided to buy a truck...a BIG truck and a travel trailer...a BIG travel trailer and head out across this great, wonderful land we affectionately refer to as "Amurka."

We realized that we are doing ourselves a disservice and kinda being disrespectful of this great land of ours by thinking we have to travel overseas to see beautiful and wonderful things. While we really want our kids to see and experience different things, we realized we don't need passports to accomplish. I mean, seriously. If we want to go to China, we can park the RV near the Golden Gate Bridge and hit Chinatown. If we want to see Italy, we park outside Little Italy in New York. If we want to see various, assorted, violent third-world countries, we head to Detroit!

So, the next few years will involve frittering away our kids' college fun $4.00/gallon worth of diesel fuel at a whack! The next time you complain about the price of gas, just be grateful you don't have to put so much gas in your vehicle that your credit card company cuts off the pump automatically! To fill up the truck, I have to start and stop the pump twice. By my calculation, one tank of gas costs Annie or Grady 1 college text book, 1/2 of a semester hour at the community college of their choice or 2 months of sorority or fraternity dues (although West Point does NOT have Greek organizations!).

Here's the skinny on our travel accoutrements:

Truck: 2003 Chevy 3500 Turbo Diesel Dually. Feel free to insert any jokes here regarding any perceived compensating on my part for any type of inadequacy. If I could have found a Corvette powerful enough to pull the camper, I might have bought that and satisfied my mid-life crisis AND wanderlust at the same time.

RV: 2007 Sunnybrook Sunset Creek 31 ft. bunkhouse travel trailer. Very cool vehicle. Two bedrooms...one in the front with a double bed. One in the back with 4 bunk beds. In other words, 25 feet between Polly and me and the kids. When you downsize from 3000 sf to 325, you need all the space you can get! It has A/C, furnace, fridge, microwave, full bath, slide-out, etc. In other words, I don't think we can ever refer to what we plan to do as "roughing it."

BUT...we will stand our ground as long as possible on not putting a TV in it. A big part of the goal of The Long and Winding Road is to escape the everyday and reconnect as a family. We go 100 mph all week, month, year long and we need to re-bond, re-group and re-discover each other. So, I will FIRMLY put my foot down about NOT having a TV in the camper! Well, right up until the next season of "Dexter" comes out on DVD. Then, we might have to re-evaluate this arrangement!

So, that's where we stand. Spring breaks...summers...weekends...whenever we can squeeze in some "us time," we will. Of course, after 1 week of showering in a tub the size of a laundry basket and worrying about filling up the "black" tank in the camper with too much poop, we may chuck it all and head back overseas each summer. But until then, The Long and Winding Road awaits!

Adios!

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