Modern Day Explorers

We have finally found our Airstream! After considering used we went with brand new, in part because Robert wants fewer problems. He wants his own never-used toilet and bed. He wants the wrap-around windows and audio package. We both want the dark wood cabinetry. No yellowed interior for us--it's all shiny, gleaming, happy, happy, joy, joy inside and out. Isn't it a beauty? I want to give it a name but it's too slick to be called "Tin Inn" or "Rollertoaster." Got any ideas?

Our trailer is a 27-foot front bedroom International CCD Signature Series. It's at a dealer's lot in Colorado. I can hardly wait to go get it. We won't pick it up till late July because the plan is to get it and start our trip from there. We'll head up to the Dakotas first then head west through Wyoming and Montana and north into Canada. We'll cross to Vancouver and then down the Pacific coast, across the southwest and back home for Thanksgiving/Christmas. Then south and out towards the eastern coast up to Canada again. Besides seeing all the national parks and sights we plan to visit friends and family along the way. Allison will be road-schooled which amounts to seeing and experiencing all the interesting places, people, and things that North America has to offer. I think that's enough of a curriculum for third grade. I intend to write about our travels, so I imagine this blog will get pretty focused on life on the road.



"Are you sure you want to do this?" Robert and I ask each other, aware of the implications this commitment will have on our lives, not to mention the discomfort of perpetual "camping." We'll be disconnected from the mainstream of life. We'll be out of touch the daily happenings of family, friends, and our business. We'll be badly-dressed, unkempt wanderers looking for a laundromat in every town we pass. Oh, but what an opportunity. We are going to see the U.S.A. one state at a time. We're going to see our neighbors to the north and find out what's so funny in Canada.

I'd like to romanticize us as brave explorers roughing-it through America. I want to see myself as Sacajawea or Lewis and Clark journeying through the wild west, sleeping under the stars, catching fish for supper, but no one will buy that image when they see us trailblazing the interstates with our shiny, brand-spankin new Airstream pulled by our 2007 Tahoe with its 20 inch polished aluminum wheels and XM radio. My fear is that we'll look more Griswolds than Jeremiah Johnson. But our intentions are good.