We are now in northern California and the first campground we stopped at wanted $40. I just don’t understand it. I am bringing the room with me so why do I have to pay the same price as a hotel?

All I need is a place to park. I can park cheaper in the city than some people want at these places. After searching we found a place for $25. It got horrible reviews on a website, but it had what we needed.

We don’t have a $300,000 rig and we are not rich. I just can’t fathom paying the price of a nice apartment in Brooklyn for one night in the middle of nowhere.

KJ says it is supply and demand and I know she is right. I do feel there should be something more reasonable.

Luckily, I have until tomorrow to figure it out.

~Lao Tzu

You would think that 30 days would be enough time to get out of an apartment right? Well for us it wasn’t. It was so much more complicated to get rid of enough stuff to fit in a RV than we expected. We are making progress though and we hope to be finished today. Then the trip really begins.

We have been living in the RV. It is a little cramped; mostly because of all the extra stuff in bins on the floor though. Every move throughout the RV has been like going through an obstacle course. If we need to cook everything has to move, then to eat move it agin, and if it’s time to sleep we move stuff again. The madness has to stop!

Overall it has not been bad though. Getting past the obstacle course, it is quite nice. Even though we are only a few hours from the city it is pretty much like being in the country to me. There are stars! It is the first time my kids have seen them, too many lights in the city. They are amazed at every little thing they see: bugs, frogs, pine cones, gravel, and even dirt. Over the last two days they have had lots of fun with dirt.

We have let them play since the kids are in such a new environment. They have had tons of fun. Being grown sometimes I have forgotten how much fun they can have with the simplest things. I’m glad they have enjoyed themselves. I hope to play with them more once we finish unpacking the RV to our travel size.

I also can’t wait for the rest of our trip. I know there are so many beautiful things to see in the next few months. I am very glad that we have this opportunity to take this trip and doing something completely out of our normal routine. There have been some sacrifices, but I believe it will have been well worth it when all is said and done.

~Susan Heller

We are going to have to buy chairs soon. Our camp site has no place to sit.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Right now we’re at a campground in New Jersey and what a difference it is.

First off, it really was like the movie “RV”. As we drove up, about six people sitting outside their RV and drinking what appeared to be Margaritas started waving and smiling at us. I can be pretty antisocial at times, so that was a little weird for me. CM asked me would I prefer them to be rude and standoffish or drunk and friendly. I chose the latter and when we walked over and introduced ourselves after we had parked.

CM broke two things on the RV already. (I know he’s going to be mad at me for telling you all this, but I think it’s funny.) He broke the handle you use to extend the TV antenna. Then he broke some rubber weather stripping on the slideout. (A slideout is a part of an RV wall that slides out to make the interior wider.)

Midget and Widget hit the ground running. This campground is more like a glorified parking lot and they had tons of space. In the city we don’t let them get any more than ten feet ahead of us on the sidewalk. Here, there were no cars and nothing blocking our view of them, so we just let them run.

Ummm….there are a lot of bugs. They aren’t too scary, but they’re fast. We opened the door for 30 seconds and 2 huge moths flew in. Also, we think that the bugs were small enough to climb in through the window screens. So now we’ve closed the windows and are running the AC.

Last but not least, I think the bathroom is starting to smell. That could become a big problem, but for now I’m going to be optimistic and hope that a couple of air fresheners will clear the odor right up. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about that later.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

**I could have used this quote when I was going through the purge.**

Mohammed