“Honey, I think that after we sell the house, we should buy an RV and travel to every capital city in the United States. Since I can work from anywhere and you are homeschooling the girls, it seems like the perfect time to take such a trip,” explained my husband, Jason, enthusiastically.
“Ok, Honey. Whatever you think,” I responded, feigning excitement while my insides absolutely churned with anxiety.
This sounded like an awful idea, but in recent months before this exchange, I had the revelation through books and counseling that I had been a continual balloon popper of my husband’s visions and dreams throughout our 15 years of marriage. Jason has been the visionary, big-picture guy in the marriage and I certainly have had my share of visions, too, but I also have a tremendous eye for detail, as well as incredible practicality.
So with this combination, Jason has presented to me over the years wonderful ideas from which I was able to discern the overwhelming details and steps to implement these ideas and consequently, was able to put a stop to most of his visions with a resounding “No” from my mouth. In my defense, without the occasional help from Jason’s assistant, I would usually be the one who had to implement and manage the details of said visions.
In the beginning of our marriage, I was able to be more supportive of his visions as it was just the two of us and I was much more available, as compared to now with two children, one dog, one cat, three bunnies and two guinea pigs, not to mention maintaining the household, homeschooling our girls and managing the finances. But enough about my martyrdom! Anyway, over the years, I sensed a deflation in Jason. Through counseling and various readings, I realized that I was a big part of that deflation.
In addition to Jason being a visionary, he is also an external processor, as opposed to me, an introverted, reflective internal processor. The external processor mulls ideas around with others in conversation, basically thinking out loud, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the ideas will every come to fruition. They are just that - ideas. Nothing more, nothing less. Conversely, an internal processor mulls many ideas over in her head and doesn’t necessarily bring them to anyone else’s attention until she has finally made her decision and is ready to enact said decision. So for example, shortly into our marriage, Jason announced that he would like a BMW, as an external processor he was simply laying an idea out there for consideration. I, as the internal processor, took that as a decision has been made to buy a BMW, and I went into a downward spiral panic. These differences in our designs have caused some rather spirited communication struggles in our 20 years of marriage to say the least.
So as I heard this idea of traveling across the country in an RV, I decided that it was time to keep my mouth shut and deal with my anxiety and simply let Jason dream or perhaps simply externally process. I needed to let go (although so challenging for me) and see how this vision would manifest or if it would at all. Although, at this point in our marriage, we did have a used BMW, so a trip around the U.S. wasn’t out of the question.
As I held my tongue, Jason spent that entire Saturday afternoon at the dining room table drawing out a map of the United States and meticulously outlining the course of our trip and the people we could visit in each location. He was so focused, so determined and so excited, while I was internally practicing the process of letting go and praying that Jason was simply externally processing.
Five months later, we sold our house in Colorado in September, 2018 and our 30-foot RV was delivered to us shortly thereafter. So just like the BMW, the RV trip was becoming a reality, but thankfully, Jason’s initial vision of traveling across the U.S. had morphed into something slightly smaller and much more manageable which entailed trekking our way down to Arizona, our final destination, but taking our time and visiting National Parks along the way. This truncation of the trip had nothing to do with me, I swear. I had promised myself to keep my mouth shut. Over time, Jason simply changed his mind regarding the length and destinations of the trip, as reality sunk in with what our family could manage and I remained in the background, supporting each change of the vision as best I could.
We departed Colorado Springs in early October, 2018 with our Outback RV hitched to our Ford Expedition carrying our dog, Howard, and my daughter, Selah and I drove in tow in our tired BMW with our cat, Ella, and our youngest daughter, Asabella - our smaller critters mentioned earlier hadn’t join the family at this point. We entered I-25 at a slow pace with all this extra weight and cargo, but within moments, Jason discovered that one of the RV tires was flat and we needed to pull over. We delicately maneuvered to Manitou Springs, the next town over from Colorado Springs at the base of Pikes Peak, and had to unhitch at an RV park for three days, as we waited for the RV tire to be repaired. So with tremendous expectations to explore the Southwest, our hopes were deflated, as we had only made it about 10 minutes out of Colorado Springs. The weather was cold and dreary and the accommodations were tiny compared to our two-story, 2400 square-foot home in the Springs that we had just sold. Quite the adjustment for all of us.
Attempting to bring comforts from home, I went to the grocery store and made chili to warm our bones and lift our spirits, but because of the small space, the sautéed onions lingered in the atmosphere of the RV, and Jason’s eyes became so irritated that he had to leave the RV for a while until the pungency of the onions dissipated. So much for providing comfort for the family,
Finally, after three days in Manitou Springs and a repaired RV tire, we were able to head South on I-25 and begin our RV adventure which had further been adjusted to heading simply down through New Mexico and Arizona. The National Parks were thrown out the window once we experienced the RV tire blowout. We headed to New Mexico and decided to make camp after about 5 hours of driving which was about all we could manage each day with children, pets and a hitched RV swaying every which way on the highway.
However, as luck would have it, we were entering New Mexico right at the time of the annual Fall Balloon Festival - world famous, by the way. Consequently, people from all over the country and perhaps even the world, had descended upon Albuquerque and most of the surrounding cities in New Mexico and we were unable to find any vacancies in any of the RV parks along I-25. So we had to design a Plan B (or perhaps we were now on Plan C or D at this point in the journey) which led us to a RV park in a tiny town, Farmington, New Mexico on the Northwest edge of New Mexico that still sported a Blockbuster Video and the nearest grocery store, Food City, about 20 minutes away.
We pulled into the park at dusk and Jason was exhausted, because instead of 5 hours, we ended up traveling about 7-8 hours, as we searched for a place to unhitch and rest for the night. In the morning, Jason decided that it would be best if we just stayed put in Farmington for the remainder of the week, as we waited for the balloon festivities to blow over. Thankfully, we had a small grass park to play ball with Howard; we had a shower facilities where we trekked all our toiletries to and fro; I was able to do a few loads of laundry at the onsite laundromat and we managed to complete a few of our homeschool lessons in our tiny 30-foot RV. It was close quarters, but we made the best of it and we even took a field trip to the local Blockbuster Video and purchased some previously viewed DVDs for knock-off prices and had some entertainment in the evenings, catching up on old movies.
Finally by Friday, after 4 days of passing each other in the RV in single-file order, collapsing the kitchen table into our girls’ evening sleeping quarters and memorizing the pathways through the tiny RV park after our daily walks, we decided it was time to head out to Arizona on Saturday morning. We planned to land at my parent’s RV park in Northern Phoenix and catch our breath for a few days to determine what our next steps in Arizona would be.
After much rain and thunderstorms on the curves of the 17 from Flagstaff to Phoenix, we arrived in Northern Phoenix on Saturday night and were excited to settle in for a while in my parent’s luxury RV, that was simply sitting empty until they would come down to visit the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. This luxury RV was carpeted, had a huge kitchen with a dishwasher and a large family room and big screen TV. There was so much more space for the family and we parked our RV on a space across the street which Jason used as his work office. This RV park had a wonderful laundry facility and a great swimming pool for the girls and we were close to both parks for Howard and great shopping for groceries and entertainment.
My stepdad informed us that we had at least 6 months to stay at the RV park, because he paid 6 months of rent upfront and we finally felt like we could rest and let our hair down to figure what our next moves would be. But no sooner than I had loaded the large RV refrigerator with groceries, Jason walked in the door and explained that the park manager noticed that we had small children with us. The manager emphasized that this was a 55+ community and small children were only allowed for two weeks. Jason kept it under the wraps that he was only 47 and I was soon turning 50. So here we were finally settling into the idea of RV living, and now easier to swallow as we lived in the lap of luxury in my parent’s RV, we needed to up and leave within two weeks.
At this point, we decided to find a rental home in Mesa and say goodbye to the idea of living in an RV and exploring the Southwest. We scrambled between Northern Phoenix and Mesa for two weeks, viewing rental properties that were affordable, kid and animal-friendly. We eventually found a three-bedroom ranch home that was 1,700 square feet with a decent backyard for Howard and a nice size pool for the family. We called the Pod facility and told them to send our belongings to our new Mesa rental house and we repacked things from my parents’ RV to our tiny Outback and headed to Mesa. We unloaded our belongings into our “new” house and collapsed on the couch and Jason proceeded to inform the family, “We just aren’t RV people!”
And with that, the girls and I exclaimed, “Amen to that!!”
So after nearly two weeks on the road and two weeks living in a 55+ community, Jason determined that we were not an RV family, especially when he experienced how much he had to do each time we set up at a new RV park, being the only man in the family. We didn’t have to travel the entire country for a year to discover this truth, as I originally feared. I sensed all along that this would be a challenging adventure for our family with two little girls, but I decided not to burst my husband’s bubble this time, as I had done so many times in the past to his ideas, and I kept my mouth shut and kept our relationship intact, all the while letting the experience speak to Jason rather than my harsh words. As a result, our marriage survived the few weeks on the road in the RV; my husband didn’t feel deflated by me yet again and now we have a fun story to tell about our crazy adventure in the Wild, Wild West in our compact RV. Lesson learned - to keep my comments to myself, to not burst people’s visionary bubbles and to allow others to externally process without always jumping to conclusions and soon discovering in the end, that there will typically will be a short-lived adventure to be had by all and a funny story to tell in the end.
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