This is how we start our sabbath.
"We eat, we play, we rest... because God loves us!" When our youngest was smaller he would yell the last part and throw his hands in the air.
It's a good framework for the questions I am about to answer:
"How did you do meals?"
"Was the trip worth it?"
"How did you sleep?"
We eat
We had lots of plans for how we would manage food before we left, and most of them worked out pretty well. As we were packing, I milled a lot of flour which made 48 muffins, 6 waffle mixes and another bag to mix with my regular flour to make bread... yes I brought my bread machine! Along with the waffle maker, the ninja air fryer, the electric kettle and the toaster. Our thought was rather than use the oven, the air fryer would make nearly anything our oven could (and was probably larger inside!) and we were right. We used the oven to store our pans, and used the stove almost daily for eggs and pasta and things. Sean and I ate A LOT of bagged salad, the kids at beef sticks for snacks until they were all sick of them, and we mostly kept a similar meal rotation that we have at home.
Yes, we did eat out, but I think our first "meal out" was 10 days into the trip, as we left the beach. And that was typically when we would grab something to go - a day we were on the road and couldn't use our kitchen, We at a lot of subs too, as they are easy to make on the go!
If we did it again, I think I would skip the waffle maker (we did use it twice!), but otherwise our appliances were all super useful (and survived the journey!!). We store them all in the shower in totes. We barely used the shower as we typically had one nearby at a campsite, so that ended up being one of the best storage solutions.
We play
Ok, one person asked: was it worth it??? And while I guess there are a couple of ways they could mean this question, I am going to answer it from this perspective - was all of the cost and planning and work for and on the trip worth what we experienced? 1000% yes.
Oh my goodness. It was more work than planning my wedding. Months of Sean plotting routes, days of going back and forth from our house with armfuls of things, willing to not forget anything we could possibly need, and finding places for everything.
I remember when we originally had even thought, could we make this work? And the question of, how much work will it be to survive with four kids in an RV for over a month??
After mulling it over for a few days last summer, I hypothesized that being home is just as much (if not more?) work. And I was right! All that needs to be done when camping on the go, can be done in an hour or so a day, leaving the rest of your time for PLAY. Really and truly, we were able to spend so much of our time just being with our kids and each other, which is the whole point. It was absolutely worth the work at the front end for five weeks of adventure. I was expecting 20% fun and 80% real life because that's what the travel families say, but I would say we experienced more than that, maybe up to 30% fun, maybe because our kids are a little older. We did a good job at scheduling a lot of downtime in the beginning, a bursts of fun on our way our west, another rest when we arrived in Colorado and then the trip to Yellowstone and back east really had it's own sweet rhythm.
And our cost was far less than it would be to take the kids to Disney for a week. ;) WORTH IT!!
We rest
"How did everyone sleep? And did it get better or worst as you went?"
This was a question I got, and it's probably the easiest one to answer, because everyone slept great. This was an answer to prayer, for sure, especially for me! I typically DO NOT sleep great while traveling. I am up for hours, and then wake up all through the night. There were a couple nights of that for sure, but for the majority we all fell into bed exhausted and did not wake up before the sun. The kids bedtime was definitely stretched into the later evenings, but that just made bedtime quicker most of the time! We really felt like we traveled at a sweet time with them, and overall, they are good travelers!
We were still happy to see our coffee every morning!
Whoops... I forgot to talk about Harvest Hosts
but I will definitely touch on that in a future post!
