Settled

After six weeks on the road I finally feel like we are in the swing of living in the camper van and life feels somewhat normal again. Leaving Boston and heading back to Camden felt like heading home. We have a great routine established, the boys are in the full swing of schooling every day on the go, sometimes I have to tear Isaac away from his math book as he buzzes through page after page. He finished his Life of Fred, Decimals and Percents, As Serious as It Needs to Be" book in two weeks! I am mastering the cooking of food over a campfire and am able to cook a full meal armed with my cast-iron skillet with occasional assists from tin foil. My latest masterpieces are pizza with whole wheat crust, caramelized onions, mushrooms and local pork sausage, followed by homemade maple cinnamon rolls over a campfire. The kids are still talking about the meat fest that included pork chops and pork loin flamed over the  fire with maple and cinnamon. Jason has gracefully dealt with the difficulties of working on the go, though often times cell phone is spotty and wifi difficult to find. He has somehow managed to keep up and his company is supportive and happy. And the tiny chihuahua can jump and manuever to any sleeping spot she desires in the camper van and is constantly amazing us with her super-ninja-chihuahua wall jumping skills as she bounds her way up the  uber-steep, ginormous rocky trails of the Northeast. She is a tiny-super-duper hiker with ninja skills.

Life is different on the road. Normal daily things are not always so easy, like showering or retrieving something buried deep within a cupboard while bending over a table and fending off one of your wriggling children or walking a 1/8 of a mile in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Things you normally do in the privacy of your own home are sometimes on view to people walking by the camper van on the street, like clipping your toenails or putting your pillows back into clean pillow cases while standing in the pull-through for valet parking at a fancy hotel in Cambridge. Conversations in bathrooms at campgrounds are funny when the other person is flossing their teeth and I am washing my face. Jason carried on a conversation with a drippy, shivery, shirtless guy shaving his head one cold morning in a bathroom that only serves glacially cold water from the faucet.

"That looks cold"

"It is man, it is"

When we step out of the camper van in the morning, we are in the woods and hikes are near. When we make the trek to the bathroom in the middle of the night the stars are bright and we can hear the waves rolling and crashing against a rocky shore.  We hear the buoys in the ocean ringing their deep sonorous bells as we fall asleep.  Who doesn't like standing around a campfire snuggling and talking and playing ukelele at night? All in all we have adapted well and everyone is happy.

Click here for Camden fall colors.