You, Me, Three Kids, a Puppy and…an RV?

Oh my. Y’all must think we are crazy. Its Andrew, not me. Any crazy fun idea usually comes from him. {insert laughing/crying face emoji}

Just a week before Reynolds’ Spring Break, Andrew says to me at 8:30pm…something like this:
“So I was thinking about this Spring Break thing, and what if we did a road trip? Like, packed up the car, and drove to Asheville, Nashville and Memphis, then came home….”
I think I looked up from folding clothes with a thought like, ‘don’t crush his idea, Michelle…go with it and see what happens.’ So I said something like, “OH! Okay, that sounds FUN {extra emphasis on FUN}! Uh…so like, go see the Biltmore and…?” to which he filled in a few things, of how we could see some friends and just explore – a lot of blanks for someone like me who likes to PLAN things out {I’m so type A, this was a very difficult conversation}.
“YEAH” he said. “You know, just go…explore, find new things…”
“I think that’s great! Um…what do we do with Bleu, because he’s not had all of his shots so I don’t think we can board him…”
“Oh, he’ll go with us…” Andrew said with a sparkle in his blue eyes.
{He is NUTS. I thought.}
“ALL OF US and the dog in a car for…er, how long? Memphis to Columbia is a LONNNNNNNNNNNNG stretch of driving.” {don’t crush his dream MICHELLE. DON’T.CRUSH.HIS.DREAM, I thought}
He replied, “Well..” and turns his head with an almost crazed look of excitement….”My original idea was for us to rent an RV.”


I think I laughed. Out-loud laughed.
I KNOW I envisioned us careening down the mountain in said RV.
I tried REALLY hard not to crush this wild dream of his, but my mouth moved faster than my brain could tell it to stop.
“Uh, Babe.” {also, shaking my head in the “no” fashion my kids do so well}, “So, you want to rent an RV, with all of us, plus the dog, and go on a road trip? We don’t know anything about driving an RV. What do we do with the dog while we’re at, say, the Biltmore, or just exploring?”
Easy for him to say: “He’ll go with us the places he can go, and other times, he’ll just be in the RV.”
“What about air conditioning when we aren’t in it?”
“Oh, there’s a generator.”
“I don’t know anything about generators. What if it doesn’t work and we come back to a dead dog? I can’t handle that.”
“Why does the dog have to die?”
“What about car seats, or do the kids just roam around the RV” – mom nightmare. Remember, we just careened down the mountain…my kids are flying through the air in my mind. NOT.GOOD.
“I’m sure they have some seat belts.”
SOME?! OMG. I can’t even with this laissez faire mess.

After some time of talking about this, and me losing my marbles inside my head, while trying to sound somewhat excited about this amazing idea my husband had just presented to me… He started looking online for our options.
Outdoorsy.com was the website we used to find our rental…
A 32 foot beauty that slept 10 people. TEN people, people. There are 5 of us.
When asked why we got one so big, he laughingly replied, it was the same price whatever size we got!
As the 2nd driver to this ship, it was huge. I’ve never wanted a Suburban or Yukon XL because they are enormous…and only 19 ft. Add 13 more feet and this is what you get.

We ended up changing our destination plans {remember the careening down the mountain?}, and drove to Florida, where Andrew’s brother and sister-in-law currently live. {They are military and will be moving this summer to RI.} Hoping to stay at the campground near his airforce base, but unable to make a reservation – first come first served – we had to park in brother’s driveway 🙂
Haha. While maybe not totally ideal…I didn’t have to shower in the RV, or bathe my kids – which was another very valid concern I had, given there was no tub and the shower was the size of a cabinet. We did ride comfortably, and the kids could go potty whenever they wanted {bonus of all bonuses}.
We packed it full of food so there were plenty of snacks, we had lunch foods and junk foods. The kids watched movies, colored and played with toys. Bleu was amazing and slept the entire time in a borrowed crate, save the stops we made to get out and stretch all the legs.

I may not be rushing to book our next RV adventure, because the ‘dumping’ part was very much less than ideal, but we had a wonderful trip. We made sweet memories. We saw the beach and our family. And we didn’t go crazy in the process.
Here are a few pics we managed to take along the way…

I hope you had a great spring break, if that was on your calendar this year! If not…it’s time to plan your next trip – will you go RV’ing? 🙂
Until next time…