While laying in bed last night with our windows open, listening to the coyote’s in the far distance I once again felt so grateful to be sleeping in a camper. This 2011 Travel Trailer with a bunkhouse is better built than the new, thrown together, “COVID Trailers” as they have been dubbed, but the walls are still thin enough to make me feel like the outside is just right there. I appreciated my apartment that I left as it was my very first home I supported myself in and it was what I needed at the time. Passing it off to my son for the same experience was the perfect way to completely write off the society norm dwelling and shift into a more nomadic and gypsy lifestyle I had ALWAYS desired. Thinking about this I had A LOT of things come to me from memories and stories from my parents that really nails home that THIS really has been a goal my entire life!! Walk down memory lane with me….

My parents camped the entire time my mom was pregnant with me. They lived in Flagstaff and the Coconino Forest is right there! When they shifted to Phoenix shortly before I landed Earth side, they camped all over the Tonto National Forest and the Verde Valley area as well as Tortilla Flats. My parents were in a tent the weekend before I was born, in December, because Arizona allows that! I had my first camping trip when I was 5 months old and Dad slept on the braided rug that always went with them with me because I napped well outside all day but wouldn’t go to sleep in the tent. I drifted off under the stars. I took my first steps camping on that very rug trying to get to Ginger our family dog. Camping was our lifestyle the first 2 years of my life and then we moved to Wyoming.

Now, there IS NOT year long availability to camp in Wyoming. I mean, I have seen some full time RV it up there but it seems they are mostly working and have been sent there by their jobs. I’m not saying you can’t, I’m just sayin you definitely won’t be doing it for a family fun time because you can’t even get to the best moutain spots in the winter. This was were blanket tents came in and even my dad putting a small tent in the living room once! Lol (He was airing it out from being stored so I asked to sleep in it and was so happy to pretend camp!) When summer came we were often found at a certain camp area in some certain mountains that I am not naming because they are already over visited with people who DO NOT respect where they are. In my minds eye I can see photographs of my mom with a handkerchief on her head to tie her hair back with a bowl of potato salad, my dad with a beer and feeding the fire and my little brother running around in his diaper. We were either in a tent or at a primitive homestead ranch owned by a local family. Kids got to sleep in a sheep wagon or a camper and we LOVED it! When my Grandparents visited from Phoenix we would camp in their motorhome and travel all over to see the things of Wyoming.

As we got older, full on camping for a week became a rare thing. My parents were both working to support our family and those nights of sleeping outside became less and less. At the beginning of one summer I remember dad cleaning out the little house he had all his tools and things in. I saw the green Army style tent we had and his cots. I asked if we could just set it up in the yard to play in and he said yes! That very night I went and asked if I could sleep outside and THAT became the “thing” I begged for every summer. Dad got a camper for his truck that only got used once due to how it fit wrong and so I asked if I could sleep out in it because it was just in the yard. This meant dad didn’t have to mess with the tent and this girl got her way!! The camper then was used at one time by friends staying and their son started a fire. UGH! The jerk (He really was just a bad kid!!) made my camper trash and it was disposed of. The following winter my parents split up and the tent and camping things went with my dad. I remember that first summer and asking if we could just buy a tent. Money was tight so I wasn’t getting a tent to set up in the yard. So…I asked it I could just sleep outside on the grass. Shaking her head my mom said “If that’s where you want to sleep that’s fine but you have to change spots so the grass doesn’t die and you can’t sleep until noon.” DEAL!!!! Most who stayed the night with me during the summer have stories around us sleeping outside on the lawn, “sneaking” (she knew!) beer from the fridge, and scaring ourselves with imaginary serial killers we just KNEW had come off the highway to kill us. Lol Seriously the BEST memories.

Life then progressed and my love of sleeping outside was fed at high school bon fire parties on the mountain where there was a rule in place that if you drank, you camped. No driving down the mountain! I always find myself with a sleeping bag either near the fire or in the bed of a truck. I loved to show others the constellations and just watch what was happening in the night sky. We would also go to the lake near town and spend the weekends there as a group with friends parents and I always chose tent over going back to cabins or trailers people had their year round. When you camp, you camp. That means you sleep outside! This was something I was raised with and the rain gods only screwed me over one time. (And I jumped into the cab of a truck, I didn’t go inside! Lol)

This entire lifestyle came to an end when I married my ex. He wasn’t an outdoors person, no way would he have slept in a tent, and leaving the town and camping nearby was never happening. I tried and it was clear by the laughter I got from him and his family that unless I got the chance with my mom and now step dad, camping and sleeping in nature was a thing of the past. BUT!! In that time we had to find a better place to live. In that process, my son and I went to stay with my mom while my ex lived in town to work and not drive 80 miles a day to do so. The day after my then 3rd grader and I were at moms, their cooling system died in the house. It was MISERABLE! The kid said “I would rather sleep outside than be this hot.” OMG YES!!! I bat my eyes at my stepdad and he pulls out a tent and sleeping bags! I got to “camp” with my kid for 2 months on the lawn before the Wyoming temps forced us indoors. (The AC was fixed within a week of it dying but we kept sleeping in the tent! Haha). I will never forget us reading books by head lamps and how fun that was.

Years went by, I got a divorce, worked a lot to support myself and everything I wrote above wasn’t even in my thoughts and basically temporarily forgotten as I had fallen in love with my first apartment and was really melting into downtown living. I met my husband, we fell in love, and the first Summer of our relationship we started taking small drives on the mountain we lived at the base of. I then showed him those spots where we had bon fires as teenagers. The next summer we ventured further to those mountains I won’t give you the name of and I told him those stories. Next thing you knew we had a tent and were excited to sleep in it! The first time we set it up was awkward and hilarious as it had been YEARS. We were also here in Arizona on our friends property they had just bought! (Who knew we would all be moving here together just a few years later!) From there we camped in those mountains from my childhood! We camped for weeks in the Tetons! We camped in summer heat in Moab! That tent was set up in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Missouri and we attempted Florida but NOPE!!! (Good God how does one deal with all those bugs and a tent. That was a hard no go!) Last Summer a tent was pitched for the first time since living here and to say that felt full circle, is an understatement. Although we were in the White Mountains, I was still in a forest in Arizona, in a tent, just like I was at the beginning of my life with my parents. This Summer we plan to try and camp in the Coconino or Tonto National Forests just to seal up that full circle feeling. (I REALLY wish I knew which areas they use to frequent and there is nobody left to ask sadly…)

Now, I know our RV is not a tent. We are not outside. BUT we technically camp full time! All the things a traditional house has, our home has AND we are camping. As you may imagine that is not enough for me so my husband is constantly hearing “I need to be in a tent.” “When are we going camping?” “I need to sleep outside outside, like in a tent.” When we are driving… “Thats a campspot!” “Is there dispersed camping here?” “I could sleep in a tent in this forest.” “We should camp here!” I have even mentioned setting the tent up on the roof when we were off grid like a loft and setting it up on our cement slab here in the RV park! I WAS BORN FOR THIS LIFE!!

So when I hear about people make snide comments about our choice to live in an RV, I kinda chuckle. I mean, I could be living in a tent! Lol My husband and I are always researching mobile living and have kicked around the idea of taking a summer, storing the RV here in our spot for a discounted rate, and hitting the road living the car camping life. Just mostly to see if we can handle it! MANY do this and there are so many tools out there for a nomadic life that it almost is tooooo tempting. Now if ever questioned I love to add in “We are also looking at downsizing to a van, truck camper, or SUV in the future because we just have no desire to be stuck with a mortgage or rent or any of that stuff that keeps people from actually having experiences and living a life.” The type of people who look down on this life can’t argue with that last part. They are working 80 hr weeks, never see the people they live with, and save for a grand vacation once or twice a year that everyone argues about and then nobody actually relaxes once there. GROSS! Not the vibe we are on and not the vibe I have EVER been on.

So as you can see here, this was always on the path of my journey from the very very beginning of my heart beating it’s first little thumps inside my momma, more than likely before she even knew I was there, and most likely while my parents were camping…

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