Day 1: Elmhurst to Minneapolis

We only got off about 3 hours after we wanted to. I had hoped to load my stuff onto the RV last night but my parents didn't get back with the RV until after 7 pm and then they wanted to load their stuff on first and said I should just wait until the morning. There was a zoom reunion at 9 am for the Country Day School in Costa Rica, where I worked from 1999-2002 and I really wanted to join in for a bit. So we didn't leave my house until 10:45. Since I am the queen of overpacking, it took me a while to unload a variety of items that wouldn't fit on the RV. I have always been an over packer. If the luggage weight limit is 50 pounds, I will stuff that suitcase with at least 54 pounds in the hopes that they will either not notice or not care. About 98 percent of the time they both notice and care and threaten to charge me, so then I have to take four pounds out and stuff them into my carry on. The only time this didn't happen is when I was going to visit my cousin in Sweden and I said I had books to give to my cousin's new baby (completely true). The woman just smiled and said okay. I may have to use that excuse again sometime.

We finally loaded up the RV and set off. I have never traveled in an RV before in my life so I really had no idea what to expect. Here are some observations:

1) The RV is LOUD, so loud that I can hardly here anyone speak, so loud I can't hear the audio book that my parents are listening to about 2 feet away from me, so loud that I couldn't even hear Angel when he called us from Mexico to say hi. One of the reasons it is so loud is because of the pots and pans we have in the cupboards. The grate on top of the oven is also extremely loud, but you almost start to ignore it after a while. Another thing that is loud is my children complaining because they all want the iPad that has the most games on it, but they just have to take turns.

2) The RV is also really shaky and bumpy, so shaky that I can hardly type and so shaky that I can't play my little handheld Pac Man game, which I am addicted to. Sometimes the overhead cupboards open up and things get very close to falling out. Sometimes when we make a turn everything slides off the table and we have to hold everything down like the family in Mary Poppins when those men on the roof next door set off the cannons. We have to be very careful to remember to stow away all steel water bottles or they may fall and break someone's toe. I'm assuming that some bigger, fancier RVs are not like this, but we do not have one of those.

3) There is something about the smell, the tiny bathroom, the AC, and the general noise that makes the RV experience similar to plane travel. On the plus side, the RV seats are way more comfortable than airplane seats and it's nice to have a big table to use for playing cards or drawing (as long as we don't make any quick turns).

4) My dad did a lot better job of driving the RV than I expected him to and he did not complain once all day about the driving. Apparently, he drove a large vehicle once in the 1960s, so that clearly has set him up for success.

5) The RV is a gas guzzler. It costs about $70 every time we fill it up, but we have to fill it up before it's gets to 1/4 of a tank. It gets about 9 miles to the gallon. We have to stop pretty often to fill it up.

6) The RV has these things called slide outs that allow you to expand the RV when you are parked. It's kind of fun to press a button and open the walls and have all this extra space. It's not nearly as fun to close the walls again. It's a very weird sensation to literally have the walls close in on you. It's like that scene in Star Wars when Leia and Luke are in stuck in that trash compacter, which always freaked me out when I was little. It makes a very scary noise and it always sounds like some part of the RV is breaking, but so far nothing has happened.

I'm sure I'll come up with some more observations as we go, but those were the first things I notice.

The kids played on devices, I read a People magazine without getting carsick and my parents listened to a book called This Tender Land which, as I mentioned above, I couldn't hear at all. Fortunately, I have already read this wonderful book so it's okay. We also played a lot of cards when the all of the device batteries died.

We stopped around 3 pm to eat at Culver's, our very favorite road trip restaurant stop. For some reason we always think this will be a fast stop and it never is. It almost always ends up taking an hour, which I blame entirely on the free custard that the kids get with their kid's meal.

When we got back to the RV, my mom decided to turn on the water pump in case we needed to use the bathroom in transit. However about 2 minutes after we drove away from Culver's a significant amount of water started flowing out of the bathroom. So we had to stop the RV to get towels (my towels) to clean the floors. Apparently someone left the faucet on (probably Alex), which we did not know until we turned on the pump. We ended up washing the towels at my brother's house where they are still sadly sitting in the dryer because we forgot them there. Of course they were the only two big towels I brought and now I'm going to have to share a Superman hoodie towel with one of my kids.

We only stopped one other time to get gas. The entire trip ended up taking a little over 8 hours, which is not great since it usually only takes about 6ish hours from Elmhurst to my brother's house in Minneapolis. The RV just doesn't go as fast as a car, and my kids just don't move as fast as other people.

We finally arrived at 9:15 pm and then my dad and Rob (my brother) spent over an hour in the pouring rain trying to figure where we could park the RV. They realized we couldn't park it in front of the house because it was too far from an electrical outlet. You need to keep the RV plugged in to electricity to keep the fridge and AC running. There is a generator, but that wastes gas.

After about an hour of deliberating, it was decided to move the RV to the driveway connected to their garage in the back alley. The driveway just happens to be on a slant which made standing in the RV feel like being in a carnival funhouse. My mom and I both thought we were going to throw up from standing in there for about 3 minutes. Fortunately, my mom and dad got to sleep in Rob's house. I got to sleep in the RV with the kids. They loved every second of it. Once I got over feeling like I was going to slide off the bed, I was okay.

I read the first three chapters of a book called The Mystery of Mount Rushmore by Carole Marsh out loud to the boys. This author has a series of mystery novels for intermediate readers that take place in famous setting like Jamestown or Disney World or Niagara Falls. The book was surprisingly informative and interesting. What could be better than a book about two kids going on a road trip with their grandparents through the Badlands to Mount Rushmore and finding mysterious clues at Wall Drug along the way? I think the kids liked it, although I think they fell asleep somewhere during chapter 2.