The Bad:<\/p>\n
Being on the road this time around is different than it was in the early days of September 2008. I’m enjoying it a lot less this time, finding driving the rig to be exhausting. Oh, I still adore the portable lifestyle, as my friend Donna calls it, but I’m not so loving being 50′ long. While a lot of RVers regret buying too small, I am beginning to regret buying too big.<\/p>\n
I’m caught in a sort of conundrum: my rig is perfect for me in terms of living space. The 31′ feet rear bedroom + dressing room layout is the difference between having an RV and having a home. But for driving, it is a pain, especially when I am towing. I grow weary of missing potentially interesting turnouts because it’s not clear if I’ll be able to pull out. I know from last September that hooking and unhooking several times in a day is unacceptable and that there is also the matter of getting caught in a place where you can’t unhook. I’m starting to dream of having a 24″ rig that wouldn’t require me to have a toad and, yet, I can’t imagine living comfortably in something that small. Perhaps the solution would be to ensure that I never go to a cold climate so that a small scooter would be a good toad for me.<\/p>\n
Another thing that I am weary of is being The One Responsible. Even if someone cuts me off or otherwise does something that could cause me to cause an accident, I’m at fault because I choose to drive a huge vehicle. It doesn’t matter that the car drivers are not letting me get into the proper lane, forgetting that I need a large breaking distance, and ignoring my wide turning radius. I just don’t find this fair. Yes, I choose to drive a big vehicle, but they choose to be idiots!<\/p>\n
The Good:<\/p>\n
I’m on the Gold Rush Trail heading to the Yukon. In terms of milestones, I’m a third of the way there. My next big milestone will be Dawson Creek, mile 0 of the Alaska highway. I cannot even express the mess of emotion that I’m feeling right now, how I tear up every single time I realise just where I am and where I’m going. I was convinced that the North was lost to me, after dreaming of it for so long. I just couldn’t see myself making it there, not with the way my old life was going. I think I know why I can’t imagine the future beyond September: the Yukon was the last dream of my old life and when that dream died, no dreams replaced it. Oh, there are things I want to see and do, of course, but there was nothing that could replace the North. It was like with Scotland, had to go there to be free of it.<\/p>\n
So far, this trip is exactly what I dreamt it would be–desolate, mountainous, isolated, and breathtakingly beautiful. If I am happy so far, in still relatively non-remote British Columbia, imagine how I will feel once I pass Dawson Creek!<\/p>\n
It is good to be back to a schedule-free life, to not know where I will stop each night, to fill my days with wondrous sights, and to sleep in my own bed everywhere from a Walmart to the rim of a gorgeous chasm. Much as I might complain about some of the hassles of RVing, this is where truly belong, on the road, heading towards a dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bad: Being on the road this time around is different than it was in the early days of September 2008. I’m enjoying it a lot less this time, finding driving the rig to be exhausting. Oh, I still adore the portable lifestyle, as my friend Donna calls it, but I’m not so loving being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1442,632,635,11,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britishcolumbia","category-canada","category-north-america","category-personal","category-rving","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}