It has been 73 days since we returned The Beast to the Owner. No one in our family talks about it. I have noticed that we all glaze over that Time of our Summer, talking instead about working at the embassy, leaving Kazakhstan or moving to Poland. We don’t have conversations about “remember that time in the RV” or “that was so fun when we stayed in the RV”…It’s not that we are traumatized… Well, mostly we’re not traumatized. It was tough! I consciously had to stop blogging because it was all I could do to survive living in a tiny house on wheels with six people! There was no way I could then also write about it in what little downtime we had!

Here is our story as I see it, from two months out:

You know the beginning: we stayed at Bull Run campground outside Manassas, Virginia, a beautiful, green, forested area, the best campsite of the trip, in retrospect. Because we were experts by Day 2, we of course had to host Campfire night….for 13 people. In the rain….which means IN the RV.

You already know that when we got in the car and started driving up to Pennsylvania on Day 4, I hated it. I felt like I was in the front of a roller coaster, but trapped all day. I spent that first Driving day laying on the bed in the bedroom. Kids were happy to take over Navigating.

When I left you, we could use the toilet in the RV, but not the kitchen sink, the sink in the bathroom, nor the shower. We discovered this on Night 4, outside Pittsburgh, PA. Mike asked a veteran camper for help the next day. I am not kidding when I say he looked at it, assessed it and replied: I have never seen that happen before. For real! We were stuck. Because we had an appointment at Pitt in the morning, we could not stop to repair.

After our appointment, we headed off to Chicago, normally an 8 Hour drive by car. (We had planned our route on driving 65 MPH between stops, but had signed a contract not to drive over 55 MPH…kind of a big difference when you have 4000+ miles to cover!) We were now looking at 10 or 11 hours of driving, without the use of any running water or sinks. Yes we could use the toilet, and we could use wipes, but we could not wash our hands while on the road.

The drive was mainly uneventful, as Ohio, thankfully, is straight and BORING. By the time we got to Gary, IN, we were starting to get excited as we recognized familiar signs of our hometown Chicago. Mike and I assessed the traffic possibilities and rush-hour situation, and agreed that we should take the most direct route, I94, through the city. We would be able to see downtown Chicago ❤️, avoid the tolls, and best of all, Google Maps showed that it was 15 minutes’ shorter drive time then taking the bypass, I294, around the city.

As we pulled through the toll gate on the Chicago Skyway, I was walking around in the kitchen/living room of the RV. Melanie🍝 was laying on the bed in the back, and Mike was driving. (Mike ALWAYS drove!) He knew he was squeezing in a little tight through the toll booth, and he heard a scuff along the side of the RV. I heard it, Melanie heard metal clanging, which she reported. Since neither Mike nor I heard it, we kept going (must have been another car).

Mike figured we had just had our first scratch. We would have to pay for the damage, but there was no reason to get out and look at a scratch in the middle of the tollway. So we continued on, 65 miles up to his parents house in Lindenhurst, IL. He was tired, but we were both looking forward to spending time with family and a family reunion several days later. At that point our only goal was to get to their house, so we could park the RV.

We were planning to sleep indoors in their house for one night to be able to have full use of bathrooms and showers. However the campsite that we had located was 40 miles away. We would head down in the morning to set up shop and really try to understand what was happening with the gray tank.

So by the time we arrived at their house it was after 10 PM, we have been driving the entire day. We were all exhausted. As we disembarked, I noticed a color change on the side of the RV and remembered that we had scratched the side of the booth as we went through that tollbooth. Just how bad was this damage, that a color change caught my eye?!

No scratch. An entire storage compartment door was gone! 😲 The entire DOOR! The trim around the door was in place, slightly bent on one side….all we can figure is that a small hook on the door somehow caught on the cement pillars separating the toll lanes, and had yanked out the door, without damaging the rest of the RV. (HOW!?!) (Melanie had reported hearing metal clanging, but The Beast is sooooo long that neither Mike nor I had heard that!)

We had just driven 65 miles with six camping chairs and two suitcases in this compartment and had lost nothing. (HOW!?) Naturally, one of the two suitcases that have been stored inside the compartment was the one suitcase that had all of our important school files and medical files, that we keep with us when we are changing location. We could not believe we had not lost it. Eek!

We were exhausted, devastated, frustrated-we now had no working shower, no working sinks and no storage compartment door. Alas, it was after 11 o’clock on our bodies; all we could do was sleep. We would deal with it in the morning.

Although we were not able to ascertain how much a replacement door would cost (we couldn’t even guess: $600? $6000?), because as you know, the RV owner had never seen anything like this happening before, we realized that there was no better place to land then Mike’s dad’s house. Chuck is a woodworker, loaded with tools in his workshop, and could help Mike build a replacement door so we could continue to use the compartment for storage. They created a substitute door out of plywood, fitting it exactly into the spot so we could finally reach our Full Redneck outfit for the summer.

There was nothing to do about the shower while we were parked outside a residence in Lindenhurst, so I went to rent the minivan we would need during our time in Chicago, and we met at our new campsite. What a relief it would be to be able to plant the RV in one spot for six days, keep our drains hooked up and figure out how to actually camp together.

Well, we quickly learned that we had selected the campground without a bathhouse. We are now on day five and we have no ability to shower. At all. Because we had plans for the next day, with dear friends who love us no matter our state of desperation, we brought our shower gear, met them for dinner and stayed to shower in their home. (Thank you Michelle and Byron!)

By Day 7, we knew that we had to bring the RV in for repairs, because that we could not sustain living there with six people and not having the ability to shower or wash hands. Day 7 was the day of our Northwestern University college tour with Michael. I drove into the city with Michael, Meredith and Melanie, for the college tour. Jorie stayed back with Mike to keep him company at the RV repair shop.

What they found, they all remarked on never having seen happened before… The gray tank was clogged with two years’ worth of grease and coffee grounds that had been washed down the kitchen sink, effectively creating a plug in the gray tank. Siggghhhh…..when the repair was complete, Mike returned the rv to our site and he and Jorie took an Uber and the train to meet us in Evanston, to enjoy some Chicago food/Lake Michigan sighting. (What a beautiful campus Northwestern is!)

Week one ended with shower ability (yay!), handwashing ability within the RV (Yay!), But a giant plywood door on the side installed on the side of the RV. One other feature we had not known to look for in a campsite is drainage available at each site. The campground we were situated in in Elgin, only had drainage in two spots in the campground. That means we had to Decamp, Close the Bump outs, and drive the 1/10 mile to the drain every second day. Having a shower available, meant that we were filling the drains much faster, and therefore could not set up shop permanently. We were learning that RV camping is a LOT of work!

We enjoyed our time visiting family and friends in Chicago, and drove up to northern Wisconsin to visit my family towards the end of week two. In Wisconsin, we could leave the RV in one place, and as long as we used the indoor plumbing at my parents’ house, we did not need to drain anything through the RV. Mike and I were able to continue to sleep in our nice king bed with a brand new mattress in the RV, the kids slept in the house and we all enjoyed indoor plumbing.

Week two was a bit easier than week one. We were now learning that RV camping is much more fun when you can enjoy the area, and stay in one spot for more than one night at a time. We actually relaxed, swam, boated, hammocked, visited and ate good American cooking before leaving Wisconsin early in week three. We headed for Des Moines, IA, where we would meet friends for two days and have the luxury of actual beds and bathrooms inside the house. I knew they would be thrilled to see us pull up in a 35 foot long RV with a plywood door!

Week three ended in Austin TX. Michael had a college visit at UT- Austin. We had initially planned to stay for one night, moving on to New Orleans the next day. Unfortunately, a hurricane derailed us from those plans. We were clear we did not want to be driving in a big wobbly RV that could easily be blown sideways off the road through a hurricane. We changed our routes, deciding to stay in Austin for three nights and enjoy getting to know Austin instead of visiting the gulf coast on our way East.

We are thankful to have had time to dine and visit with my Aunt Martha and Carolyn, and the Ward family while in Texas. It was lovely to have those visits, and hard to leave our friends and family. But there was so MUCH waiting along the gulf coast! I was mainly hoping for lazy beach time and sunshine.

By the time we arrived in Louisiana, on the tail of the hurricane, it was pouring nonstop and would continue for another 24 hours. We took Louisiana to be the place that we could use the bathrooms, look at the pretty pool and grab a yummy doughnut. Unfortunately that is literally all we learned about Louisiana.

The morning we woke up there, Melanie was in great pain. She had been the person designated to sleep on the foldout couch, with a very soft mattress and a bar running through the middle of the bed. After two weeks, her back literally could not handle it. By the time we drove into Alabama, Melanie was in tears and could not stand up. It was 7 PM and Mike and I knew we had a problem. Fortunately, we were pulling into a town of good size. We located the urgent care, drove to it, found a wide enough spot to leave the RV for a few hours, and set up shop in the waiting room. Melanie was checked in at 8 PM. By that point we had not had dinner. We have been expecting to pull into our campground and be able to grill once we set up there.

As Melanie and I waited and waited, Mike decided not to wait. He began grilling chicken in the parking lot of the urgent care in Alabama. 😆 This is actually a cherished memory from our vacation. After an hour, I decided to have a conversation with the staff. The conversation led me to realize that what we needed for Melanie was not going to be found at the urgent care. Mike turned off the stove, secured the hot food and we drove to the nearest hospital.

By the time we checked in to the emergency room, it was 10 PM. You cannot drive quickly in an RV! Melanie was not seen by a doctor until 1 AM. Mike kept Vigil in the RV, occasionally checking on the wait and how things were going. [This is where having an RV was a real advantage! The three younger kids were able to sleep on the couch and in the big bed while I waited with Melanie in the hospital]

She had x-rays and nothing serious was found, thankfully. She was given muscle relaxers and pain relievers and we were discharged at 4:30 am. We checked into our campsite (which we had specifically chosen for us access to a beach), at 5:30 in the morning. At this point RVing had become something to survive. Melanie had actually been damaged from sleeping in an RV for several weeks! We were ALL Ready to be Done.

The rest of the trip became a quest to have one relaxing day at the beach while also GETTING THIS THING BACK TO MANASSAS. We left Alabama and departed for Saint Augustine, FL, where we hoped we could enjoy a little bit of vacation time. We did! We had a lovely morning at the beach, enjoyed the town and moved on to Savannah GA.

We had one more college visit: Meredith-University of South Carolina. I was thrilled to be able to tour Charleston and Savannah with the kids, and really wished we had more time to explore those cities.

In a bit to save our sanity, and try to up the Balance of this trip from Mostly Work to more Work and Play, we elected to drive straight through to Virginia Beach VA, spending our last two nights as close to water as we could.

Mike found a fantastic campsite flat: pretty, facing the Chesapeake Bay, with availability, a bathhouse, with drainage available. We arrived, set up shop and headed for the beach, just a couple hundred yards from the RV. Ahhhh….finally! Day 28 we had figured it out!

1/2 Hour into our swim time, Jorie was the victim of a jellyfish sting. This was new for us- Mike and I had no clue what to do! Fortunately the family next to us was dealing with the same thing. We watched as they threw fresh water on the it and sent their daughter back into the water to swim. Not so for our number two! She lobbied the rest of the family to decamp and drive into Virginia Beach, where we could swim in, as she called it, “the regular ocean”. We did …..and we loved it. We had a wonderful day, sitting on the beach, eating hotdogs from the hotdog cart (is there anything better?) and a seafood dinner.

The next day was D Day….as in DONE! DID IT💪🏼 Nobody argued about rising early and decamping for our 4 Hour drive back to Manassas, where we could finally LEAVE The Beast. 😄

As we had five more days in Virginia before departing the US, once again we had to rent a car. I picked up the car while Mike drove the RV out to Woodstock. This added an hour of drive time, which aggravated me as I was completely ready to be done. As you may recall however, we were returning the RV with a plywood door. It needed to go to the repair shop before it could be rented out again.That was our responsibility. We met the owner in Woodstock at a RV repair shop, where we negotiated on mileage and repairs (some of which were his).

We drove away, and agreed we had never felt so free! 24 states, 4200+ miles, Hours of Dutch Blitz and Play Nine card games, 29 nights, 4 colleges, DONE! YAY Us.

In case you’re wondering…..we don’t recommend 6 adults living in an RV…..