Wandering Wahls

Last night I was reading my checked-out-from the Air Force Academy library book (we’re making full use of the base services in Colorado Springs). The book is my first experience with a large print edition. Not that my eyes are going bad, it’s just that I put my name on the wait-list for Dan Brown’s latest book and the large print edition is the one that became available. After reading 80 pages in my first sitting, I was pretty proud of myself. However, I realized that since this was large print, what I read was probably the equivalent of 3 pages in regular sized print.

I gave up on the book and started thinking of how this business of settling down is full of interesting experiences. For most of you, the issues we are experiencing while settling down are probably nothing new. For us though, this is our first time buying a house (first time being able to paint walls), first time finding a school in the US, first time buying a new washer and dryer, and so on. Additionally, there are still cultural issues to get used to (i.e., how did “sweet” become such an integral adjective in my kids’ vocabulary even though they’re not talking about food or candy?). Also, is running a red light legal now? It’s frequent enough.

Anyway, we did find a house and we’ll recount that experience for you later (as well as the associated adventures). We were fortunate to have a great realtor, Brian Slivka, who was a Godsend in helping us through the labyrinth known as house-buying. Now we must get used to an empty bank account as well as getting things done in the house and getting the RV ready to sell.

Regarding the last point, we want to scale down from a 41-foot behemoth to a smaller behemoth more suited to week-long trips to National Parks – as opposed to a 16-month trip across the US. If anyone needs a great RV well suited for full timing on the road (bunk beds for kids, washer & dryer, 6 TVs – one outside even, and “super storage”), let us know. It is kind of sad to be thinking of selling our home-on-the-road though.

One of the goals for our blog entries for MOAA is to include different perspectives on  our experience. We’ve heard from Mary Claire, the active duty family member, and me (the spousal unit – I will not refer to myself as “DS”). What have been missing is our kids’ perspectives. In that regard, I thought I would submit today my daughter’s thoughts on the 16 month RV trip across the U.S. – specifically about what one part of the trip stood out in her mind. For me its whoopee pies. For Anna though, not surprisingly, it was our visits to the 60+ National Parks and the impression they made on her.

As background, Anna is 11 years old and in the 5th grade. These thoughts and words are hers alone – and I am proud to say that her mom and dad DID NOT write this for her.

Tom

National Parks are important to me first of all because they all feature wonderful wildlife which cannot be found in many other places (zoos do not really count because the animals cannot be called “wild” life). The wildlife varies from the many bats in Carlsbad Caverns National Park to colorful fish in Biscayne National Park. Second, National Parks let me get away from people, and give me peace and quiet.

I consider myself very lucky to have seen about 60 National Parks in the last 16 months. I never realized all the natural beauty in the USA before we took our cross-country trip in our RV. Starting in California we saw Joshua Tree National Park. There we were lucky enough to see a tarantula. Unfortunately, we missed the National Parks around Oregon and Washington, but we did see the wonders of Yellowstone National Park (in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming). With bears, wolves, and geysers, Yellowstone is one of my favorite National Parks. Theodore Roosevelt National Park treated us to bison in our campground; prairie dogs in Prairie Dog Towns; and, wonderful hiking trails. Mount Rushmore National Memorial taught us about the presidents. I can’t list all of the National Parks but some special ones were Everglades National Park in Florida (alligators in every swamp), Rocky Mountains National Park in Colorado (Mountain Goats if you’re lucky enough), and Carlsbad Cavers National Park in New Mexico (stalagmites and stalactites in the beautiful caves). My brothers and I also got Junior Ranger badges or patches in every National Park we visited. We prefer the patches over the badges.

Traveling the country really inspired me to try to help protect the National Parks. Protecting National Parks does not always involve hard tasks. Some rules like “don’t bust the crust,” “leave no trace,” “stay on the trail,” and “don’t feed the wildlife” can actually help a lot.

“Don’t bust the crust” means not to step on Biological soil crust. This crust is actually alive! Biological soil crust can be found in Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.

“Leave no trace” means to not litter, not to take anything, or just not to change the natural habitat. The only thing you can take is pictures and memories.

“Stay on the trail” means, well, to stay on the trail. Why the National Park Service wants you to do that is because if you step off trail you may step on plants that are growing there. Only one person stepping off trail may not do anything alone, but if one person does it then other people are bound to do the same. Soon everyone will be destroying plants, and animal’s habitat, all because of a few (maybe even one) people off the trail.

“Don’t feed the wildlife” also means what it says. Why the National Park Service wants you to follow this rule is because when wild animals are fed they forget to feed themselves because they depend on people too much. Also they (mostly larger animals like bears) can become aggressive and attack humans for their food. Sometimes the animal has to be put down because they are too dangerous. The saying “a fed bear is a dead bear” comes from that fact.

An idea that may help protect National Parks could be that school field trips be held at National parks and the schools could raise money to help the National Parks.

In conclusion, America is very lucky to have these fabulous National Parks. I hope that people will keep helping and Protecting National Parks so that I can take my grandchildren there some day.

At my last entry I whined a bit about feeling “lost” after retirement. Thanks to my wonderful AF friends, I had replies that confirmed this was not at all unusual. My amazing husband also gives me unending support. So I am now feeling that it’s OK to take some time for myself. One thing that’s been great is going to the gym at the Air Force Academy every day. Wow, I never had time to do that while on active duty. I even get a personalized strength-training lesson with the exercise physiologist from the HAWC. She was explaining the machine to work on the “latissimus dorsi”, and the other retiree with me happily shouted, “Oh, you mean the bra overhang.” We had a good laugh, and I wondered why the girl in her 20’s didn’t get it.

I’ve also taken the time to go to daily mass. (It’s Lent after all.) When I was active duty I barely had time to run in for ashes on Ash Wednesday. I feel so lucky and blessed to have this time to devote to my spiritual growth, and improve my physical health as well.

Mostly I am embracing the importance of being home with my children. I love picking them up from school and hearing all about their day. I have signed up for PTO activities and started volunteering in the lunchroom. (Now that’s a great way to spy on your 7th grader, much to his dismay!) I even have dinner cooked for Tom when he comes home from work. After all, that was HIS job for 12 years. As soon as we move in to our house, I might even have warm cookies waiting for the kids.

Now how is that for transitioning?

Stopping the RV has been interesting. There are times I feel like I should be hooking up the car, putting the antenna down, and plug an address into the GPS for our next stop. Of course, this may be due to single digit weather as opposed to a feeling to get on the road again.

However, the arrival here has been a culture shock – and a shock in general. Getting used to having to arrive at work at a specified time has been a change. But, I’m teaching at a good school and in a great department, so it has been easy to ease into a new career (“about time” as my brother-in-law would say).

Then there was the car search. We lost a perfectly good, high mileage, well maintained, Volvo early in the trip. It burned to the ground while being stored over a weekend by a mechanic. Unfortunately, the storage building was owned and shared by three local businesses, so finding fault was like finding good Mexican food in Europe. We went through USAA for the loss, but the payment didn’t quite equal the real value, and it was less the deductible (how about this for a bad choice: I raised our deductible before the trip in order to save premium, and we end up having 4 claims during the trip that more than exceeded the premium savings).

Anyway, looking for a second car was not so much an eye-opener but a reminder of how much I despise buying cars. The Scotch-Irish in me made me look for used cars instead of buying a new vehicle. We had to deal with the anonymity of CraigsList  and local want ads, and the related cynicism about the real reason the car is being sold. And, of course we met the local car dealers’ salesmen (they’re always men, but that’s probably a positive statement regarding the integrity of women). I’ve never met so many best friends in such little time who really cared about my family (my hand was on my wallet the whole time).

In the end, we came across a nice guy who emigrated here from Poland a few years ago (I mention that only in honor of my late mom who was always proud of her Polish heritage – she would have enjoyed meeting him). He had an ’05 vehicle with low mileage and a great price. On top of that, he owns a few hotels around Colorado and threw in a free weekend at his hotel in the mountains at Frisco, CO.

Things are settling well. Now, on to the house issue.

It’s been 18 months since my retirement from the Air Force, but the reality of this retirement is just now sinking in. The first couple months of the trip were busy with the actual move back to the USA, searching for and negotiating the RV, and planning our trip. Once we took off, we were consumed with the adventure itself. There were travel routes to plan (many on the fly), destination spots to research, and kids to teach! My days were filled with new and amazing discoveries of our beautiful country, as well as discoveries of my own family—things that I missed when I was active duty. Being together 24 hours a day for 16 months in 200 sq. feet of living space fostered a kind of family intimacy that I had never imagined.

Now as we transition from RV life to “real life” in Colorado Springs, I can’t help but feel a bit lost. The kids are in school, Tom has started his job, and I am feeling role confusion. I have always been an active duty mother—squeezing in motherly duties between the military duties, and relying on my great husband to keep the house together. Now it’s my turn…and it feels strange. Filling out paperwork at the dentist’s office today, I pondered on the line “occupation.” First, I put “retired”. No, sounds too old. Then I put “RN.” But I’m not actually working as an RN. I scratched that out, and put “housewife.” But we don’t have a house yet, and no one would get “RV-wife”. By that time there wasn’t room for “transitioning.”

To get to Colorado Springs, we had to drive through two songs. First we went backwards through the tune of Route 66 via “Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino…” We got our kicks on Route 66, if only for the few remaining miles that exist with the Interstate. After getting hip to Bobby Troup’s kind of trip, I’ve got to believe it must have been a lot more fun in Mr. Troup’s time than now. The sections are full of truck stops, strip malls, and housing developments.

Our second traveling-through-a-song adventure came as I exited in Arizona to get diesel. While waiting for the 80-gallon tank to fill up (I wish I had kept track of the life minutes lost while filling the RV’s tank over the last 16 months), I realized I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. As I contemplated Jackson Browne’s lyrics (though made famous by the Eagles), and felt like a free sprit looking for flat bed Ford, I realized there was a girl in an RV door peering out to take a look at me – but it was to hurry up, the tank had been filled for awhile.

At least I’m not “running on empty” – yet.

You’d think after being full time RVers for 16 months, we’d not make expensive mistakes anymore. We were proud of ourselves for carefully planning the journey to Colorado Springs to avoid crossing mountain passes and potentially having to put chains on this 41-foot beast.

Instead we drove south through Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino (are you getting hip to this kind of trip – stop me if you’ve heard this). We arrived in Colorado Springs among snow and 40 degree sunny weather—even my California Girl of a wife could handle weather like this! We checked in to the FamCamp at the Air Force Academy, which is a quiet, peaceful place, especially this time of year. (I wonder why.)

We knew enough to fill our water tank, then disconnect the hose so the water hose would not freeze at night. There are only about 5 other RVs here, and we did notice that some of them had lamps turned on under their RVs. Not bothering to ask why, maybe that was where they read the paper, we then set out to see our good friends who live in Colorado Springs.

They warned us of a cold front coming in (temps predicted to be -20 F with wind chill,) but we assured them we were cozy and warm in the RV. We came home late that night, with temps now down to -8, and found we had no running water. Hmm, that’s funny, we filled up the tank earlier—could the water have frozen in the tank? We called the RV manufacturer, Newmar, to ask about the problem.

Their reply: “Did you leave the heater on when you were out?” No, we were trying to save propane. Oops, that meant possible frozen water pipes, which ran along the furnace ducts, or a frozen water pump.

Our experienced RV neighbor Al helped us thaw out the water pump the next day by lending us a spare hot lamp and space heater. The culprit was found—a cracked water pump. Thank goodness for mobile RV service. $500 later, our water pump was replaced and we were back in business.

Now we know to leave the heater set at a comfortable 60 degrees while we are out. No more frozen water pumps. Do you think we will learn as many lessons when we move in to a normal house?

We had a wonderful 2 months in CA and AZ, where our primary mission was to spend time with our families. My family is in AZ, and we enjoyed desert weather and swimming in my dad’s 90 degree pool in his townhouse retirement community (it is always set to 90 degrees, slightly cooler that the temperature his fellow residents get when they see kids in their pool). MC’s (large) family is scattered around CA, but never fail to all aggregate for holidays and parties! Being stationed overseas for 8 years was glorious, but we missed so many family gatherings. It was terrific to spend time with family—and enjoy the parties.

With all this family time we were actually contemplating calling California “home”—(I know what you’re thinking—too many people, too much traffic, too high of prices – I kept telling my wife that same thing). But then the call came. I had been sending out resumes to many Universities to continue my on-line teaching. Then, I got a call from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, offering me a full time position teaching Business Writing (the class I’ve been teaching part-time for UMUC the past 10 years) in their Professional Writing Program. (This offer is for face-to-face teaching, not on-line.) So…we pondered it a bit – Colorado is a beautiful state, and was on our “Top 10” list, but 20 driving hours from family members that we just reconnected with.

When weighing our pros and cons of the move, we realized that we were sitting at the same dining room table at my brother-in-law Dan’s house in Wilton, CA, that we were sitting at 16 months ago planning our “Wahls Across America” trip – talk about full circle (irony or sign from God?).

We broke the possibility to MC’s family, thinking they’d be heartbroken that we’d be moving 3 states away. But they were actually pleased, promising to visit often! My brother-in-law Dan, always full of sage advice, smiled and said “Party’s over, Tom, time to go to work!”

And with that, the Wandering Wahls are pondering  (is it final?) “settling down”, and moving to the beautiful state of Colorado. But I assure you, the party is NOT over! Nor, the blog – I still have (mis)adventures to tell and new adventures about transitioning from military life to civilian life – from the perspectives of a retiree, her spouse, and their military brats (children) who have spent the majority of the past decade living overseas as a military family.

Sorry NY, We <3 CO now!

We’ve eaten very well and very inexpensively on the “Eating Our Way Across America” portion of our trip. From the $1.75 hot dogs at Coney Island in Fort Wayne, IN to a little joint in Coeur D’Alene, ID whose name I have forgotten. The place only offered hamburgers (with or without sauce), fries, and a drink. The line moved quickly and the food was delicious, and under $2.00 a hamburger. In Tempe, AZ we had fabulous Mexican food at a little inconspicuous place set away from strip malls and trendy areas.

However, we have encountered a few meals where we ask “why?” when discovering the taste/price ratio. These places tend to be in touristy areas where the tourists must feel it is part of the experience to dish out too many dollars for too little taste. A coastal town in California was part of this experience. We heard the place’s (I’ll keep the place nameless) cookies were the best around and worth having with their $4.00 cup of coffee. That price should have given us a warning.

But, since MC and I enjoy a cookie now and then (more of “NOW!” for me actually), we walked over to try the cookies. At first the price wasn’t so daunting, $3 for a couple of cookies – I mean, they had brown butter and sea salt in the ingredients so they must be gourmet (I was trying to not to sound too uncouth otherwise). Two surprises came – they weren’t that tasty and they were small! We had committed to pay for barely more than a quarter-sized cookie! Maybe the sea salt shrinks them.

Oh well, the weather was good and the beach fun. On to eating our way across America!

Let's go get a cookie!

I have come to realize that my driving leaves too much free time for me to ponder useless bits of RV philosophy, especially on those stretches where there is no radio signal to be had (which is frequent in the open spaces of the west). For instance: Is drydocking at an RV park comparable to purgatory? (Thinking about an issue such as this is either due to a wandering mind or my Jesuit education – or both.)

Drydocking is an RVer term for those times in an RV park when the full hook up sites (water, electric, and waste at the site) are full and one is shuttled to another side of the park where there are no, or only partial, services to await the opening of a full hook up site. Here, one must utilize a central spot to periodically fill up the RV’s water tank and dump the waste, while running the RV’s generator at the site (during limited hours) to enjoy TV, microwave, W/D, etc.

Drydocking occurs primarily at popular areas where there is a gathering of wildlife known as “snowbirds.” These very intelligent “birds” know that places like Florida, Sand Diego, and Arizona are much more enjoyable in the winter than other parts of the country.

I was recently recalling during a drive between Barstow and Flagstaff that when we hit the base RV parks at Tampa, Cape Canaveral, and Key West without reservations, we spent most of our time drydocking. We still had a great time and would return in a moment’s notice, but it occurred to me that this was like an RV purgatory – we’re so close to Heaven with all the blessings of full hook ups 24 hour power, yet we’re not without some access to them; we haven’t been dispatched to lesser settings, such as a Wal-Mart parking lot. Is this a metaphor for the purgatory I learned about in Catholic grade school?

I’d also go into the question of whether the children of the “dark side” in Star Wars use nightlights, but that really would demonstrate a need for more thought provoking diversions while I drive. It may be time for satellite radio.