What to Do in a Pandemic? Of Course, Buy an...

You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish.   Author Unknown

In April, my husband and I began a five-week trip-of-a-lifetime to New Zealand, Australia, and the Cook Islands. Yup. Dream trip come true. The two of us exploring -- from Milford Sound to the Great Barrier Reef, finishing with a weeklong stint in a one-bedroom cottage steps from the lagoon in Raratonga. Floating in the South Pacific. Heaven.

Our dream trip remains a dream. As does all the travel everyone else in the world has planned. Not much excitement for any of us -- except the navigation of life in the time of Covid-19. Due to a dedicated stance on masks, social distancing, and maintaining our "pod," we've been fortunate to escape the illness and loss many have suffered and continue to endure. For us, a long stint stuck in our home has proven to be our adventure.

I'm not one to get bored. I can't recall the last time I was bored. The pandemic hasn't changed that. My unread books pile up on my ToBeRead shelf like always and I'm borrowing audio books from the library, via Overdrive, like normal. (Okay, maybe a little more.)

Yup -- that front line of books has a back line.

Playing with watercolors and acrylics and practicing patience with my lack of ability while organizing my thoughts?  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface in that venture.

Now and then, I have grandchildren to play with. Makes life easier when you do what a four-year-old tells you to do -- or follow a 17-month-old around the perimeter. 

Of course, there is the online ordering of groceries and the creative cooking. Ina Garten's Instagram entries have certainly added variety to my repertoire of the past 42 years. Continuous watering of the container garden vegetables, since I didn't plant a garden this year, takes up time. (I wasn't supposed to be here for the spring planting and harvest. Right?)

And, one can always clean house. (For me an occasional necessity -- an activity I accomplish with efficiency and speed.) 

But, still, somedays, I get itchy. 

Not bored. Just itchy to be somewhere different.

So itchy, I announced to my husband I was pulling out all our old camping equipment and we were going camping. The tent. The campstove. The coffee pot. The lantern. The clothesline. Everything. We were getting out of Dodge.

My husband shuddered in his chair. "I'm too old to sleep on the ground."

"We'll buy a huge blowup air mattress for your tender body," I snapped. 

Once upon a time, we were big campers. On our honeymoon, we drove from Michigan to the Pacific Coast Highway, camping from Astoria, Oregon to below Big Sur. We didn't have much money in our early years so campouts at Lake Michigan, and, later, while living in Colorado, Utah, and Connecticut, became our vacations and getaways. Our entertainment.

Having all three sons become Eagle Scouts meant we did significant time at campgrounds. Since getting rid of the kids, we've taken to seeing the world. We don't stay in the fanciest of hotels as we only use them for siesta, shower, and sleep.  But much nicer to sleep in a hotel on the Zambezi River than a tent where the crocodiles can have you for a midnight snack.

With those future adventures on hold -- and even road trips curtailed from visiting family or anywhere to get out of the relentless Texas summer heat, camping was the only solution I could come up with to avoid hotels and restaurants. Camping with a river to cool myself.

My husband wasn't on board. While I researched open campsites on the Frio River, he pounded away on his laptop. One morning he said there was something we needed to see in Houston - a three-hour drive away.

Next thing I knew, this happened.

This was not an idea out of the blue. Our plan in our retirement was to purchase a used Airstream -- after we satisfied ourselves with more international travel. The afore-mentioned Oceania areas of the globe followed by South America, Asia, and Spain/Portugal/Morocco. And, and, and...

As long as our bodies and pocketbook held out, we were going for it. No fancy cruises. Rental cars and roadmaps, picnic lunches and guidebooks in hand. The Airstream would come after, when we were older farts traveling the US and Canada, leeching real showers off friends along the way.

Enter the virus. Adaptation. The re-arrangement of the plan. Online shopping to explore grey/black water hoses. And, our first adventure. 60 miles from home at Blanco State Park. Floating down the river. Oilcloth on the picnic table. AC! on a hot August night in a campground. 

I write this post today as my husband and I celebrate 42 years of marriage. Where we had to use our wedding gift money to fund that 6000-mile honeymoon trek, and our VW broke down in Chicago, and my parents towed it home, and lent us a car, and it snowed while we figured out how to put up our new tent in Yellowstone National Park--in the dark -- we are now in a little better position to purchase our used 2014 Airstream. 

Although we're not snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef or watching the glowworms in New Zealand or hiking up to Machu Pichu this year, we are back where we started -- at a campground.

Poetic, I'd say. 

Now, if this thing could just learn how to back up by itself. 

Hope you're all doing well as we all plod through this, our newest lesson, in perseverance --

and life.