Escapees March-April 2019 Vol 40 Issue 5

                                                                                                        B randon, my mom, and I have gotten into a rhythm during the past few years on the road. Sometime during the spring, my mom will fly to visit us in a new location, sharing a vacation for about a week. We’ve met in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to explore the high desert, and in Vancouver, Washington, to visit family. Another year, we ditched the RV and headed to Iceland. Every trip we explored someplace new, offering us unforgettable experiences. During those trips, my Mom stays at a hotel or with family. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make the spring visit last year. We all knew she would still like to come visit at some point, and I wanted her to get that vacation on the books. As Brandon and I started talking about fall plans, I had an idea for her to meet us in Vermont. During our first year of RVing, we had visited the Shelburne Museum and always thought she would like it. We continued our travels with the idea that she would meet us in Burlington, Vermont, around October. In the spring, we had to switch our travel plans and ended up in the Midwest for an extended stay. We decided to go with the flow and cross into Canada for the summer and bring a little international travel into our plans with my mom. She would fly out and meet us in Montreal, for some French-Canadian fun, before dropping back down into the states. We started building an itinerary around all our interests. We’d sightsee and try all

the food in Montreal, go down to Burlington for the Shelburne Museum and see autumn colors and apple orchards. We also planned to make a stop in Seneca Falls, home of the first women’s rights convention, the National Women’s History Museum and the inspira- tion for Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life . The road trip would end back at her house where we would spend Thanksgiving. When Brandon and I went to pick her up from the airport in Montreal, she had a bigger bag than usual. I have seen her bring a miniscule duffel bag on a week-long vacation in Mexico, so when I heard “duffel” on the phone, this is what I pictured. What she brought was a large duffel on wheels that had to be checked. I instantly worried about where we would store everything. We don’t have an extra bedroom or closet in the RV. We don’t even have an extra drawer! She was staying in our living room on the jackknife couch. We utilized the front passenger seat as her closet and storage space. It worked out quite well. The hardest part was having to shuffle everything when we changed campsites. I felt like I should keep explaining that we normally could break down camp much faster, but there was added stuff (we were also carrying some renovation supplies to use during our holiday stay). I didn’t want her to think all this extra work was our normal life. The extra floor space in the passenger area turned out to be a blessing. Brandon

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