Nearly 5 months into this CHAPTER of our lives, the one word
description would be BLESSED!
Our Dollar Tree placemats say “Blessed and Thankful” and
that pretty much says it all!! We had
been warned that getting a space in an RV Park without reservations was iffy at
best. Maybe before COVID-19 but not
now!! We have been so fortunate, finding a perfect space EVERY TIME! Except for one, there always has to be an
exception. But even there we received a
full refund when I said that we didn’t have the skills yet to back into a space
with a new ONE MONTH old trailer (fortunately
Tom was NOT with me! He would have
disagreed!)
Our last trailer we built ourselves BEFORE CHILDREN! Tom even guided the tent maker in Pasadena –
she had never seen or built a zipper with curved corners, actually 2 zippers
each with a curved corner, for tall folks!
The tents in those days had 3 zippers – one vertical and two horizontal
at the bottom meeting in the middle, so a tall person had to manage to turn his
head into a triangle! Can’t find those tents
any more unless they are in your great-grandparents garage’s attic! We sold that custom designed trailer to a
Girl Scout Leader when we moved to Strawberry in 1979. It is probably still camping somewhere!
LIVING in a HOME on wheels requires organization and diligence,
timing, and patience. But it isn’t our “first
rodeo” – that would be the furnished 1 bedroom apartment in So Pasadena in
1961. I worked days and Tom worked
nights, and the saw head for the radial arm saw lived in the space behind the
curve on the sectional! He was allowed
to leave the base with the arm and the stand that he had built from 2x4s out in
the Laundry Room provided he cleaned up after any use and removed the SAW.
Then there was the 12 x 24 mountain cabin in Burland
Ranchettes on Hiway 287 above Bailey CO when the boys were pre-school. The excitement every other day was going to
the community pump to get 5 gallon containers of water, and to Bailey to get
the mail, that is if we had a working
vehicle. It seems we went through SIX in
the first year we were there 35 miles from Tom’s work. We borrowed every extra vehicle from both
sets of parents while repairing the last one that broke. Being mechanically gifted is often a
CURSE. Eventually all were back in
running condition, but we NEVER took
transportation for granted again and were VERY thankful when that run of “bad
luck” ran its course.
Then, there was the move to the 2 bedroom apartment in the
Strawberry Inn where for a month our furniture from the house in San Jose was
in the kitchen of the apartment AND a downstairs storage room. Cramped but we did survive!! And the three children increased the
enrollment of the Pinecrest Elementary School by 10%!! Read that story in “Diary of a Would-be
Inkeeper” ) ask Martha to email you a
copy.)
Life is full of adventure as long as you view it with
GRATITUDE and a good ATTITUDE. You can
choose to be a victim or a VICTOR! So
after 41 years in the vacation / hospitality business we are now partakers of
the hospitality of OTHERS; if there is
such a thing as KARMA – ours is all good.
If I choose to think of it as BLESSINGS,
I give GOD all the credit!!
