Our Moving Hotel Room

Chapter 18 of my work-in-progress camping memoir

Our campsite at Fort Wilderness, Walt Disney World, Orlando Florida, July 2017

I started working on a camping memoir five years ago but abandoned it after a year of detailed work because the time just wasn’t right. Now I am ready to get back to the work I started and turn it into a true memoir of the first 21 years of marriage and parenting. If you want to get regular updates on this project, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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The first summer after we moved to Texas, my sisters and I made plans for an anniversary celebration for my parents, which meant traveling to Michigan for our summer vacation. We had two options: we could board the dogs and drive our smaller car up north and squeeze our family into spare bedrooms with everyone else being home, or we could travel up with our camper and extend our vacation for a few more days while giving us a place that we could escape to that would be our own.

It was our first time prioritizing our camper as a moving hotel room. We left on a Friday, taking the risk of leaving without reservations anywhere and ended up traveling nearly 400 miles for over seven hours before we finally found a roadside RV campground. It came with a playground for the kids and absolutely no place outside to put our dogs, but it worked for night of sleep. Unfortunately, it also reinforced our feelings about Arkansas, thoughts we would have to let go of two years later when we traveled there for spring break.

Our travel goal for the next day was Fern Clyffe State Park in Illinois, taking the chance even though we didn’t have reservations. But first, we had to get out of Arkansas. Jeff didn’t stop for five hours, constantly on the look out for a good place to stop with the camper and a place that would meet the needs of four humans and two dogs. We traveled across a desolate eastern Arkansas, not finding a place to stop until we reached the Missouri Welcome Center 20-miles over the border.

That’s right, the welcome center where Ethan would break his first bone.

I ran back and forth between the building and the truck, filling our many water bottles while Jeff held onto dog leashes and watched the kids play. Lydia had recently discovered that she could successfully cross the monkey bars at any given playground. Five-year-old Ethan decided that if his seven-year-old sister could do something, so could he. Before I headed back into the rest area to fill up yet another set of water bottles, I watched our son attempt the first two monkey bars and then safely drop from that height to his feet. Thankful that he didn't break a leg, I left to fill the water bottles. I returned to discover my shaken husband comforting our wailing son. After I left, Ethan decided on another attempt across the bars, slipped from the first bar, landed on his feet and then fell on his wrist. We found as cold of an ice pack as we could, I dug around for some children's ibuprofen, and then we headed back on the road with me in the backseat trying to comfort Ethan while both kids settled in to watch some Zootopia. Three days later we would discover that he had broken his arm in the fall.

We did make it to beautiful Fern Clyffe State Park where we surprisingly found plenty of opening camp sites. We also found another playground, another place to walk the dogs, and a much roomier place for our whole family to settle in for the night, even if one family member was struggling with a sore arm.

With no intention to explore, the next morning we headed straight to Michigan where we spent the next week parked in Jeff’s parents’ yard, allowing us to have our own space while my sisters and their kids were also at home at my parents’. Our trip home was far less eventful, but was really more of the same as our RV became a sleeping pod as opposed to home base for outdoor adventure.

The time with my family was wonderful, but it did leave us hungry for a family vacation that focused on our family, which is why Jeff started planning for a trip to Orlando shortly after we returned to Houston.

When we bought our second camper, Jeff made it perfectly clear that his ultimate goal was going to Walt Disney World and camping at Fort Wilderness. He joined camping forums on Facebook and showed me every post of families heading to the Magic Kingdom. He watched one of his good friends plan their surprise family trip to Disney and then we both watched the video he posted of his twin girls as they realized they were almost at Walt Disney World. Moving to Texas didn’t make the trip to Orlando any shorter. It is pretty much the same distance from Fort Wayne to Orlando as it is from Houston to Orlando. What changed was our acclimation to southern summers.

During our second summer in the Houston area, Jeff asked what I thought about going to Disney.

“We could go in July. We’ll be used to the weather anyway, and according to everything that I’ve read, it tends to be less busy in mid-July. Can I at least look into it?”

I hesitated. I wanted to go on the trip. I wanted the kids to have their Disney vacation. I wanted to make sure that we did it before we had to pay “Adult” prices and while our kids were old enough to remember the trip while also thoroughly enjoying it.

“Ok, but we have to be able to pay for it with cash.”

And he was off to the races.

Travel agent was contacted, dates were selected, and plans were made. We initially wanted to keep the trip a surprise from the kids, but as we got closer to the date, we realized that we needed to tell the kids so they could have a better grasp of our summer plans, especially since those summer plans included my being gone for paid professional development (which would help cover the bill for our Disney vacation) and a quick trip for our whole family up to Indianapolis for our goddaughter’s baptism. Jeff couldn’t take extra time off, so he would be flying home early and the kids and I would driving home on our own. The summer was going to be packed and we felt they needed the full summer plan in front of them. We were also giddy with the anticipation of combining our favorite family activity (camping) with the most magical place on earth. When we broke the news to the kids, they became active participants in the planning process, picking out their magic bands, looking at maps of each of the parks so they could pick out which rides they wanted to schedule times for, and carefully selecting every item they would take with them.

Finally, after months of excitedly planning our trip, we were headed east. I made reservations at a state park in Mississippi for our first night on the road, providing us with a solid stopping point as well as a new state stop for our camper. It was a long day of driving, made longer by traveling with the camper behind us through storms and the relentless traffic along I10, which I have decided is one of the worst interstates in the United States. We drove along the shoreline and arrived at Buccaneer State Park right before dark, giving us enough light for a simple camp set up. Jeff and the kids stretched their legs at the playground while I made dinner. Excited and eager to get back on the road in the morning, we all headed to bed early so that we could do it over again the next day.

Our journey continued along I10 through torrential summer rainstorms that drenched us as soon as we tried to stop at the Alabama welcome center. For most of the next day we encountered slow moving traffic and the challenges of traveling with a camper that was getting pushed around by wind and water. Jeff struggled to keep the camper traveling straight as he drove across the bridge crossing the Mobile Bay, a stiff wind coming off of the Gulf with a promise of more rain following us the entire way to Florida. When we got to Florida, we knew that we needed to make one more overnight stop before getting to Orlando, so with no planned stop we found a roadside RV park less than two hours from Fort Wilderness. After our first night at a clean state park with a place for our kids to play and clean bathroom facilities, we spent our first night camping in Florida thankful for the clean facilities inside our camper.

This vacation was not our first trip to Disney World. When Jeff was in middle school and then all the way through high school, his family traveled to Florida every other year with our high school marching band. Long after high school graduation, his family still made use of their Orlando timeshare and planned multiple trips to the area. Nearly every trip involved at least one stop at a Disney park. I made my first stop at Disney when I was in college on choir tour and then returned a couple of times with Jeff’s family once we were married. Lydia went to Disney for the first time when she was almost two years old. Jeff took her to Orlando to hang out with his family while he was at a tech conference and I, very pregnant with Ethan, remained in cold Fort Wayne. Two years later, when our son still qualified as a free visitor because he hadn’t yet turned three, we budgeted for a single day trek to the Magic Kingdom and then spent the rest of our week in Florida hanging out at the resort pool and miniature golf course. It was during this particular trip to the Happiest Place on Earth that Jeff and I decided we needed to return to Disney for an entire week with our kids and just our kids. No extended family, no restrictions, no plans to visit other places, just Disney.

And now we were doing it, with our camper in tow.

We pulled into the resort before our official check-in time, but the accommodating staff found an unoccupied site in the same area where we had picked our first site. We parked, set up the camper, and checked out everything within walking distance of our campsite.

For camping purists, a stay at Fort Wilderness wouldn’t count as camping, but for our family, who had left the tent camping days behind us, it was the camping vacation of a lifetime. We had a perfectly clean campsite with full hook-ups and a clear path right to the bathroom and laundry facilities (and yes, I did use the laundry to prevent a huge pile up before we headed home), easy access to a large family pool with a water play area for our Ethan and a slide for the rest of us, and once we got our unlimited refill cups, access to Coke beverages all day long. We took the shuttle busses to Hollywood Studios, the ferry to Magic Kingdom and the tram to get us to Epcot, and we easily drove to Downtown Disney, Animal Kingdom, and Typhoon Lagoon. Fort Wilderness, while still a Disney vacation resort, is one of the cheaper options for resort stays with all the advantages, including the Magic Hours, which, at the time, gave each guest extra time at designated parks on designated days. We took full advantage of the extra time, including staying at Magic Kingdom until nearly midnight with a six and an eight-year-old who refused to stop until they were sitting down on the ferry that took us back to the campground.

In short, our memory making vacation was everything we could have wanted and more. And what made it even better for us was that we were able to return every night to our home away from home, a place with our stuff, our food, our clothes, and a home base which we knew inside and out. And when we invited Jeff’s sister and her family to drive over from their home only an hour away, they were able to find a tent spot close to ours to visit, spending considerably less money than if we had been staying in a hotel. Add to that impeccable service, a mosquito-controlled environment, and a loop that our kids rode their bikes on over and over again without any concerns from us about safety, and it really was a perfect vacation.

Jeff and I are homebodies who are usually more than ready to be home before a vacation has ended, but we didn’t feel that way after our Fort Wilderness stay. I could have stayed for another week. Despite late nights and an average of 20,000 Fitbit steps every day, I wasn’t exhausted, I wasn’t done, I wasn’t ready to give up the precious family time. Because of the packed days making sure that we did everything that we wanted, we had to be unplugged from our lives at home and plugged into each other, all the while watching the magic come alive for our kids. There was no time for anything else, only each other.

Unfortunately, the magic of that summer vacation with our RV as home base made the following summer trip with our RV as home base pale in comparison.

My dad is the oldest of seven kids who have settled all over the country and my paternal grandparents lived in Canada for half of my childhood. My childhood memories consisted of vacations that usually involved visiting family. That’s not to say that our childhood vacations were boring. My toddler years were spent traveling from Detroit to Goderich, Ontario, so years before Lake Michigan became my true love, Lake Huron was my first love, the icy water lapping over my frozen tiny toddler toes as I begged my teenage aunts to join me in the water. In later years, we flew to British Columbia for a family reunion and then traveled to Toronto for a couple holidays when my grandparents lived there before they settled into retirement back in the United States, moving to Kansas so they could be closer to two of my aunts.

Visiting family took my sisters and me to San Antonio, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and every place in-between as we traveled from place to place. To say that our family vacations were boring would probably be an understatement. My parents did whatever they could to make the vacations feel like vacations. So while the exciting, non-family visiting trips (such as the trip we took to California when I was nine) were rare, I did get to go to a lot of new places growing up. It’s just that it usually involved family.

When one of my nineteen younger cousins announced that she was getting married in Iowa at the end of June, I decided that I was ready to ditch the plans we were already formulating for a Colorado vacation. I hadn’t seen many of my aunts and uncles in years, and with my grandparents getting older and my grandmother’s steadily declining health making itself more and more apparent, I felt like it was something that I both wanted and needed to do.

The only problem? I forgot to run the change of plans by my husband to see what he wanted to do. See, while I spent most of my childhood crossing time zones, and sometimes national borders, to visit extended family members, most of Jeff’s extended family lives right in Michigan, or at least really close. When his family left their home to go on vacation, they were going on vacation.

Let’s just say that this particular difference in our childhoods has been an occasional cause of disagreement.

And because it is an occasional cause of disagreement and I am a notorious conflict avoider, we didn’t make actual plans for our summer vacation until well into May, when Jeff begrudgingly said he would take the vacation time to go to a region of the country that we kept promising we wouldn’t return to yet (the Midwest) and we could camp our way up and back. But I had to do all of the planning. And my initial dreams of adding Minnesota to our camping map had to be scratched. He wasn’t driving the camper that far.

So, with one month to go and the school year finally behind me, I mapped out our trip, made reservations, and waited for the moment that we could pack up and go back up north and towards the Midwest for the third summer in a row.