Our next camping trip.

Agreed. I do feel like the BBC does a better job covering as many sports as possible, and having a lot of replay to watch. NBC is wretched. Truly wretched, and I am tired of how few sports actually get any seconds of air time much less decent coverage.

Yes, we didn't do any kind of sink. I really like doing dishes outdoors, and Mark always helps after every meal. We warm water on the camp stove in our galvanized bucket. We also use that bucket to warm water for washing up. So far we have stayed in campgrounds with showers, but eventually we will try dispersed camping. We do have a portable composting toilet that we can take with us, and we will probably buy a solar shower. But when you disperse camp, you have no potable water source and have to carry it all with you. So, water conservation becomes the name of the game!

Our son that got JnJ because that was all that was offered, really wants to get Pfizer, but none of the local pharmacies are willing to do it.

Hmmmm. I haven't thought about that much. I thunk that while things like golf and tennis, soccer, etc. do have a lot of international play so I don't think they need the Olympics, a lot of sports only have national level play so the Olympics are very important to those athletes. I do wonder about the addition of sports for whom there are very few countries with athletes interested in them. It doesn't end up being much of a "world" event so to speak. But, mostly I am happy for the diversity. And hey, it is very, very important because we love that Jamaican Bobsled team! 😀

For us, our youngest graduated high school/homeschool when I was 50 and DH 54. He won't retire until he is 62, and I went back into the work place. So since our retirement plans are dependent on not holding down salaried positions that offer very little flexibility, what we do now is not the same as what we will do then despite the fact that we are fairly empty nested. Two boys are going off to grad school in 2022, and youngest ds graduates with his BS in April, 2022. So we will be truly empty nest at that point because none do them will be living around here as employment/grad school options in their respective fields are not available. But, dh won't be retired. My job in community fine arts has been gutted by covid and isn't coming back, so I am working off and on as a gig pianist. I am not sure if I will take on other work or not.

Thanks! A Pro master is nice because it is taller, and it is a very good performer in accidents so safety is a bif consideration. You can get more storage and stand up inside. That is one reason I would consider a taller van. But we want to cover such long distances that we need something that gets good gas mileage so we are likely to buy a hybrid minivan in the future. The Chrysler Pacifica is out because currently it only goes about 35 miles on electric only, and the battery pack is in the back under the bench seats so those seats do not stow, and you cannot get extra cargo space by removing them (ie. using the bench well like we can in the Sienna). However, since we have a five year wait before we absolutely want to make the transition, we can see if their design changes. That said, we are pretty brand loyal. Christopher and I were in a Sienna when we were t-boned in 2014 by a woman driving like a bat out of hell who was playing on her phone and ran a stop sign at high speed. Two firemen and a state trooper told my husband that Christopher would have been dead if we had been in any other mini-van or smaller vehicle because the Sienna had the best engineering for t-bones available at that time, and even the old models came with side curtain airbags (saved Christopher's head) when no one else but the newer Odyssey minis and none of the American SUV's had them as standard features. It made me very emotionally attached to the brand. I have recently purchased a Chevy Equinox for my regular driving now that I do not have a rocket team of teens to transport to practice and competition launches. It has just enough cargo space for Mark and I to use for our own personal rocketry trips. It came with all the safety features I wanted, gets the same safety rating as the Sienna, and gets much better gas mileage. I have adjusted to the smaller vehicle. I can use it solo camping because with the back seat folded down, I can just sleep in the back since I am only 5'4". But poor 6' Mark absolutely cannot, so even though our tail veil fits it, we won't be able to camp together in it. I am going to do a solo camping trip in it in October. I am excited about that prospect! I am also going to take another photography workshop. Some car and camp gear companies will pay Vanlifers for photos they can use in promotional materials. I also absolutely love our National Park and National Forest service and am willing to donate photography to them for their use. I need to up my game and abilities in this regard. I have taken one beginner and one intermediate photography class, and am taking fairly decent photos now. I need a lot more practice though, and I also need the advanced class after I get that practice. Most of what I post here has been quick, cell phone shots, not anything with my good DSLR.

I am so sorry. I think what happens to people like this is, sadly, they die in their homes alone, or sometimes social services gets involved if they make too many 911 calls due to not being able to take care of themselves.

We just bought our retirement home in Alabama, and bought one with a view, a wonderful yard, fruit trees, gardening options, and is a great gathering place for the whole family. There is room for our mothers if they live that long. Currently, our daughter, son in law, and two grandsons live in it, and we have a suite. We will come and go from the house for the next five years when dh officially retires. We intend on not being there all the time though. We are keeping a small place by Lake Huron here in Michigan for a summer place because Bama is too hot and sweaty for summer. We also will be VanLife camping all over the United States with the house in Alabama as home base. My sister lives in France so we will be making regular excursions to see her and my brother in law.

We haven't canceled, but we have modified. We chose a more remote campground for fall van camping than the one we had originally booked just to be sure we don't encounter very many people and are sharing the restroom facilities with a sparse number. (We make in the restrooms as well.)

Also z though expensive we found a two burner Coleman camp stove with a refillable tank that can run on unleaded gas. We carry a pen gallon gas can now. We GRT a TON of cooking from that so for gallon. Way cheaper than buying those little propane tanks that you can't get refilled, making them undesirable environmentally speaking. It won't take long for the new stove to pay for itself.

No, we don't keep an electric pot. We can cook in our tail veil with the camp stove, so we have a perk pot for coffee which doubles for hot water for tea and cocoa.

Yes, they are adjustable to fit. I can use our tail veil on our Chevy Equinox if I want.

I 100% agree that as a society now dependent on internet, it needs to be guaranteed and regulated! Virtual was a disaster here in many places due to a variety of reasons, but poor internet service in rural areas was one of them.

For the trip we took with our sons, we left the bucket seats in, set the cubbies on top of the bed and stored bags of items under them enough route, and took another sleeping tent plus camp cots for them. We were packed in like saridines with two coolers and more camp chairs as well. But all the fishing gear, kitchen equipment, etc. stored nicely in the long tubes under the bed, and pull out as needed. When we do buy the hybrid Sienna, we will be taking the back bench seats out entirely. This will create a very deep well for storage so probably a new platform will be built with spaces for tubs and shelves. He will still do it in multiple pieces so we can have the bucket seats in if we want. This will come in handy with two grandsons who might want to tag along once in a while.

I don't have a good shot of the tail veil attached to the van. You can see just a little bit behind Peter who is attempting to devour a smore while battling his moustache and beard.

More

More photos.

So I am going to put a bunch of photos in here of our minivan camper conversion. First, it should be noted that while Make and I not do super rustic camping, we also do not need a lot of amenities to make us happy. This is not the conversion for people who want a lot more options. He and I like to sit outside, like to be around a campfire, etc. For two of us, we can comfortably hunker down in the van and tail veil when it rains or is really cold. This is an older model Toyota Vienna with recessed seats. We take out the bucket seats, recess the back seats, and slide the conversion in. It comes apart easy peasy in three pieces all of which are hinged so you can access storage underneath.There is a cubby for each one of us behind the driver and passenger seat, and long under bed storage containers under the main part of the conversion. We took a layer of an old memory foam mattress that we had, and a foam topper for over that and it has been the right amount of padding for sleep, and the I have a couple of quilts I made for it. The curtains were made from a set of six 48x84" panels that used to be a room in our house. I had them stashed away after we redecorated that room. We used thing, long bamboo rods (leftovers from a 4H kite engineering project) for curtain rods, and 3M sticky back hooks. The curtains just lay on the bed when we are driving along with our cooler, and a food box. The tail veil was from Amazon. It connects to the back of the van with the hatch open when we make camp and provides a 10x10 or so room that is tall enough for Mark to stand up in comfortably. We only use it when we are going to be in one place more than two days. Otherwise, we store the cooler and food box on the front seats when we sleep, and the camp chairs go in a soft side topper on the roof. Mark made the conversion himself. It cost about $200 in supplies. Siennas now have the option of being bought with conversions. They are slightly more elaborate than ours, but not by a lot, and I think they cost $7500.00. We only get about 22mpg. So a goal for the future is to wait for the new hybrid Siennas to end up on the market used in about five years, and then buy a lower mileage one. Those get 35+ mpg.

It is temporary so that we can use the van for other purposes.

I think we better make scanned copies of our cards, and then laminate them for protection. Yikes. I totally forgot to do that! Evening project on the list.

Personally, I think that the Delta variant is going to just rip through, kill a bunch more, disable even more, and then still adhering to their delusions and refusing vaccines and safety protocols, Lambda will hit. Another wave of wiping people out. After that, having lost a lot of hosts and presuming that boosters become available to those who have already vaccinated, boosters tweaked for the new variants, it will finally ebb. I think it is going to get very Darwinian out there. Children, as usual, will suffer the follies of the asshat adults who don't give a damn. It has always been this way. Sigh. I figure when the U.S. hits about 3 or 4 million dead, a few hundred thousand kids dead or disabled, orphanages have to be built, social security disability goes totally bust from the sheer number of folks needing it due to covid disability, food costs absolutely skyrocket because there aren't enough workers, and medical workers quit in droves or are dead from being overwhelmed by viral load, then a few people may go, "Well sh$t! I guess we should have paid attention." Or maybe not. The denying and delusional furor has reached a place of being like religious mania. They may be so dogmatic that they don't care how many die, how bankrupt the nation becomes, or even if their own kids die. I know religious people who really do not care, and when their own foolishness catches up, throws their hands in the air and claim, "God's will." Blaming a deity for human complacency is their norm. I have seen a bunch of that including folks that would not get medical treatment for very treatable conditions because "God's will" and "God will heal me". So it is entirely possible that there is no amount of suffering that will cause people to take precautions of any kind unless forced upon pain of incarceration, and I doubt the country will resort to that. I think we are heading down a very dystopian hole, and I don't think anything can be done to stop it. All you can do is do is the very best you can as individuals who see the iceberg ahead to get your own family into the " lifeboat". The rest are going to party until the hull splits open, and the ship sinks! 😠 I say this as my unvaxed nephew and his wife with a 5.5 year old and a newborn, plan a 200 person party indoor/outdoor no precautions in a county with substantial delta variant spread. My heart weeps for my two great nieces, but I can't do a thing about it.

I retired from teaching lessons a long time ago. Locally, parents want something for nothing and getting them to pay is like pulling teeth. Plus, the vast majority still think covid is a democratic hoax to steal the election. They are not going to sign up for online lessons. I offered an online music class (every student would receive a box of rhythm instruments, boomwhackers, etc.) weekly for the fall 2020 semester and only had one kid sign up. Two other families inquired but would only do it if I was volunteering for free. Sigh. Not going down that rabbit hole again.

No. The cove is in conservancy because several species of endangered bats live in the cave system down there. It is a no trespassing zone. The conservancy gave permission to the Spelunking group in Huntsville to go into the caves and check on things several years ago, but they have nor given permission to anyone else to go down there. Jackson Cove on the other side of us, down a different and better maintained switchback, has a lovely little stream running through it but far too many snags to paddle. Mark and youngest have a hankering to drop a line in it this fall and see what fish might come out. But, youngest won't have a chance to do that until after his college graduation in the spring. We can paddle on the Tennessee River 5 miles north (distance depends on what public boat launch location we use) which is gorgeous, and at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge 20 minutes west.

Dh and I have discussed this a lot. Thankfully, we are on the same page. Our goals were two fold. 1 was to be near our grandsons and be involved in their childhood. So we just bought a home for multi a generational use near them. We have our own guest suite, and there is guest bedroom space for both of the elderly grandmothers as well as our young twenty-something bachelor sons. Ds and family have moved into it for four years while they save for a down payment on a place of their own. We have our suite set up, and since dh has a work remote contract, we will be frequently going back and forth. Part 2 is to travel a lot when he retires. We have a bucket list of National Parks, Forests, Historic sites, Nature Preserves that we want to see, and we want to travel at low cost and with privacy, cook our own food. So we have converted a 2008 Toyota Vienna minivan into a two person camper and are gearing up for VanLife when he retires in five years. We have already used it to take mini-vacations in Huron-Manistee National Forest at Lake Michigan Recreation Area, Hiawatha National Forest, Cooper's Rock State Forest, Indiana Dunes National Lake shore/Park, and New River Gorge National Park. I am also interested in trying some very simple solo camping, and will be trying an excursion at Lake of the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains, Upper Peninsula this fall. The low cost travel will hopefully help us conserve money for the higher cost travel of visiting two of our three sons who hope to go to grad school in Germany and Denmark, and then reside there if possible. Plus, my sister lives in Cannes, France, and we want to see her every couple of years. Those trips will be much more expensive. Prior to this, I took a job as a program director for community fine arts through a foundation locally. I began that job when my youngest graduated homeschooling and went to college. I loved it! Fantastic job. But covid gutted it, decimated it, steamrolled the finances (donations in the gutter), and the foundation has indefinitely furloughed the program. Bye bye job. I hate covid!!!!!!!!😠