I am going to take a moment and let you know our status as it relates to the pandemic.  First and foremost, we are safe, and currently with friends. I feel extremely blessed that we have a safe place to stay with access to power, water etc.  That is not the case for everyone who lives their life on the road so I wanted to walk through what the last week has looked like for us.

1. Our first decision was to stay in place.  This was difficult for us because we had a planned route and reservations for 6 weeks of travel to see our family in Charleston, SC, Washington DC, Columbus, OH, and Minneapolis, as well as an RV Dreams rally in TN. It was very hard for us to not barrel ahead, but ultimately we decided to stay because we weren’t sure we wouldn’t get stuck somewhere, or have some other travel related problem.  As containment zones might spring up we realized we could get stuck en route in a strange place and worse as campgrounds close we could find ourselves with no place to stay.  Thankfully our family understood and more than agreed with our decision.  My daughter who lives in DC in particular had concerns about us visiting and since one of our campgrounds was a military one inside a base chances were high that the base would be locked down prior to our arrival, leaving us nowhere to stay, in an area not really packed with campgrounds or RV parks.
2. Making sure we had supplies.  RV’s don’t have a ton of storage space and I was concerned about having enough food for a self quarantine period.  Thankfully where we are there is space, and between us we coordinated to make sure we had the basics covered.  Two of our friends were out of town temporarily with family and we also reached out to them to see what they needed.  Ultimately we made sure we had enough supplies for six people for a month and we managed to do that without going crazy and overbuying.  We spread our purchases out between a variety of stores and personally I was careful to not take the last of anything.  The sole exception to that was a bag of rice I bought, but since I only bought one I felt OK about that.  We had the supplies in place early in the week so didn’t have trouble finding anything.  I also stayed away from the major grocery stores and went to places like Dollar General and smaller stores.  They ended up having everything I needed and the prices were reasonable.
3. Having a medical plan.  Based on a variety of factors, my assumption is that eventually all of us here will get sick.  Thankfully we are all reasonably healthy and are able to take care of each other.  We made sure we refilled our prescriptions and have plenty of aspirin, flu, and cough medicine available.  Since you can’t cure it but only treat the symptoms that is what we focused on.  We also made sure everyone had sanitizer and wipes in their vehicles and started wiping things down when we went out in the world.  We all tried to limit those trips, but things had to be done so we were just as safe as we could be.  Going under my original premise that this will just delay the inevitable, it is still a good practice.  We have talked quite a bit about the importance of flattening the curve.  That concept is our healthcare systems can handle this if everyone doesn’t get sick at once.  Hopefully if we do get sick we will be able to treat it without needing to go into a medical facility.  Those resources should be saved for the most needy.
4. What happens if services are interrupted?  We did talk about what to do if we lost power.  Thankfully we all have solar on our RV’s and are completely self contained.  You can decide how far down this path you want to go, but in my case I considered it a good mental exercise.  Being in an RV has both pros and cons in a situation like this.  Yes, you can move from place to place but you also need fuel to get there, and a place to stay.    One of the biggest advantages in my opinion is being able to get away from large concentrations of people.  Thankfully we have a place we can stay and as I mentioned I feel very grateful to be here. I am also very grateful that I have a job I can work remotely and it is in a largely recession-proof industry.  If we were gate guarding this would be a completely different situation.

We are safe, we are with friends, and we have supplies.  That doesn’t change the fact that we have family and friends spread all across the country and of course we are very concerned about them.  Many of my family members are in the medical field and are on the front lines of this.  My son-in-law is self-quarantined, and two of my daughters work in the restaurant industry, and probably will not see a paycheck for awhile.  My youngest is in the military in DC and may find herself in a lock down situation.  It is hard to be away from people you love during times like this, but the best thing everyone can do is stay calm, be safe and not make things worse.

Take care everyone, and know that this, too, shall pass.

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