Captain’s Log: RV Wanderlust 06-18-15

• Date: 06-18-2015

• Current City: Kansas City, MO
• Current Location: Worlds of Fun Village
• Site Number: 8
• Wi-fi Signal: Verizon – Average / AT&T – Good / Campground Wi-fi – Slow and Free
• Cell Signal: AT&T – Good 4/5 bars
• Mission: Work / Explore / Pre-train Darius for Coast Guard Basic Training

• Compliment: 2 Officers, 2 Crew, 1 Guest
• Captain: Eric Highland
• Navigator: Brittany Highland
• 1st Mate: Trogdor the Burninator
• Deckhand: Rhythm Jasmine
• Guests: VIP Darius Highland

• Weather: Partly Cloudy / 82°
• Precipitation: 0%
• Humidity: 67%
• Wind: 6 mph

• Fuel: 33 Gallons of Diesel – 1/3 tank
• Odometer: 112,562
• Generator Hours: 4621.8

• Estimated Date of Departure: Saturday, June 26th
• Next Destination: Middle of nowhere Kansas for one night, followed by Peregrine Pines FamCamp on the Air Force Academy Base in Colorado Springs, CO.

Special Orders: Prepare Darius for Basic Training

Captain’s Remarks

11:27 – We left St. Louis and headed to Kansas City, MO. We absolutely loved St. Louis.

As you can tell, we’re heading west! We’re heading to Colorado! But first…a stop in Kansas City.

So we’re sitting in a theme park facing a roller coaster. Yep, it is our first theme park campground. The park has 6 roller coasters, a ton of other rides and a full water park as well. The place is called Worlds of Fun, but so far we haven’t gotten to experience it.

Worlds of Fun? This last week has been more like Worlds of Work and Worlds of Training. Let me explain…

The eldest of the Highland clan, Darius, joined up with us and has been with us the majority of the time since April 4th. He’s 18 years old now and preparing to join the United States Coast Guard. He has been working diligently on his required knowledge and physical fitness training. This means that Brittany and I have been quizzing him and working with him on physical fitness in preparations every single day.

We also took him to the range and he spent sometime shooting the Sig Sauer P229, the Coast Guard’s service weapon.

We hope to visit the theme park this Saturday. Tomorrow we’ve dubbed as Darius’ last week of pre-training and we’ll celebrate by going to the park on Saturday.

Confession…

It is a strange feeling to have your eldest leave “the nest” and venture forth as he forges his own path. I’m really struggling with it. I just remember when he was so little that I held him in one arm and his little feet didn’t even reach the crook of my elbow. His life flashes before my eyes every time I look at him. I love him with all my heart.

But he’s grown into a fine young man. He worked incredibly hard to get into the Coast Guard, and now we’re just a few short days away from him shipping off to Basic Training.

This Sunday, I’ll be driving him 9 hours (including the time change) from Kansas City, MO to Louisville, KY. We’ll spend Sunday night and part of Monday together then I’ll drop him off at the MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) hotel, and they keep him until really early on Tuesday morning.

I’ll then get to watch as Darius is discharged from the Delayed Entry Program and enlisted into the Active Duty United States Coast Guard. It is at MEPS where we’ll say our goodbyes. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to cope, so please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. More importantly please keep Darius in your thoughts and prayers. He is about to go through 8 weeks of intensive training. I’ve been through it, and it was beyond challenging. But I believe my son has what it takes to be a fine Coastguardsman, and that he’ll do fine in training. I’m sure the pre-training that he’s done will be a blessing to him.

Other stuff…

From a financial perspective this week has also been hard. One of our clients’ main investors passed away and his son has put a freeze to all activity with that company. We’re hopeful things will work out for our client, because we really like working with them. We’re also hopeful that things will work out for our client because we took a significant hit to our monthly income and it was completely unexpected. Ouch!

In other news, our Austin blog, The Austinot (which we don’t make any money from), is doing really well. But…we’ve had a few writers that have had other commitments and have had to leave. This has put additional pressure on Brittany as the Editor.

We also picked up another client that Brittany took on, so her stress level has been through the RV roof. But she’s a champ and handling it all as well as you would imagine that she would.

And if all that weren’t enough I literally just found out as I was writing this that my best friend’s father passed away.

Did I tell you we always promise to be transparent in our writings?

All in all it has been a productive week, a stressful week, a sad week and yet it has been a week of hope for the future. We always try and look on the bright side of life. So having said that…

Here are some quick photo highlights of our week:

So we saw this crazy set up at a truck stop on our way to Kansas City. The sign on the RV read: “Pa’s Redneck RV.” This family had what appeared to be an ambulance modified into an RV pulling a trailer with a tractor, a golf cart, a vintage SUV and towing a pop up camper!

We found a statue of Neptune and thought it was appropriate to take a photo of the future sailor with it. So here is Darius in all his awesomeness.

After his long runs, Darius has been spending time in the hot tub here, relaxing those muscles for the next training session. He also has been able to spend sometime talking with his sweet girlfriend Mackenzie. (We really like her!)

Brittany also got to go to the range. And she’s quite the natural shot! Look at that grouping!

So that’s it folks. You are all caught up. Leave us a comment we’d love to hear from you!

Remarks: Our deckhand Rhythm Jasmine has been tearing up our leather furniture. It’s pretty much pointless at this point to stop her from climbing on it. Other than that, she is growing like a weed and is still as playful as all get out.

Navigator’s Addendum

2:43 – I really enjoyed our time in St. Louis. Of the cities we’ve visited, I think it’s my favorite behind Savannah, Hot Springs and Williamsburg. I couldn’t believe all the things to do, and the food was crazy good.

But it was an exhausting two weeks because of our active itinerary (I was also sick in bed somewhere there in the middle). Eric’s description above of our hectic work commitments is accurate, but we’ve actually been doing less after work since we arrived in Kansas City. That has been refreshing.

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again. As a full-time RVer, you can’t play tourist all the time. Sometimes you have to pretend you live a “normal” life with a consistent routine, just so you don’t run yourself in the ground. There’s so much to see as you travel and you’ll never see it all the first time around. That’s just something you have to accept when you’re on the road.

-B