Our greatest RV adventure to date started during a little thing called The Pandemic (eeeek!) In the lead up to Christmas 2019, I found I could not bring myself to buy more toys and gadgets for our kids, items that would end up cast aside, broken, or otherwise discarded. I talked the husband into gifting them an experience instead. I painstakingly planned and booked a European Adventure for our family of 5, to England and France for spring break that coming year. We surprised them with it on Christmas morning, with a scheduled departure date of March 20, 2020.
The world shut down March 17, 2020.
The husband and I were both about to be on vacation for 2 weeks, our kids had been kicked out of school, grocery stores were empty, playgrounds were covered in caution tape, there was still snow on the ground, and things were getting weird, so we decided that instead of being stuck in our house for the next two weeks, there was no reason we couldn't "quarantine" in our RV instead. We decided to hit the road and head south (it was warmer). We threw all the food we had in the 5th wheel, loaded up a couple of weeks' worth of clothes, jugs of water, the dog and kids, and hit I-25 south out of Denver Metro.
We made it to Southern Colorado the first night, to a dingy campground. Someone tried to steal our bikes off the back in the middle of the night. Everything was strange.
The next day we drove through New Mexico (we weren't allowed to stop) on our way to Wichita Falls Texas, to a beautiful Jellystone campground with all the amenities including a little farm/petting zoo. Things seemed normal, people were out, kids were running around, farm animals were waiting to be pet. The following day things started to shut down, and we headed out to Tyler Texas. Tyler was again normal when we got there, everything was open, we went out to dinner to celebrate one kiddo's birthday, our always patient middle child, who was supposed to celebrate his birthday in New York City on our way to London. Instead we had mediocre Mexican food followed by cake. A cake we picked up in town. A cake that we failed to notice was made of ice cream. And we put it in the fridge for a few hours. Whoops. Things were not looking up.
The next day everything shut down around us again. We drove through Downtown Dallas without another soul on the highways, it was EERIE. We felt like we were on the lam.
We landed in Vidalia, Louisiana and camped in a beautiful RV park on the Mississippi River. We spent a day touring Vicksburg National Park (which is a great place to visit; the history is fascinating), went to a drive through daquiri shack, had a nice walk along the river. Once again life seemed normal.
The next morning the Sheriff drove through the campground (multiple times) with his bullhorn telling everyone to stay inside. We were already planning to bail to Mississippi that morning, so we threw everything in quickly, buttoned up the rig, and drove off after the sheriff made his next round. Fortunately, Natchez, Mississippi was about 2 minutes away, just over the bridge.
We drove through Mississippi on our way to the Gulf Beach RV Park in Biloxi. I seriously had to Google to see if Mississippi had a coastline - I had no idea. We booked a spot for 3 nights, thinking we would make our way to Florida and settle there for a bit. To our surprise we were welcomed to Mississippi with true southern hospitality. We settled into our RV spot (concrete pad, 50amp, view of the gulf, by the pool) and prepared to stay for a few days. A few families had also landed at the Gulf Beach RV Park, but it was maybe 1/4 full. As we were tired of being on the lam, and unsure if we could travel from state to state any longer, we decided it was a good time to stay put for a bit.
3 nights became a week, a week became a month, a month became 3 months. The Easter Bunny even made an appearance. Ironically the husband always said he wanted to live in an RV and travel around the US with the kids. I told him he was insane. Our unexpected three months together were surprisingly enjoyable. We found we didn't need a big house full of things; we had everything we needed in that small space.
Eventually we had to return to work remotely during the day when our vacations were over, the kids did online school in the mornings. We worked from the RV, out on the deck, or in the club house depending on the day and the weather. Life had returned to mostly normal on the gulf coast, people were getting back to work. The adults and kids in the RV park became fast friends and we would all mosey out to the deck overlooking the Gulf in the afternoon, bring ice chests full of beverages, dinner, a speaker for music. The kids would run around free-range children style; we quickly became a big Covid Family. We made life-long friends and many very cool memories. We had a taste of living in the south and we were smitten. By the time June rolled around, we had to stop living like Peter Pan and return home to Denver, a very different world from the Mississippi Gulf coast.
We sold our house in Denver and moved south exactly one year later. Life is certainly unpredictable.
This pic is one of my absolute favorites from that time.
Camp socially!
Campgrounds:
Jellystone Wichita Falls: https://wichitafallsjellystonepark.com/
Jellystone Tyler Texas: https://jellystonetyler.com/
Gulf Beach RV Biloxi: https://gulfbeachrvresort.com/
The Covid Kids
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