Bushkill Falls

To embark on the “Full-Time RVing Lifestyle”, Artur and I needed to give up some minor comforts. Obviously, since we are making less money, we will need to spend less money. Checking out all the local restaurants might not be on our agenda, and we definitely won’t be updating our wardrobe anytime soon…..but today we had the opportunity to experience exactly why we chose this lifestyle. And what this lifestyle means to me.

Bushkill Falls is a local natural park in the Poconos – billed as the “Niagara of Pennsylvania”. We looked at the website and the park map before we went. Meant for “experienced hikers”, we chose the longest trail. No, we aren’t really experienced hikers, but we are young and in relatively good shape, so I thought the 2 mile hike would be suitable for us. The brochure mentioned parts of the hike were steep, parts were rocky terrain, and it should take about 2 ½ hours. Our trail would hit on all 8 of the waterfalls in the park. We couldn’t wait!

Well it was truly amazing! Seeing sites like this was our dream for this new lifestyle. I hope to find many more similar ‘gems’ on our travels, but to be honest, if this is the only one we find in the Poconos, this assignment will have been well worth it!

Instead of trying to describe in words the parks beauty, I have posted some photos we took along the trail. The pictures are never as good as the real thing, but enjoy!

Alone in the Campground

When our arrival date was established, our employer decided to have us on site before the campground opened. This would allow them to utilize us to prep the facility for opening. We were told Artur, in maintenance, would have quite a few tasks to keep him occupied. I, on the other hand – working in the ‘”Welcome Center”, would have limited work to do before the campground opened. However, the sister campground (the ‘north’ to our ‘south’) was already opened, so I would be able to get some hands-on training and exposure to dealing with the campers. So far, this has been very accurate.

What we never really considered in deciding our arrival date, was that we would be staying in a campground that was virtually empty. I don’t know why this thought never occurred to me, but it didn’t. And, honestly, I’m not quite certain what my opinion of that would’ve been before we arrived. But after about a week of being here, it is true peace and solitude staying in an empty campground!

Without the other campers, the deer freely roam the grounds day and night. They are usually in groups of three or four, and always include at least one young. They don’t seem to care about us – even daring to get as close as 30 or 40 feet from us and our dog. We’ve seen wild turkey on the road, but not in the campground. I don’t expect to see that. We’ve heard rumors about a black bear, but have been advised that he won’t show up until August. As terrifying as it might be to see a black bear, I think I would feel jipped if we leave this area without a sighting….

As there are no other campers to mind, Artur has taken the liberty to gather downed branches from around the grounds – we won’t need to buy firewood all season! And seeing the stars at night over our campfire is beautiful – although we haven’t made it to night’s darkest yet, not until the nights warm up a bit! I wonder if the stars will be as bright when all the other campers have their fires lit.

One of our goals on the road is to be social with the people around us (a more difficult task for me, than for Artur!) because many of them will be individuals we wouldn’t have come into contact with in our old lifestyle. We want to appreciate their differences, and learn from the people who share our adventures. So for now, we will soak up as much of the calm and serenity as we can, and look forward to the next “vacant” stop on our route!

Just for fun, here is a photo of the tree I love by our site – it reminds me of a giant Japanese bonsai tree! (No laughing, I know nothing about trees!) Hopefully soon I will have some pictures of the deer!

We've Arrived

It took us two days to arrive in the Pocono Mountains, where we are going to serve as workampers at Timothy Lake South as maintenance(me), and welcome center(Christi). The weather was still rainy and cold as we set up our site. Walking around and hooking up we noticed that a semi truck had clipped the side of our travel trailer and pierced the outer fiber glass layer. Frustrated, finishing the outside set up we moved inside to clear things out so we would have more room to move around. A few minutes later Christ found water dripping in through the ceiling - "on sh*t". We were one of only two workampers in the entire park and the gates were locked for the night, and we didn’t have a key. We just had to wait out the night and repair the roof and side wall in the morning.

With a temporary fix to the trailer, Christi and I moved past the damage. After all, what had happened wasn't going to damper our spirits. There is nothing that we could do to change what had happened (I'm still working on my time machine), now we just focus on continuing our adventure. I'm sure that more situations like this one will arrive (hopefully not soon) and we will just have to put up with them. As long as no harm comes to us, there is no reason to get scared and halt our exploration.

Would you really want to leave this behind?

On the Road

About 9am on Monday morning, we were loaded and ready to go! I was so anxious trying to get away from the city congestion – it was practically unbearable sitting in that traffic! But finally, we reached the Indiana border and a relief settled in as the cars disappeared.

But the drive wasn’t quite so easy. Pretty quickly Artur and I ran into some disagreement with the GPS. I, personally, don’t care for the GPS. I guess you could say I’m old-school – I like to look at the map and plot out my route in advance. I will reference the map throughout the travel, but should have a general idea, in my head, what roads I will be taking. Artur, on the other hand, just wants to jump in the car, enter our end destination, and follow the instructions. But, on this route, the GPS got it wrong….

No biggie, though, Artur and I smoothed it out and figured out where to go. To avoid the toll roads, we endured highway 30 through Indiana and Ohio. It was relatively slow going, but we got away from the traffic jams and speeding cars. What we couldn’t avoid, however, was the sheer tedium of Indiana and Ohio. Being from the Midwest, flat farmland is in no way exciting to me. But once we hit Pennsylvania, the whole story changed.

I’d been to Pennsylvania previously, but I must not have driven the length of I-80. It was a stunning drive – I recommend it to everybody! Hilly and foresty, with quite a few lakes and rivers. The scenery was beautiful and serene. But the drive wasn’t quite so smooth. If our life were a novel, that first chapter would’ve been analysed with some strong foreshadowing. The entire drive was filled with rain! Ranging from slight drizzle to full-on torrents, there were many points where I just wanted to stop for the day! And boy was it cold!

Our first night on the road, we settled into a truck stop for the night. I don’t mind the truck stops – actually, I feel pretty secure staying there. With so many trucks, rvs, and people around, I don’t worry about being secure…..And the noise doesn’t bother me – complete silence would bother me more! The second night, however, we made it to the campground and settled in there. But all was not well…

We met up with the evening ranger (a super nice fellow workamper!), and he helped us pick a site that was available. Artur pulled the trailer in, and we hooked up all the cables (in the cold rain). It was rather unpleasant, and thankfully, Artur managed those tasks. We got the slides out and while Artur was fiddling with the hook-ups outside, I began to get some of the random items put into place (we needed some room to walk around!).

Before too long, I made a disturbing discovery – water leaking in the kitchen! It was a rather terrifying hour or so – drying up the kitchen, realizing we couldn’t go to the hardware store to attempt to fix the leak (we were locked in the campground), and wondering how we were going to get our “home” to the shop for repairs. There was a brief moment when it was suggested that we might need to drop this idea and return to Chicago. Me, in my infinite wisdom, declared that since there was nothing we could possibly do tonight, we should just stop thinking about it and deal with it tomorrow.

So we did. Artur connected the tv, we relaxed as much as we could in the circumstance, and we went to bed.

6:37 am - waken. First thought on my mind - lets get this show on the road! I glanced over to Christi's side of the bed - "baby?" "What time is it? The alarm didn't go off", she asked. Perfect setup for me -"time to get going", I shouted out with excitement. I couldn’t lay in bed anymore knowing that we were going to be on the road by 9am at the very latest. I jumped out of bed, got dressed and glanced through the drawers one last time to make sure that we weren't leaving anything important behind. By that point Christi was up and about and getting ready as well. Doing her usual morning routine. I went downstairs to feed Zoey, and get us a cup of coffee ( as I do every morning, as part of my routine). Following our coffee, we both double check the room once more and headed out to deposit my final paycheck and pick up a new battery for the trailer (If you winterize your trailer and disconnect the battery, don't forget to bring it inside.) We probably got these tasks done in world record time, and when we got back someone had parked their car in front of our trailer ( you've got to be kidding me!). I ran to my neighbor and found out who the culprit was. The gentleman moved his car, then we hitched up and hit the road.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

10 Hours and counting

Here we are, roughly ten hours remaining until we start our first official assignment as workampers. This past week I walked through the trailer to make sure that it was in road-worthy condition for our first assignment. I checked all the plumbing since we had a fairly cold winter this year in Chicago. I gave It a good scrub down to keep a nice shine on the exterior, followed by checking the tires for proper inflation. The last two days was a marathon - having packed up all of our necessary belongings that we will bring with us and running back and fourth to the trailer. Now with only a few hours left the excitement of leaving is becoming more evident.

Just about everything on our list is checked off and ready to go. The pantry is stocked, the dog is washed (Zoey the Husky), we said our so longs to our friends and family. The only thing left is to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow refreshed, have a cup off coffee and hit the road. We allotted two and a half days to get to our destination at Timothy Lakes in East Stroudsburg, Pa. We are going to take a straight shot there and make stop offs by ear. Our next blog posts will come to you from the Quaker state where we will document our first time as workkampers.

Infertility

In my last post, I discussed that while on the road Artur and I would still be dealing with real life issues. And while I didn't outright mention it, my thoughts were only on the fertility conerns we'd been having. And since Artur has already brought it up, I might as well include my thoughts on the subject.

Once we were married, we had decided that we would allow nature to take its course and become pregnant naturally when it happened. We weren't "trying" but we certainly weren't preventing a pregnancy. About a month into our marriage, newly relocated to Seattle, I thought that it had happened. I tested my theory, and a home pregnancy test confirmed it. When I told Artur, I was crying. I thought having a baby at that point would prevent us from establishing our marriage, and our life together, in the manner of our chosing, I thought we would end up moving back to Illinois, Artur working for his father, neither of us happy, both of us stressed. At this point now, I can't imagine feeling that way about a pregnancy. (By the way, Seattle was a false alarm...)

Just over a year into our marriage, I was at a routine doctor's appointment. Part of the usual questioning, I was asked about birth control. Being honest, I relayed that we weren't using anything. The discussion naturally evolved to the fact that we hadn't protected againts pregnancy for over a year, yet we had not become pregnant. My doctor mentioned that if we wanted to have a family, we should consider setting an appointment with a fertility specialist. Thus began our obsession with whether or not we could have a family of our own, I charted my periods, attempted to figure out my ovulation days, and took pregnancy tests if I thought my period might be late. Eventually, Artur got his semen tested and we discussed setting an appointment for me with a specialist.

At first, when I didn't know what was going on , I truly believed that I would leave the decision up to nature. If it didn't happen, well then that meant that Artur and I weren't meant to have kids. And I truly believed that - I didn't see myself going to extremes, and possibly "against nature", to form a family. Artur would be my family. It wasn't an easy idea to swallow, over the course of the last 6 months I have spent more than my fair share of crying. All of a sudden it seemed as though every woman I cam across was pregnant. Every tv show and movie revolved around family life. I couldn't bear to sit in church, surrounded by mothers and fathers and their multitudes of kids. Poor Artur, I was crying all the time. But I hit my limit. I worked through it. I felt as though I'd reached a point where I could live with the idea of not having kids. And then I got pregnant.

I had had a suspicion that I was pregnant about a week before I tested. After months and months of stressing about it and taking pregnancy tests at the slightest hint, I didn't want to rush it and get overexcited. So, I patiently waited until I was certain that I was late. When I hit that day, I took the test. And it was the boldest, fastest positive I could imagine. I calmly walked out of the bathroom, having said nothing about yet to Artur, and showed him the test. He looked so excited, I thought we was going to cry. We were both so happy!
It wasn't long before that happiness faded. I had taken several more tests to confirm, and they each cam back bolder than the last. I contacted the doctor to set up a pregnancy test, and scheduled an appointment for a week later. Little did I know I would be in there sooner than that.

By the end of the week I was bleeding and knew it wasn't right. I got in with the doctor and confirmed my pregnancy, and was able to schedule an emergency ultrasound for a few days out. The ultrasound showed a mass in my tube that was of some concern to my doctor, and she wanted me to come back in a week for another ultrasound. I came back, only to be told the mass had grown, was definitely an ectopic pregnancy, and I needed to go to the hospital for emergency surgery. I was crushed. I couldn't stop crying.

It took me slightly less than a week to recover physically from the surgery. In that week, my emotions were all over the place. I had a lot of time to think about what had happened, what the doctor says our future options are, and what is a priority to Artur and I. And while previously I never thought I would consider the option, I am now excited about the day that I can have In Vitro Fertilization and grow my family with my husband. Who knows when we will have saved up enough money for make this option a reality, but we are both committed to that end.