Day 3

It’s now the beginning of day 3 of our grand adventure although I likely won‘t be able to post this until tonight. We started in Florida and have passed through Georgia, South Carolina (where we met T’s mom to drop off Sophie,) North Carolina (where we camped at a Flying J truck stop instead of walmart,) Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennslyvania .

That first night, we just couldn’t make it another 1.5 hours to get to the WalMart Super Center that was on our path. We might actually have to forgo walmart camping because we have are using an entire tank of water each day. When 6 people have to stop and pee at least every hour to hour and a half…we end up using our entire supply of fresh water in the tank in less then 24 hours. That’s water for flushing and washing hands. I guess that also includes water for washing a few dishes/pans, too. The flying J has water, propane, fuel and even a dump station. We will try to conserve water a bit more on our driving days but I doubt we could go 2 days unless we resort to public restrooms. {{gasp!}}

Speaking of restrooms….we seem to have started a tradition where the first person in the camper bathroom at each stop…well, they stink it up for everyone else. Most of us hold our breath and just deal with it but our sweet Kendall has a very sensitive nose and she starts gagging. Poor thing! Yeah - it’s not pleasant. Got to keep it real before I encourage any large family road trips!

I have been knitting so much that my hands are feeling arthritic…especially now, first thing in the morning. On a VERY happy note, I finished one of my Monkey socks…with Jitterbug Kingfisher. And it fits!! I cast on number 2 immediately but had to stop when I dropped a dpn into the door jam of the van. I later recovered it but it as then too dark for me to resume knitting. I also discovered that my yarn ball winder fits perfectly on the grab handle of our van. I actually had the nerve to frog my first too-tight monkey sock and then I wound it onto the ball winder so that I could keep the skein continuous. I have just kept it there because I rather like knitting off it.

Speaking of my beautiful completed Monkey sock. I tried it on and took a few pictures. Not even 30 seconds later, we discovered that Lily filled her diaper. We spotted a sign for a farmer’s market so DH pulled off so that I could change her and then afterwards we would pick up some fruit from the market. I layed a towel down on the bench seat of the van and I unbuckled her. I stood at the end of the seat, pulled her pants off and was treated to a small ‘thump’ on my monkey sock foot. Yes, a nice plop of yellow cabbage poop flew out of her pant leg and of all places onto my prized hand knitted sock! I got her cleaned up and then I got myself cleaned up. By this point I was feeling gross so I took a quick sponge bath in the tiny camper bathroom and I washed my hair by leaning into the tiny shower and using the shower sprayer. No one else has showered or anything. We are holding out until we get to our campground.

After the poop knitastrophy, we picked out our goodies and then headed to a local playground to fix lunch and to let the kids play. It was a great playground and a class of daycare kids was there so my kids had new friends to play with.

One thing that I hadn’t planned on…it’s freakin cold up here!! I packed a minimal amount of cold-weather clothing…pants and long sleeved shirts for the kids. It had to be in the lower 40s last night. We are going to be in trouble if it ends up like this every day. Thank goodness dh had 2 hoodies because I took one of his. Lily is wearing Pjs today because it was the only thing that covered her arms and legs. Brrr! I guess I would have expected this a month ago…but not late May.