As you are well aware, COVID-19 pandemic has swept the country and most of the world, making sure that everyone has been affected by it. As a full-time RV family that travels the United States, we have a unique situation. At the end of March, we were originally scheduled to travel to Ireland for my sisters' wedding and explore the beautiful countryside via a camper van. After the President banned international travel we were left scrambling to find a place to stay because we had a 3-week gap to find a place to stay.
Scrambling to find a place to stay
We were able to extend our reservation at Chatfield State Park for an additional 6 days, for a total of 13 days. That left us with 2 weeks to find another place to stay. The last day we were notified the campground was closing due to the shelter in place order and we were allowed to stay until the next morning, which was perfect timing since that was our last day anyway.
We are just one family of the 1 million full-time RVers that were scrambling to find a place to stay when the shelter in place orders started. Most national and state parks campgrounds closed leaving many families without a place to go.
We had 2 options to choose between for our next location:
Go to our "home" park and have no water hookup, be 45 minutes away from family, and deal with cooler weather due to elevation.
Mooch-dock on friends property with full hookups and be 20 minutes from family.
We ultimately decided to mooch-dock and we ended up staying for over 3 weeks. During that time we were able to safely enjoy time with our friends, we managed to social distance our families fairly easy, and enjoy the sunny days between 3 snowstorms. While we were mooch-docking, there was a freak accident power surge that knocked out most of our major electrical appliances including the converter, microwave, TV, instant tea kettle, refrigerator heating element, and a few other smaller items. Most of the issues have been taken care of as if the accident never happened.
We moved to our next spot at our "home" park after the water was turned on to the entire park and we plan to stay for the next 4-6 weeks. It is nice to be at a familiar place, see old friends, and enjoy some more space because the campground is not full.
Ways we have been impacted
Honestly, other than scrambling to find a place to stay initially, our day to day lives have not changed much besides the obvious trips to the grocery store, wearing a mask and social distancing. Both Steve and I have been working remotely for the past 8 months. We have already made the adjustments necessary to be successful at it including high-quality headphones, a set schedule and routine, and balancing being around the family all day. We started homeschooling last fall and have a routine down that works for our family. We have not had to deal with remote learning during this crisis like so many other families. Our hearts go out to all the students, families, teachers, and staff that are dealing with the whole situation thrown at them so quickly.
The biggest way we have been impacted is not being able to travel like we want to, canceling summer plans, and playing the waiting game on making future plans. We were planning to tour the Northeast starting in Maine, celebrate the 4th of July in Boston, and spend 16 weeks slowly making our way back to Colorado, but there is always next year. We are grateful to be near family and friends, have a safe place to stay, we are both working, and are almost finished with our first year of homeschooling.
