August 13, 2011 . . .
Recipe swap time! I want to share with you one of my all time favorites.
RV Road Dawg Adventure
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| The SWRCT* |
You’ll need:
- One yellow dog, about the size of a moose (sweet)
- One CCI service-dog-in training (not quite ripe)
- One freaky little terrier mix (extra spicy)
- One college kid (optional – a hard to get ingredient)
- Someone that can drive a house on six wheels
- Another someone with amazing navigational skills
- Approximately 30% of the contents of your home
and
- One ginormous RV that has more character than class
- An exotic destination
Combine the first seven ingredients into the RV, but don’t stir! You’ll just make it worse. It’s enough to have a closet filled with enough dog food to feed an Iditarod team for a week, dog beds, dog bowls, dog toys, water jugs and leashes and harnesses and such. Then we start packing for us, which is pretty much just some food in the fridge and a couple changes of clothes. Well, more than that really. Some pots and pans so I can (yes, I’m an idiot) cook on vacation, too. Lots of books, my laptop and camera gear for personal entertainment.
By the time we get all this stuff in the coach, we’re exhausted and pretty ready for a vacation. Some folk say it’s the journey, not the destination. And I would buy in on that, if the SWRCT* didn’t end up at a local Camping World on every trip because something broke. Again.
(*SWRCT – the Six Wheeled Rolling Cat Turd. My somewhat affectionate nickname for our house on wheels. The thing has, oh I don’t know, “character.” Like it has a nice personality, I guess you’d say.)
This time it was the air conditioning, which took a dark turn from unreliable to completely defunct. But on the positive side of things, it was only the dash air. The roof air units are working great and we can run those when we park. See, the glass is half full! I’m an optimist, I am. I’m one sweaty, short-tempered, positive thinking chick.
We’re on our way to the land of sea and sky, Myrtle Beach. Living in the Midwest gives us a craving for the ocean. To see a treeless horizon, the rolling waves and such. It takes us a couple of days to get there, so we drive for a day and stop at a KOA campground in Wytheville, Virginia to recharge our batteries. And to turn on the roof air conditioner. (half full, half full . . . )
We’ve darkened the driveways of many a campground rolling in with the SWRCT and I’ve found that KOA’s can be relied on to be dog-friendly places. Many, if not most, of the KOA’s we’ve stayed at have enclosed dog parks. It’s a beautiful thing to let your dog off leash so they can run off the day’s travels. A tired dog is a good dog, I always say.
The Wytheville KOA goes a step further and has separate fenced in areas based on dog sizes. That’s cool. So we throw the two yellow dogs in the Large Dog park and look down at Jager. He’s standing on tiptoes and saying that he is not a Small Dog, thank you very much. Well, Jager, there’s not a Medium Dog park and you’ll get creamed by the two yellow dogs and you know that. But we shrug and send him on to meet his fate. There’s no reasoning with terriers.
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| Micron and Yaxley pose in the master bathroom at the Large Dog park |
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| Just a sec. Lemmee check my messages. |
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| Three happy and tired dogs |
As proof of their dog-friendly nature, the Wytheville KOA had some clever t-shirts in the gift shop.
And a couple of parting shots of the campground before we pulled up anchor and headed back on the road the next morning. Good-bye roof air conditioner (sniff). We’ll see you again tonight! (half full, half full . . . we’ll be in Myrtle Beach by nightfall).
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| Micron is all regal looking and everything, like a superhero dog. I’m picturing a thought balloon over his head that says “Squirrel!” |
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| Lookit Micron! I’m doing you! |
Go. Do. Be Dog. 