the camper

Welp, we found a camper, our home for the next little while! We had narrowed it down to a specific model, the Northland Polar, because (A) it is very insulated (a basement model) and we'll be in potentially freezing temperatures out east, and (B) there are older ones out there and thus in our price range. We'd been looking around the northwest for a few weeks, and we found this'un via craigslist in Boise. We traveled there Saturday and arrived back home at 2 am this morning. Jason got a solid 4.5 hours of sleep before work. We haven't figured out precisely how we cut everything so close, but this seems to happen despite our best efforts.


But woo-hoo! We're ready for the big road trip! Or at least we have the raw materials to begin getting ready with. Here are a couple pictures of the whole get-up:




The trip through Idaho was gorgeous. Curvy mountain roads, tall pines, cute little towns. One highlight happened yesterday evening. We had stopped in a town in search of coffee, and we watched a dad teaching his girl (probably 8 years old) how to mow the lawn with a push-mower. She was supposed to be the main driver, and he was standing behind her sort of steering and helping, but any kinetic energy we observed was the result of his efforts, for sure. At one point, he let her take it, and the mower jutted ahead out of her control. She stood there and cried while he hugged her and encouraged her to go inside and get a drink. We could tell all of this because the mower was so loud they had to use gestures.


Speaking of drinks, getting good coffee in rural Idaho isn't as impossible as it might at first seem. A lot of towns have espresso shacks, and we were sure to hit a few on Saturday, on our way down. However, getting good coffee in rural Idaho at 7:00 pm on Sunday evening on your way back to Montana is a real chore. We got to the point of such craving that I attempted to call Mom and ask her to search the web for potential places. She'll do that for us. Mom's our living "ask jeeves" when we're away from a computer. She's rad. But it wasn't happening last night: no cell service through the mountains.


The trip so far had inspired lots of conversations about rural living, and I asked Jason at that point if he would choose rural living if it meant never having coffe. No, he said. He'd rather live in a city if it came down to that, but it wouldn't come to that, because he would be sure to stock up on beans. I like ridiculous conundrums like that, choices you'll probably never have to make, but Jason's not a big fan of them. Anyway, driving along, he had resigned himself to temporary coffee-less-ness, but I still had a frown on my face when we saw a sign for a little place called Syringa. By now I know that the syringa is the state flower, but yesterday we were mostly concerned with how familiar the town of Syringa was with coffee. They (and by they, I mean the 4 people we saw in Syringa...literally) turned out to be quite familiar. They had this delightful little mediteranean restaurant right by the highway, and they made us mochas. Sure, they used Hershey's syrup as the chocolate flavoring, but who cared? Not us. We also got an order of fish and french fries and an order of pita bread with hummus dip and eggplant dip - to go.


Then we hit the road with our unexpected delights. Jason uttered a "thank you, God" for the mochas,which launched us into a 1/2 hour discussion/argument about thanking God for such things as mochas. Jason said that yes, we should, because aren't mochas good and perfect gifts from God? I asked, "Who's to say mochas are good and perfect." We had to pause right there and realize what a dumb statement I'd made. Of course mochas are. Nevertheless, I feel we should wait to attribute other, bigger things to God, because otherwise you can get into this mindset of reading spirituality into not-necessarily-spiritual things constantly, which can lead to actually losing your mind. Jason says qualifying what you're thankful for is the faulty "Bank of Blessings" mentality, like we only have 329 blessings over the course of our lives, and we'll run out if we count 'em up too quick. Rather, Jason holds that God is the Blessed Controller of all things, which I agree with, but there are things I doubt He cares about. Unless of course these mochas, which to us are pure delight, are made from coffee in a country where people are paid only pennies for their labor, etc. etc. We finally agreed that at a bare minimum, thanking God for mochas at least means you're attempting to conscientiously live a life of gratitude, which is indeed good.


Then we realized the main reason this conversation was even happening was that we were each injesting 20 ounces of coffee. I think I can say in good conscience, "Thank God for gack'dness and road trips."