These days, I spent most of my free time inside our motorhome. Sometimes I’m organizing or cleaning, but a lot of times, I’m just sitting on the sofa inside with my head thrown back and my eyes closed as I listen to the patter of the rain on the roof. (It’s pretty spectacular).

We took the motorhome aka the Winnebago aka the Aspect aka Gracie Rides Again aka the rig aka the RV out early Saturday morning just to drive it around. My husband is still kind of a chicken and hasn’t driven it yet. I’ve been behind the wheel and I can honestly say that I absolutely love it.  It’s a bouncy, jingly, jiggly, squeaky ride as we go along and feels nothing like driving my Mustang, of course, but by driving it like I am, I’ve overcome my fear of driving it.  And that was a huge issue when we started the process to buy it.  In my head, I imagined turning it was similar to the way one would drive a 40-foot bus in downtown Seattle. It’s not like that at all, thankfully. Wide, careful turns and being observant at all times is key.

Gracie Rides Again (GRA) sitting along Hood Canal at Twanoh State Park

On our Sunday morning drive, we cruised through downtown Port Orchard, over to Belfair, and then headed along Hood Canal. We stopped off to turn around at the boat launch at Twonah State Park. It was a foggy, rainy morning and I loved every second of being out in it.

When we got back home, I have to back the 8 foot wide rig through the 12 foot wide gate.  Not a big deal, right? Well, I can’t even back up very well in my Mustang with a full back-up camera and lots of windows and mirrors.  Backing up the motorhome is slightly terrifying. I have a back-up camera with the screen that’s built into my visor, and I have huge mirrors. I don’t have a back window, though, and I kept finding myself glancing into the rearview mirror, which gave me a fantastic view of the bathroom door but nothing else. The majority of the stress comes from the fact that our house sits on a straight part of our road between two 90 degree turns and people come screaming around the corners like their mufflers are on fire.  Then they have to slam on their brakes because there’s this huge, lumbering RV backing up slowly, blocking the lane. My husband is outside at this point, yelling directions at me and occasionally screaming his infernal head off so that I hear him and don’t hit one of the metal fence posts.  (In my defense, there was about an inch and a half of space between the side of the RV and the post.  I totally had it!)

GRA sitting in the driveway. She’s got a big booty…

Yesterday, I headed to Dollar Tree to buy a lot of stuff so that I can stock the kitchen in the RV and last night I started to get things set up. I got a few cool items at our Judaica shop at the synagogue, including a Star of David trivet and a towel set, plus we made some purchases at Camping World the other day.  All in all, she’s starting to come together.  Now to just get rid of the ugly wallpaper border in the kitchen area!