Fine Tuning The Art of Melding RV Dreams with a Victorian Village Lifestyle

Awaiting May in Lovely Ouray...getting Lovelier every day. Still, not a month "Home" from a winter's worth of road-tripping, Colorado to Utah to Arizona and back, mental dialog over my two, make that all three "mistresses," comes to a boil. "Where, when, how long." If you will pardon the pun, being a wandering "polygamist" isn't as easy as it's cracked up to be.
  
This dialogue is not uncommon in April (the moody bitch). April is like bad company; after three days it begins to stink. Her thirty day "period" doesn't help...up and down, up and down, up and down...dragging me along for the ride. I get caught in her maelstrom every year, trying to beat it home before the dreaded tax deadline. It has me counting down to Summer. Ah, Summer, now there's a Season to my liking. I imagine being wrapped in her long-legged days, warm body pressed against mine, and the sweet breath of young love upon my aging face. I digress...

As Winter goes kicking and screaming from Lovely Ouray...dragging its feet like a spoiled rotten kid in a candy store...mountain dwellers must stiffen upper lips in order to shoulder Shoulder Seasons. I play those wretched philosophical mind games, starting with, "It could be worse." Every dream has it's price. More on that in a minute.

There is an Art to melding a Victorian sticks and bricks life with RV adventures. We experiment with different rigs, looking for perfection but always falling short. We tweak destinations, time away, boondocks, interiors, exteriors, solar, internet, toads, meet ups with friends...I sometimes worry if the RV life might run it's course and die when there are no more "tweaks" to be tried. 

Lately we've been fiddling around with our come and go lifestyle. About the time Ms Autumn drops her vibrant leaves in Lovely Ouray, we try to dodge Shoulder Season malaise and dreary weather by ducking November and running off to Zion. It's our way of extending Ms Autumn's stay another thirty days...eschewing a Boondock in favor of a Resort Plug-in with posh amenities...siding up along movie star rigs with our antique Lazy Daze, Goldie. Hiking and biking in an alternative Eden to our own back yard adds variety and spice to life, not to mention making new friends every year.

This is where the "fine tuning" comes in. It works most efficiently if one has a home base nearby, preferably in a four corner state so that everything is within a days drive. That is what allows for our come-and-go lifestyle from Lovely Ouray...spreading out once in a while, part time jobs, and choices. 

December through mid January finds us here in Lovely Ouray. There is something about a White Christmas, warm fire, and football. The Hot Springs Pool is a five minute walk, snowy Main Street, ten. A month or so around the holidays is about all the Holiday spirit and winter recreation I need, then I'm ready to don the shorts and flip flops, get Goldie out of storage in Saint George, Utah, and hit the road.

On the other end, as much as Bobbie is oh-so-ready to return to her Crevice Home before April fools day...to put some distance between her demure presence and a hulking husband, to regain a modicum of privacy, space and decency, and escape the Shadowy confinement of 240 square feet, I believe she is ripe to concede April's fickle weather in favor of a May-ish homecoming. This is a pleasing development for it is in the depths of April's tantrums that my Wanderlust balloons out of control, in spite of just coming off the road. Some would say this borders on a Psychopath-etic disease...this, this, duality of opposite personalities, if you will, that go at each other like Frazier and Ali. They pit Cain against Abel...our Eden Home against Nirvana Roads Less Traveled. Enter the call of the Pacific Northwest and Glacier, and a full-blown love triangle steals my midnight hours. 

True Wanderers are uncompromising wayward types...their promises and itineraries root in sand. It's why most are either single or destined to become single. True Wanderers delight in ultimate freedom and control at the risk of occasional loneliness...no one to please except themselves. It goes without saying, going "solo" is out of the realm of "fine tuning." A tried and true marriage exists because of compromise. A true companion takes vows seriously and does things they wouldn't necessarily choose to do in the name of love. 

Tis the last day of "the Bitch." May is the gateway to Summer, full of promise, fraught with tulips, daffodils and irises. They thumb their nose at Old Man Winter with in-his-face blooms. Here's to the "long-legged days of Summer," may they wrap around you like a glove. Cheers.

Mountain snow is doomed to water 

Mountain cold is doomed to Summer 

Ice Lake white gives way to blue 

Expeditions to timberline await the bold