College Visit - "Stay put...we'll bring home to you"

I often refer to our RV as our second home, or our "home away from home." It's not just a cliché. This was very obvious to me this week.

Our daughter is in her first year of college. For the last five weeks, she has been living in the dorm and, thankfully (knock on wood, cross your fingers), making friends and adjusting well. We decided last week to pay her a visit, but were not originally planning on taking the RV. She had plans with her friends on Saturday night, so it was to be a quick one day visit. We didn't even know if we would stay overnight in a hotel or just drive the three hours back home Saturday evening.

Once we broke the news to her that we were coming, she said "You're bringing the RV right? I really hope so, because it's like my home away from home." She was right and she wasn't alone. We all felt the same way. So I gave it a little thought and decided, of course, to bring the RV. She was very excited. "We want to carve pumpkins?" she said. "And Dad, can you BBQ us some chicken?" Again I said....."Of course."

We had planned to leave home early Saturday morning. But, sitting around after dinner Friday night, my son says "we should leave tonight!" Expecting to hear "No" from me, he was surprised to get a "Sure. I'm okay with that." We packed up the RV and headed out into the night at around 9:30PM.

We arrived at the RV park at around 1AM. Within a few minutes of getting hooked up, our daughter shows up with her roommate and three other friends. We sat around and had a great conversation until around 4AM. We slept in the next day, before meeting them at the dorm at 1PM for a visit to a nearby pumpkin patch. They piled into a friends pick-up and followed us out to the pumpkin patch. After a run through the corn maze, we found out that the pumpkin patch was out of pumpkins! Pumpkin patch with no pumpkins? That was a let down. So we went to the nearest grocery store which had a bunch. Everyone picked out a pumpkin and we headed back to the RV.

We spent the rest of the afternoon carving pumpkins and, as promised, I grilled up some chicken for the nine of us.

It was an unexpected very special weekend for us. We had great quality time with everyone, carved pumpkins, had a BBQ, and finally roasted pumpkin seeds. Try doing that in a hotel room. That's right...you can't! In fact, I think it was actually more enjoyable than if she had come home for the weekend.