For the last two weeks I have not had much time to blog because we have been soaking up the company of some "road friends." That's my name for the new friends we made during our travels. If you followed us much last year you probably caught at least of few of our posts about our time with the Boyinks. If you were really stalking -- I mean, um, consistent in reading our blog then you might also remember Frank and Julie from Big Bend NP.
Frank and Julie are not actually from Big Bend, but that is where we met them. And by "them" I mean Frank, because Julie is not a morning person (because she is smart) and by "we" I mean me and Kevin because they only ever saw our kids whiz through the campground on bikes. Our primary acquaintance with Frank happened at an overlook while photographing the sunrise. You might recall that Frank is the one who gave us that piece of RV wisdom: "Every time you roll down the road it is like subjecting your house to a magnitude 7.4 earthquake." I never forgot that, and my Corningware thanks him.
Part of the fun in knowing the Boyinks is how many other full-time families they know. It can be like playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Last Wednesday we drove out to Hillsborough River State Park where they were camped to spend the afternoon and arrived to find they had located another full-time family, the Kipers. I did not think I knew them until we were nearly done with introductions and someone said "Joining the Gypsies" and I said, "I've read that blog! That's you?" And they said, "You're Dare You 2 Move? We've read yours!" That is pretty much how it always goes when we meet another FTer. We're such a barrel of monkeys, us blogging nomadic types.
We passed a pleasant few hours sitting in the park chatting about life on the road and getting to know each other while our collective nine children amused themselves down a trail somewhere not far from the gator-infested river. I have noticed something about conversing with fellow full-timers: while the slower pace of the open road takes off everyone's hard edges, none of us ever bother much with small talk. I always feel like people are pretty open and get right down to the business of letting you know who they really are and what really matters. Maybe it is because at some point almost all of us looked around at the trappings of suburbia and declared, "Ain't nobody got time for this." The happy result is that while we usually only get a day or two to spend time together, we full-timers can form decent bonds pretty quickly. I love the people we met out there. I feel truly blessed that they still welcome us into their gatherings although we are no longer official members of the club.
-Jenni