Adaptations, Or Making Do (Andre)

As you know, we left RI in a snowstorm in a van on a cold, February Saturday afternoon. All that we had to live off of were the contents of the van, things we might find along the way, and our ingenuity. Well, we are happy to report that each of the three, what we brought, what we have ‘found’ and what we could figure out have served us rather well – so far!
 

While traveling in the van, we learned to live and eat small and enjoy it very much. Meals were typically quick, convenient, and not requiring of much preparation or ingredients. Hanging around in the van usually included reading, listening to the radio (we really have appreciated satellite radio with many channels from around the country including news channels), or if we were in signal range, catching some local television on a small 12 inch TV. Of course, most of our entertainment came from exploring the many new and different areas we found ourselves in.

Once we got to Big Bend and got our own apartment (you may remember this was a surprise, we anticipated living in the van while we were here), we had to pick up ‘our game’ a bit. First we now had a full kitchen with a full size stove, fridge, sink, cabinets, etc. We were able to scrounge some things that others had left behind and that we were able to borrow including a dish rack, some spices and other cooking ingredients, and a microwave. As you will see by the picture below, our cooking pans still are our backpacking pans that we purchased nearly 20 years ago. (The small camping tea pot is a new addition and the skillet is from our former home.)

 

 Now that we had an apartment, and there is no television signal for a hundred miles, the 12 inch TV from the van didn’t offer much in the terms of entertainment when we wanted to just hang around. So, we got a bit creative. As you can see from the picture below, what we set up really is a ‘component’ system! The 32 inch TV came from a community room in the park that is not currently in use. The wonderful TV stand is two chairs we scavenged from the laundry room. We use Laura’s old computer which has an S video output to stream movies from a hard drive that Nick sent us loaded with more than 200 movies. And, when we really want to push boundaries, we can watch things on the Internet through an Ethernet connection that then streams to the TV.

 

 

 Of course, these are only a couple of the many ways we have made do (quite well we think) living in this surprise apartment on the road. We had no mop or pail to clean floors, fortunately there was one in the laundry room. We use the mattress topper from the van to ‘smooth’ out some of the less comfortable parts of the double bed that was in the apartment. Our camp chairs became our front porch chairs. And certainly we have done some ‘re-purposing’ – this extension cord worked for this need, this bowl could serve for that, these towels worked for ……..

 As we are starting to think about leaving Big Bend in the coming weeks, we will take with us further confirmation that anything is possible and that adventuring down the road is just one big, interesting, and ongoing adaptation!