Summer as a full-time RVer is a different animal. Campgrounds are booked months in advance. National parks are packed. Everyone is on vacation at the same time, including the people who live on vacation permanently. That would be us.

We started the summer of 2023 with zero reservations. No plan. Just a vague intention to head north and see what happened. In retrospect, this was either brave or idiotic. The line between those two things has always been blurry for us.

Yellowstone

We pulled into the Yellowstone area in early July and spent a week exploring the park from a boondocking spot about thirty minutes outside the west entrance. The park itself was crowded, but the early mornings belonged to us. We'd wake at 5am, load the kids into the truck (still in pajamas, because battles worth fighting, etc.), and drive into the park before the tour buses arrived.

Old Faithful is one of those things that sounds overhyped until you're standing there watching it erupt and your seven-year-old grabs your hand and says, "Dad, the Earth is actually doing that right now." He wasn't wrong. The planet is doing something remarkable right there, on a schedule, and has been for thousands of years. It's humbling in a way that's hard to describe and impossible to photograph.

The bison were Calvin's highlight. We sat in traffic for forty-five minutes while a herd crossed the road, and he watched every single one of them like they were celebrities on a red carpet. Millie fell asleep. Carol took a photo of me taking a photo of Calvin watching the bison. Layers of documentation.

Glacier

Glacier National Park was the trip's emotional peak. I don't say that lightly. We've been to a lot of parks. But Glacier has a quality that's hard to articulate. The scale of it, the way the mountains rise straight out of the lakes, the color of the water (turquoise, impossibly turquoise), and the knowledge that the glaciers that carved all of it are disappearing.

We drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road on a Tuesday morning with the windows down. Calvin hung his head out the window like a dog. Millie pointed at every waterfall and yelled "WATER!" with increasing volume. Carol gripped the armrest during the narrow sections and asked me to slow down approximately every thirty seconds.

At Logan Pass, we hiked to Hidden Lake Overlook. It's a relatively short hike, maybe 1.5 miles, but the elevation and the snow patches made it feel longer. Calvin charged ahead. I carried Millie on my shoulders. Carol stopped every few minutes to take in the view, which honestly was the right call. The view deserved it.

That hike is one of the top five moments of our entire nomad life. Standing at the overlook, all four of us, looking down at a lake so blue it seemed painted. Nobody was on their phone. Nobody was complaining. We were just there, together, in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

The hard parts

We dry camped in eastern Montana during a heat wave. 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Our solar panels were working overtime just to keep the AC running, and it still wasn't enough. The kids were miserable. Carol was miserable. I was pretending not to be miserable because someone had to be the optimist and it's usually my job by default.

We spent 65% of July without sewer hookups, which means conservative water use, strategic shower schedules, and a heightened awareness of tank levels that borders on obsessive. This is the glamorous side of RV life that doesn't make Instagram.

We also stayed at the most expensive RV park we've ever been to. I'm not going to name it, but it was in Montana, and it cost more per night than some hotels we've stayed in. The WiFi didn't work. The hookups were dated. But it had a view of the mountains and it was the only spot available within two hours. Supply and demand.

Washington state

We ended the summer drifting west into Washington. Olympic National Park, Whidbey Island (where we found a gorgeous military campground at NAS Whidbey that I'd recommend to any military family), and eventually down the coast.

At our campground on Whidbey, we found a little sign forest where travelers leave markers. We made ours using Calvin's magnifying glass to burn our name into a piece of wood. The kid is an eight-year-old pyromaniac, but in a wholesome way.

What this summer taught us

Three years in, and the road still humbles us. We don't have it all figured out. We still make mistakes (wrong turns, bad campgrounds, underestimating distances). But we've stopped expecting perfection. The summer of 2023 wasn't the most efficient or the most comfortable. It was the one where we stopped trying so hard and just let the trip happen.

Alaska is next. The grand finale. Fifty states by the time this summer is over. It's going to mean something.