My New Motor Home

Gordon Smith sent a photo of an extremely extravagant motor home with this comment: I just thought I would send all of you a picture of my new motor home.
At least I wish it was mine.  However, I wouldn’t even be able to buy the gas for it.


Myrna wrote: Nope! I'm with my dad: take a comfortable car that can get into any parking lot, eat out and sleep at a good motel. Take your time and have fun. Can you imagine trying to drive that thing in Nauvoo? If you want to camp out, you couldn't even get that thing in a campground. Sometimes, big isn't better.


Gordon wrote: I don’t really want a big motor home like that one either.  We have a nice medium sized travel trailer.   We enjoy it very much. The trouble with motel camping is:  I can’t take that motel and park it along the stream where I like to camp.  I can’t sit around the camp fire and watch the fish jump in that stream while I roast a hot dog when I motel camp.  I can’t sit in a folding camp chair and look at the beautiful sky, watch for satellites, find the big and  little dipper with the North star, without being hampered by all of the surrounding city lights when I am motel camping.  I can’t conveniently cook my favorite forty mile Dutch oven stew on the
asphalt in the motel parking lot.  I can’t walk on the trail through the trees along that stream while camping at the motel.  There are a million reasons why camping in the mountains is better than camping  in a motel.  But most of all, the food just tastes better up there.  And I like to watch all of the animals.  Last time we camped, I saw deer, forest grouse, wild turkeys, many types of birds, butterflies, fish. squirrels, and voles.  Plus, if I want to, I can take my trailer to trailer parks near all of neat places a person would like to go like Disneyland, Nauvoo, etc., etc.

Oh well, motel campers help me to have more space in the mountains.

Lots of love,

Gordon


Myrna wrote: I didn't mean to imply that we don't like camping because we do. We have family camps and 'just us" camps all summer long. We love it and always have. So did my dad who would invite us all to go boat-fishing with him. BUT, when we drive cross country to Boston to visit Melanie, or Johnstown (Todd), or Colorado Springs (Kirsten) or El Paso (David), we drive long days and stay in motels at night. We'd rather spend the time in the homes of the kids than drag a trailer around. We have a mid-sized trailer that sleeps eight and we spend a lot of time camping in our beloved mountains. I still like campfire cooking even though we have a good stove and oven in the trailer. (We even have a microwave, if you can imagine the weirdness of that.) We'd rather Dutch oven our meals. Remember, I am married to a man who has 40-years of scout mastering in his blood. He even likes tent sleeping.


Gordon wrote: Myrna,  Do you have any idea how special you are?

Yes, there are times when it is better, and easier, to stay in a motel when you travel. And I also have enjoyed tent camping.  However, this old body of mine with the artificial knee, artificial hip, back with two rods and six screws,  three vertebra unroofed in my lower back, and three vertebra fused in my neck, I just don’t sleep very well on an air mattress anymore.  As my English Department chairman at Spanish Fork High School said to me the year before she retired, “Old age is a s _  _ of a b_ _ _ _!”  She just came into my office, shut the door, and said, “Gordon.”  I said, “What.”  She then said what I have quoted her as saying.  She then opened the door and left.  That was the total conversation.  She was a jewel.  I loved her like a sister.  The students
loved her too.  She retired the next year, and was dead the next year.  The stress of public education does not kill you.  However, the stress of it lowers the ability of your body to defend itself from other problems.  She died of cancer.

I would like  to take our trailer and travel across America and back some year.  Travel three or four hundred miles, stay for a week, see what you wanted to in that area, travel again, stop again, etc. until we had been to the states and places we would like to see.  Then come home.  However, I am not sure this eighty year old body of mine will let me.  Therefore, maybe I will just take us to the nice places  closer to home.   I do still go on the deer camp with our boys each year.  I don’t hunt.  Just camp and cook.  The last time I hunted was when I was seventy two.  I did get my deer that year, and drug it out by myself.  Three years ago, Roberta went with us on the deer hunt.  The boys all had permits in the Book Cliffs.  We stayed nine days.  The boys all got a nice deer.  That was the year I received my artificial hip.  I am sure Roberta went just to take care of me.  However, the boys have all said over, and over, that it was the most fun hunt they have ever been on.  It wasn’t the deer they got.  It was just that  mom was there.

We have taken the trailer to Utah Lake State Park during general conference in the Spring.  It is nice to relax there and watch conference in the trailer.  I want to do the same thing at Rockport Reservoir some year.  We camped there on the deer hunt one year.  I found that you can get channel five on television there.  Good fishing too.

Well, I am sure you are tired of reading all of this blarney.  And I think I better get to bed.  It is 12:40 am.

You and that good man of yours have a good day

Love Ya,

Gordon