After two years of full-time living and traveling in our Airstream, I think we have come to really understand what we are doing and make the most of it. Why is it that when we are in the groove we inevitably have a reason to break out of it?

Friday morning we were all feeling fine. There was nothing much on our schedule except another 2 p.m. Ranger Walk (this time on park geology), and we had a sated feeling about the park that encouraged us to just hang around camp and have a relaxing morning. I asked Eleanor why she was looking so happy, and she said, “We’re just camping!” She meant we had no obligations, no pressing schedule, beautiful surroundings, endless opportunity, and all was well.

Many times we’ve been in a wonderful national park but I’ve had business obligations hanging over my head, worries about meeting deadlines, phone calls that needed to be returned, etc., and those things have tainted the enjoyment of the place. Finally this year the pressure of business seems to be abating, and I’m finding I’m more able to walk away from mental stress. The rest of the family can sense that, and I think that’s helping them relax as well.

In Yosemite I haven’t been free from the duties of my business but I have managed to compartmentalize them. I have allotted 60 minutes in the early morning to write before Emma is up, half an hour in the late afternoon in the center of the village to check voicemail and maybe briefly return a call, and an hour in the evening to respond to email at the hotel. It helps that the news from the business and from my friends has been uniformly good. The associates who help me run Airstream Life are all independent professionals who can generally take care of whatever comes up without my intervention, which is the way any good manager should want it.

In the afternoon Eleanor and I left Emma in the care of Robert and Kelli for a couple of hours so we could explore the Yosemite Museum (native baskets, an exhibit of climbing photos from 60s, obsidian arrowheads) and so Eleanor and I could visit the Ahwanee together. Sitting on the big couch by the fireplace is a romantic experience. I have to admit that the fireplace is one advantage of our house over the Airstream on a cool fall evening.

I’d like to come back in summer so we can hike to Half Dome (16 miles roundtrip), or perhaps do some backcountry camping in our tent. I did a little research on those possibilities for a future trip. But for now it is time to head south. This is the irony that I was alluding to earlier. The final days of our full-time travels are approaching quickly, and there’s much more we want to do before we pull into the carport in Arizona. I’ll talk about that in greater detail in a future blog entry.

Today we hitched up and moved south about 130 miles to Visalia, where we are courtesy parking at the home of blog readers Roger and Roxy. They’ve got a nice concrete pad next to their house and have generally rolled out the red carpet to us, with wifi, 30-amp electric, and water. They even moved their Airstream to the curb so we could park on the pad inside their fence. When an Airstreamer moves their own treasured trailer to the curb, it’s like offering their own bed, so we feel honored.