Laundry Day!

Today we drove up through Montana to Missoula to stop at the Big Dipper Ice Cream shop (and do laundry). The Big Dipper had good ice cream, but once again, the definition of "homemade" was slightly different than what I expected. I guess I'm just old fashion, but I think that if you are going to call something "homemade" you shouldn't get your base delivered to you on a truck. We'll keep looking.

Anyway, I thought I would talk a bit about how its going living out of our truck. I'm attaching a few pics too.

So first things first. Isaac made a sweet little platform bed for us in the bed of the truck. The frame is welded steel with a plywood top. Under the platform, he made us some storage drawers. One drawer is shorter than the other to accommodate the cooler. In addition we have a separate "hidey hole" compartment toward the front of the bed accessible by two doors. We keep our clothes in the hidey hole and all our camping and play gear in the drawers. On top of the plywood we have a memory foam pad and our sleeping bags. Isaac also added some super efficient LED strip lights to the front and back, a converter and outlet for our computer to charge, and some adapters to charge our cell phones.

So how is it? Well the storage areas are working out really well. At first we had a little too much food, so stuffing everything in was quite a puzzle. Now that we have eaten much of it, we have no problems sliding the cooking/food draw in and out every day. The climbing, camping gear drawer is heavier and a little harder to slide, but still it works just fine. Getting to our clothes can be a pain. It is worse for me because I like to get up early and Isaac --not so much. So if I forgot to set out clothes for the next day (or for running in the morning) I am kind of stuck because the hidey hole is under his head. Once I recognized that though, I have been more prepared. Sleeping is extremely comfortable (I love memory foam!). The only problem is that it is really narrow up there. Getting in and out or changing clothes can be quite an exercise in contortionism. It is certainly not for the claustrophobic! The real problem is that once you're in, you don't really want to get out. We tend to sleep in a lot due to this fact. It is easier just to keep sleeping than to try to extract yourself! For me this is especially hard as my "delicate condition" makes is so I have to pee during the night --or at least early in the morning. What a drag to have to move around with a full bladder!

Other than that, I have to say, our set up is pretty sweet. It is great when we just stay in a campsite for one night not to have to set up a tent.

Well that's about it. Hope everyone is doing well. Next stop---Glacier NP!