October 18 - November 1, 2023 -- Aspen Ridge RV Resort in South Fork, Co
Written By: Wendy Ptolemy
Photos By: Scott Ptolemy
As Scott and I were planning for our travels, one of our main trepidations was that we would be isolated on the road without finding any people to connect with. We wrestled with how we would build community for several months until one day our overly social 4-year-old son came to the rescue. Over the summer, before we started traveling, I was up at a local beloved Wenatchee trail with the kids. Parker started talking up some people he just met and "introduced" me to his new friends. It turned out that they were just moving to the Wenatchee area after traveling in their RV with two sons for the past two years! It was amazingly serendipitous, and we invited them over for dinner. We picked their brains and they introduced us to the organization Fulltime Families. It is an organization that is dedicated solely to our main concerns: finding connections and a community on the road. Our new friends encouraged us to attend a Fulltime Families rally early on in our travels as a way to meet people and learn from others. So as soon as they left our house, we looked it up and signed up for the "Halloween Hullabaloo" in South Fork, CO.
Fast forward to October 2023. We made the quick jaunt from Washington to Colorado. We were a bit nervous as we pulled in the Aspen Ridge RV Park where we would be spending the next 2 weeks with 28 other families. We had only been on the road for 3 weeks at this point, and we had no clue what we were doing. As Scott set up the trailer, I dragged the kids to check-in at the clubhouse. It immediately felt like summer camp, and I instantly breathed a sigh of relief and settled right in. We were given a calendar jam packed with events for kids of every age and evening activities that were just for the parents. I knew that this was my kind of place - lots of social activities - yay!
At the welcome event that night, we met all the coordinators and a number of families. For one of the ice breaker activities we watched as the younger kids chased the older kids around who had candy glued onto their shirts, and they tried to rip off as much candy as possible. Surprisingly no one even got hurt. As dusk fell and the temperature started to drop, a roaring bonfire was built and we spent the evening sipping hot cocoa, roasting marshmallows and meeting new friends.
Over the course of the next 2 weeks, we went to toddler story time, made new friends at the community dinners, learned how to play Nertz (it's a very intense card game - look it up!), had jell-o shots with other parents at the adults only party, painted pumpkins, and thoroughly explored every inch of the campground. We watched with joy at the growth of our children in the short amount of time while we were there. Parker's confidence and ability to play with other children bloomed as he become more and more independent, running around the campground with a his gang of 3-8 year-olds.
One of the most exciting days of the event was our field trip day to Great Sands Dunes National Park and Sand Dunes Hot Springs. We all left the campground bright and early on Saturday morning in a caravan of 20+ diesel trucks and a few Jeeps thrown in. I have never been a truck person (I've always had Subarus), and I've had mixed feelings about owning a truck. But in this moment, I was proud to be a truck owner and knew we fit in perfectly. Parker spent the morning running up and down the giant sand dunes with his two new friends while they had pretend battles with stick swords. Caroline enjoyed flying down the hills on the sand sleds. Walking back up the sandy hill was another story, but we all huffed and puffed our way up. After we were all thoroughly exhausted from the sand play, we hopped back into our truck line and headed to Sand Dunes Hot Springs. We soaked our tired bodies in the rejuvenating mineral waters all afternoon while mingling with more families. Scott and I marveled at how amazing it was that 20+ families were all on this outing for the day together. In our "real life" there was no way that we would ever be able to coordinate this many families (let alone 2 families) to do an activity together like this.
As the end of our days at Aspen Ridge RV Park drew near, we could feel a distinct shift in the interactions between people. It suddenly felt like speed dating for families. One of the things that many families are hoping to walk away with after a Fulltime Families event is one or more families to travel with for a while. People were asking more pointed questions about travel plans and whipping out calendars and itineraries. The type A families had plans booked out for the next 6 months, and the type B families were trying to figure whose plans were to their liking that they could then join onto. When a few other moms asked for my itinerary and Facebook or Instagram name, I felt a flurry of butterflies in my stomach like I had just been asked out on a date. "Oh! You are in interested in me and my family?! Well great, I like your family too!" There were very specific criteria that were needed for perfect family match though (in this order):
1. parents must get along
2. kids must be relatively close in age
2. kids must get along
4. traveling in the same direction
5. have similar traveling style (length of stay, campground vs. boondocking)
We did not think that we had met our "road family" yet, as all the criteria was not quite ticked off for us, but we met a lot of new friends we hoped to see again. We departed South Fork as if coming out of a dream. The whirlwind of activity had abruptly ended and we were back on the road.