Part Deux

We had such a wonderful RV adventure last summer that we decided to do it again!

During the first three weeks of July, 2011 the Smith Family traveled from Williamstown, Massachusetts to Charleston, South Carolina in a 30-foot Class C motor home rented from Cruise America.  If you're wondering why any sane person would willingly choose such an activity for family vacation—and find yourself snarking the question, "what could possibly go wrong?" please review the blog pages that precede this one.

At the conclusion of last summer's adventure, we asked ourselves he following question: "If we were to do a trip like this again, which aspects of the first trip would we want to retain and what would we want to do differently?" In summary, these were the results.

These things were fun and we should do them again:
Rent a big RV
Bring the whole family (some dissent noted on this point)
Visit many fun places
Let each person pick an activity that he/she enjoys
Visit friends along the way
Leave room for spur-of-the-moment adventures
Stay at some fancy-schmancy campgrounds
Have campfires and cookouts
Keep lots of cold beverages within a finger's reach
Play family games
Watch some movies
Swim a lot
Take family hikes
Leave time for reading and relaxing
Eat lots of yummy local foods
Stay in each campground at least two nights
Take lots of photos
Keep a blog of the whole shebang!
HAVE FUN!

For the love of God, do NOT repeat these mistakes:
Do NOT venture to the surface of the Sun without a properly functioning air conditioner unit
Do NOT spend multiple days of your vacation trying to repair said air conditioner unit
Do NOT rent an RV so loud that we can't all listen to music/stories/each other while on the road
Do NOT rent an RV from Cruise America
Do NOT spend so much time driving
Do NOT pack so much crap
Do NOT worry about making everything an "educational" experience for the kids
Do NOT stay up quite as late each night writing the blog
Do NOT be such a Poop Nazi!

Most of the intentions from last year's trip remain intact as well. I'm not sure If we'll be able to hold true to all of these, but we'll do our best.  If anyone is following along on the blog, shoot us some comments from time to time and let us know how you think we're doing. But if you don't have anything nice to say....

Here we go!