WHAT DO YOU CALL PEOPLE WHO SHOP AT WALMART?

There are some things
you can never unsee..

We've all seen those pictures of Wal-Mart shoppers that have been making the rounds on the internet for a couple of years, right? Those snapshots of grotesquely clad (or unclad in some cases) people with inappropriate tattoos, weirder than weird hairdos, men in baby-doll pajamas and the like. There are websites devoted to this stuff, folks. In addition to the strange shoppers, let's not forget the long line-ups at the check out, followed by those disgruntled employees you meet at the check-out, and not a single person in sight to help if you should need assistance maneuvering around. No wonder some of us would rather have root canal sans anesthetic than go there.

Personally, I prefer to avoid WalMart at all costs. Despite the apparent savings to be had I'll shop at Metro or SuperStore and pay a few extra cents or bucks for groceries. If I'm looking for inexpensive clothing to be worn while walking my dogs I'll opt for Joe Fresh any day rather than head next door to WalMart. My husband, Erik, well that's a different story. He doesn't just dislike the store, he has a positive fear of entering their sliding doors. It starts with the greeter, a sad old retiree who everyone ignores to the ever-present display of sickly and calorie laden cinnamon buns piled high against one wall to the huge crush of people fighting for carts. All of it gives him the heeby jeebies. You can imagine then how unprepared I was when he came to me and suggested we go to WalMart. What? On purpose, intentionally, and with pre-thought?  He wants to enter those terrifying sliding doors to the inner-sanctum of fear and frustration? This is serious, folks, he must have a pretty darned good reason to even consider spending time in WalMart.

Well, it turns out he did have a reason - he had a darned good reason. We needed stuff for the Fifth-wheel. He's a man who dives in when he undertakes any new project and this RVing is a new project. He doesn't scrimp and save and try to cut corners or make do. Nope. If you are going to be living in an RV for six months then that RV will have as many of the comforts of home as possible. The dishes, glasses and cutlery borrowed from the house needed to be replaced by something more permanent and unbreakable and new and it appeared WalMart just may have what we needed. There may even be substantial savings involved. He was armed with information in the form of 2 of the 3,000 or so flyers we get stuffed into our mailbox every Thursday and had even done a solitary reconnaissance to both Canadian Tire and SuperStore.

A plan was formulated:  make a quick trip to Canadian Tire and SuperStore, check their stock, pick our favourite patterns, jot down prices then tackle WalMart; both of us, together, in tandem. He was NOT going to WalMart alone. Clutching our list of prices and summoning his courage, off we went to WalMart. We parked our honking, great truck in the huge and overcrowded parking lot, and remarked on the Fifth-wheel that appeared to be using the parking lot as a camping ground. Through the sliding doors we went, ignoring the retiree greeter, not looking at the 45 foot display of baked goods, not veering left or right, we made a bee-line for House Wares. We didn't even stop to investigate the 30,000 DVDs that were piled high in a prominently displayed bin and marked with a yellow smiley face 10 for $2.00.


Holy mackerel, what an amazing display of House Wares. Do you have any idea how many different patterns Corning Ware makes in dinner ware? Did you know there were other brands? I didn't. After carefully (and quickly) perusing all that was on offer, we opted for a Corelle pattern  - cute, colourful and kind of funky - just what you need when you are on an adventure. Not only was it vastly less expensive than the other stores those other stores didn't even have that cute pattern. Next on the list - glassware. Not being a fan of plastic glasses (there's an oxymoron for you) I was happy happy happy to see they carried a style of plastic glasses that was thin and actually looked like the real thing. Bingo. Four red wine glasses, four white wine glasses and, oh yes, four water/milk/whatever glasses. Amazing. This was taking no time at all. Next - cutlery. Loads of it. WalMart did not disappoint in the cutlery department either. When buying every day cutlery, the test for me is to see if the teaspoon bends easily. If it does, you don't want to buy it. Down the aisle we went, bending or not bending teaspoons until we found a set to our liking with tough, unbendable teaspoons. Cutlery, (plastic)  glasses, dishes, whoosh, were all selected within a matter of minutes and carried to the checkout  Getting out of the store, well that's a different matter. People who shop at WalMart seem to be obsessive shoppers, in my completely unscientific opinion. I haven't done a survey, I am just basing this opinion on my one venture into the store that day when everyone else had carts that were positively overflowing with stuff. Even the self-checkout lines were full of people whose carts were brimming over.

We weren't in any hurry to be anywhere, we had no urgent business or meetings awaiting us, no, we just wanted out of there. We patiently waited for everything to be scanned and bagged and off we went, passing the ever present greeter, passing the tired shoppers taking a break at Timmies, passing the pastry display and out the sliding doors to freedom. We did note the RV was still parked in the lot and the owners appeared to be setting up for a late lunch or perhaps an early dinner.

So....what DO you call people who shop at WalMart? I guess you can call them whatever you like but whatever you choose to call them I guess now you will have to include us in their ranks. Would we be back another day to shop at WalMart?  Hmmmm.  It's possible.  They really do have a selection far greater than any other store here, the prices are probably quite a bit better than most and there's a certain entertainment value. One thing we won't be doing though, we won't be parking our Fifth-wheel in their parking lot any time soon.

NOTE, no WalMart shoppers or employees were harmed during our shopping expedition.

ORGANIZATION IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

Planning a six-month trip with two dogs takes some major organizational skills. Luckily for me, for the dogs and for the travelling public in general my husband, Erik, is the epitome of organization. He loves flow charts, spread sheets, lists, investigating and searching and enquiring and plotting and discussing and rediscussing his findings.

His major find is Good Sam Club, an on-line organization that assists you with planning a road trip; their slogan being We Cover EVERYTHING That Moves You.  Maneuvering around their website www.goodsamclub.com is an amazing trip in itself with a huge amount of information to absorb. I got to absorb second-hand what had already been absorbed by Erik. If you ever contemplate taking such a trip then do yourselves a favour and check out their site. I am happy and proud(ish) to report we are now Good Sam Club clubbers. No badge arrived in the mail, there was no swearing in ceremony, no fanfare, no cannons being fired in our honour and no one has yet congratulated us on this milestone in our lives. Perhaps they are behind in sending out congrats to newbies due to the fact they have over 1.5 million RV owners who save money every day .


What Good Sam does give you is a run down of pretty much every single RV Park that exists in the world. You also get discounts at various gas stations, not too shabby now that we're the owners of a honking great truck and will be towing a Fifth wheel. There is oodles of information about every park and a link to individual websites. I tell you, RVing is big business down there in the States and the further south you get the more decadent they become. You'll find enormous parks, huge amenities that often include onsite shopping (yes!!), swimming pools, sports, laundry facilities that would rival the most up-to-date laundromat anywhere, washrooms that high-end condo owners would  covet and fenced in dog parks. I was quite amazed at what is available. And so, we clicked our way through the maze of information to find out where we should stay our first night ON THE ROAD!!

Pennsylvania for sure. First click and up pops about 200,000 RV parks in that state alone. Click again and we narrow it down to central Pa. which only leaves about 100,000. Another click and we've narrowed it down by half to pet friendly. Click, click, click to get rid of those without a 9+ rating in all categories, and we end up with a manageable amount of RV parks that will suit our needs to a tee. Now we can click click click to find the one that most appeals. We check out the oodles of great pictures of people having loads of fun at the RV parks.  Geriatrics doing face painting? Thirty gazillion children screaming in the enormous playground? Community apple bobbing? Probably not.

We clicked our way to Twin Grove RV Resort & Cottages in a little town called Pine Grove, PA. Off the beaten track in central Pa. with tons of things to do we hit the Make a Reservation button. Yahoo. We are in. At our disposal we'll have an amusement park (which we won't use), two pools (yikes!! not this time of the year in central Pa), crafts centre (anyone who knows me will smirk at that). However, it is pet friendly, and the description of 104 acres on a gorgeous rural setting is very appealing. More importantly they offer HUGE LEVEL SITES. How important is that? Pretty important when you consider it will be our first time actually parking and unhitching in a real park.

We are within weeks now of our first-day of driving and our first night as true blue honest to gosh RVers. In no time we will be 'On The Road Again'.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, RIGHT??

The truck is ours, the Fifth-wheel is ours and it's parked quite nicely in a camping ground about thirty minutes from home. What's next on the agenda? Well, staying in it of course. Gathering up all the necessities of life, trucking on out (excuse the bad pun) to the site and living there overnight, for a few days, or even for a week. Time is on our side, so let's go RVing.

Me, a book and Freddy.

Crockery, cutlery and pots and pans have been whisked out of our kitchen and foods for the barbeque have been purchased. The linen closet has been similarly raided and stripped of a couple sets of sheets, some towels, toiletries and the extra hair dryer. All were packed in the truck and off we went, out for our first overnighter in our new home away from home. It was pretty exciting making up the bed, pressing all the buttons to make sure everything in the RV still worked, setting up the lawn chairs under the awning. Pretty peaceful too sitting there in the autumn sun reading my book, dogs curled up at my feet. Every RV site we plan to visit is 'dog friendly'. You can tell because there's a little icon of a dog on their website. How happy are we that most of them have that little icon? They all also require that no dogs be loose on the property; makes a lot of sense, but it means our dogs will have to be tethered, something they aren't used to. Not only are we practicing living in the confines of an RV, so are our dogs. They don't really care where they are as long as we are there but being tied up? We'd have to wait and see.

Kaede checking out new smells.

Once they realized they had quite a bit of room to wander around, sit or lie down in comfort the tethering up didn't seem to bother the dogs too much. It's not my favourite thing, tying up dogs but in the case of RV park rules it makes nothing but sense and treats have a way of making dogs happy with less than ideal situations.

Making meals in our RV turned out to be pretty darned easy. In addition to our barbeque there is a microwave (yup, this camping business is rough!!), a three burner stove top and an oven. Not a let's cook a turkey sized oven, possibly not even a let's cook a chicken sized oven; it's actually more of a two chicken breasts sized oven, but hey, who wants to be travelling and thinking of cooking turkey dinners anyway? Not me. Nope, barbequed burgers and a crisp salad was our first RV meal and it was wonderful eaten outside in the setting sun.


Our practice run was, so far going, swimmingly (as they say). The park had everything you could need or expect at this time of year in Ontario; clean washroom facilities, DVDs if you fancied and lots of great walking trails to take the pups. Best of all, thirty minutes from home if it suddenly occurs to us that we have forgotten to bring something essential to our well-being, such as curry powder or a teflon coated pan.

Our first day was done, we were battening down the hatches and getting ready for our first night of sleeping in the RV. And, wouldn't you know it - that also lived up to expectations. The queen sized bed turned out to be as comfortable as the one at home; the shower performed exactly as you would want it to and the heater kept us toasty warm. What else is there?

Erik in his jammies, morning coffee and Freddy nearby.

I am not a camper. I don't like tents, I don't like the outdoors unless there is indoors very close by, I certainly don't ever want to sleep in a sleeping bag out in the woods somewhere. I would not be very happy doing any of that and then have to get up the next morning all scrunched up and cold and miserable and flicking the remnants of dead bugs, or worse, from me. In that scenario I know for a fact there would be no morning coffee and certainly no Starbucks nearby. But, when you have a nifty little RV with electricity, a hot shower, a microwave and your hairdryer from home you can also have.......guess what??? your Keurig. Yup, my beloved individual brew Keurig and lots and lots of little pods that make me a delicious cup of extra bold, dark roast coffee. That's what I like to wake up to. And that's exactly what I did wake up to.


I do believe being a camper (well, RVer, actually) might just suit us quite well.