It was 40 years before we got our next Atticus. By then our kids had grown, I’d been through two different careers earned two Masters and was finishing a Doctorate. Not exactly the hippie life style I’d envisioned originally. For years we had perused the papers’ want ads looking for something we both wanted and could afford. Neither of us wanted to pull a trailer and a pickup with a camper was just not what Lyd wanted, feeling it was too small and cramped. Our searching finally paid off when we found a brand-new Thor Fourwinds, 23 foot RV on sale as a loss leader. We rolled me out to the car, I was recovering from reconstructive surgery on my foot, and made the short trek to Eugene.
Because of my surgery, I was unable to climb up into the “bus” as it came to be called, and had to rely on Lydia and Josh’s description of the interior. It was the easiest sale of the day for the dealership.
To most people Atticus II was “cute” because it was so small. People stared as we passed each other and we often drew comments when we were parked in an RV park. Lydia was a star at packing and organizing the little bus in a way that was amazingly efficient. When we were finally sure that we were “road ready”, we took our first trip, operation guidelines in hand. We drove 10 or 11 miles to a KOA on Highway 34 and parked for the weekend. It was a shakedown trip for us, a chance to try our hand(s) at RVing within a comfortable radius of home. I had spent some time driving the bus around the local college parking lot a few early weekend mornings, so the size wasn’t much of an issue, though backing into camping sites with Lydia’s guidance resulted in yelling and hurt feelings often in the first year. I was not fond of hooking up the black (sewer) line, even with rubber gloves on I had to focus on steady breathing to avoid the gag reflex. It was like dealing with dirty baby diapers all over again.
We found that an RV was the ideal way to travel for us. While we love the idea of traveling, seeing new places, or just hanging out at the beach, we are essentially home bodies. We are most comfortable when we have our things around us and, prior to the RV had cut trips short just because we were ready to be home. Our little bus became for us an extension of home we could take with us. Not very adventurous I know, but there it is.
Ultimately we moved from rookie to journeyman status as RV campers. We made a glorious trip through Yellowstone in 2012, and in 2015 to Glacier National Park, then up to Calgary where we turned west, re-crossed the Rockies and drove south to home.
Our biggest challenge with Atticus II was sleep. The bed was in a loft over the cab and logistically was difficult for us. We had tried several different configurations for us sleeping up there after we rejected the table that turned into a bed as too small, but none seemed to allow us to sleep comfortably and also to allow us to easily climb down for increasingly frequent visits to the bathroom during the night. I could not sleep far away from the edge because of my need to be connected to my BIPAP (breathing machine) and my Oxygen. (Yes at night I look like a cyborg regenerating). Also climbing the ladder became increasingly difficult for me as arthritis and COPD developed also; yes damnit I’m getting older and it both embarrasses me and pisses me off.
Unwilling to give up the comfort of driving a small piece of home around with us, we elected to find a bus that was slightly larger with a bed on the “ground” floor yet still affordable on our limited income as retirees. We began our search for Atticus III.