The Coffee House
We are living in a Sonic Lite 167VMS travel trailer. The colour palette is Latte. We picked this because there aren’t any mad patterns or bright colours inside. The colours are close to what we had in our house. Lots of dark wood cabinets, stainless steel, and latte walls and seat cushions. It’s minimalist.
The obvious name for our little home is The Coffee House. Where do writers go to work? The Coffee House. Where do friends hang out? The Coffee House. Where can you get lovely baked treats and hot drinks? Yeah, see, what else could we call our little tenement on wheels.
We took The Coffee House out for the first time on the May long weekend to Stamp Falls Provincial Park in Port Alberni. Next up was Burnaby Cariboo RV Park to attend a family wedding in Surrey. Early June in Vancouver? Yes, it rained a lot. These trips were essential for us to figure out what had to go where in the trailer, and if we could even do a few days together in a small space. For the wedding, we had four adults in The Coffee House. Now that was interesting! And fun! Even with the rain, and having to get ready for a formal event in a 20-foot trailer, we survived.
When we returned from Burnaby, it was mid-June. Jamie no longer had a job. We had a month to get The Coffee House ready as our next home. Our daughter came every weekend to hang out with us and do her laundry. We got our annual medical checkups done, and we shared our Costco purchases around that we couldn’t pack with us. When you buy a big bag of rice, how can you know months later you will decide to make a huge lifestyle change? We took care of everything we could think of that needed to be done before leaving Vancouver Island.
Time was passing quickly. We were still questioning our decision in June to leave home and set out on a huge adventure, but we didn’t have the energy or the luxury of a day off to think too deeply about it. We put as much money as we could in the bank, and we continued to make trips to donate, dump, or gift items from our home to friends and family.
There were a couple of friends who went above and beyond to help us lighten our load. We appreciate all that you did for us, Britt and Wilf. Thank you for understanding our needs, and supporting us in ways we never expected.
Having left his desk, and a family of coworkers, Jamie didn’t feel like he was on vacation. It would be a while until he would enjoy a quiet hour to read a book. Both of us were getting an extra hour of sleep in the morning, but that was often not enough because we were up late each night going through the boxes that had piled up in the garage. We were packing what would go into storage, getting items we needed to live full-time in our Coffee House, and saying our goodbyes to friends.
This is a design mockup we had our daughter, Devon Kitto, do for us. Going with the Sonic theme, we asked her to create a hedgehog that was in the same colour palette as the trailer. Those are golden coffee beans, by the way.
This blog post was written in our truck, edited, revised, and scheduled while lakeside in The Coffee House.