Planning for our Mother-Son adventure went a little something like this…

This is the second part of Scott’s journey when he surprised his Mum and took her on a fantastic trip back to her home town… To read the first post, click here.

So, to pick up where we were, which was… let me see, oh yes, I was preparing for the Birdsville Track trip with my Mum!

This sort of trip could go either way. In fact, I wasn’t initially too worried about spending 2 weeks with my Mum… alone… in a small space… 24/7, until a myriad of people I was excitedly telling about the trip gave me answers that had a familiar theme, “Gee, I couldn’t do a trip like that with my Mum!” That started to spook me a bit.

At this point it is worth interrupting the preparations discussion to talk about the ‘Why?’ Why didn’t I just go on my own? Because I was only in my very early 20’s when my Dad died, I have always felt that I didn’t really know him, you know, man to man. I had also led a life which distanced me from Mum a bit too. So this trip was all about learning who Mum was and, through Mum, who Dad was! I firmly believe that this time spent one to one was the best way to reach a depth of understanding and relationship that I couldn’t achieve at home. There is just something special about an adventure that does this for us human beings!

Back to the planning, I stuck to my guns and carried on with the planning. I checked in with Mum about any dietary requirements she might have and how she preferred to ‘meal break’. This is a surprisingly important consideration. You see, Mum is a stock standard ‘three meals a day’ person with snacks regularly and at specific time intervals. My wife is the same. But I’m not. I’m a grazer. I tend to stop very little and eat lots of small portions as I go. So I had to be aware of my driving times in the itinerary planning and the meal plan. No point stocking up on lots of small portions if Mum doesn’t eat that way!

I did what I normally do for the meal planning, sent the food order off to the supermarket to pre pack for me. It works for work trips, I make it work for my own trips, too! It can save a lot of double handling. I even drove the campertrailer to the store and packed it straight into the fridge and relevant storage containers and food drawers. No double handling! Plus, I could sort the missing items immediately, even before leaving the car park.

I had determined to do a couple of meals in the camp oven especially for Mum (it’s all about the ambience!) so I also had to factor this into the route plan. We had to get to camp early enough on the given days to get a good coal fire going. Or vice versa, plan the meal for a smaller, shorter travel day. A little schedule planning can make a huge difference.

But by far the largest consideration was the unknown factor of ‘how was Mum going to travel?’ This wasn’t just my concern, Mum hadn’t been on long day road trip for many years. She shared the concern. We factored alternatives into the route plan just in case her back didn’t hold up. We worked on her access to the bed as we were in a campertrailer and we made sure her medications were stored at an appropriate temperature no matter what the outside conditions.

But we got all the planning done; car serviced and prepared (two different things by the way), ran our packing lists over and over and headed towards Departure Day! So I drove down to Mum’s to celebrate Mother’s Day a night early (my sister came in too) and the following morning we got up at sparrow’s breakfast (a reference to time) and headed to mum’s childhood home town for breakfast… which is. Nah I’ll share that with you next time!

See ya next time, Camp in Comfort, Scottie B

Do you feel you could tackle a new challenge? What obstacles would you need to overcome to make it happen?