We’ve been eagerly anticipating the Lady Gaga concert for months now, and the Tacoma Dome conveniently has a parking lot where RVs can stay overnight – with hookups! We were the only RV in the lot (I guess Gaga isn’t very popular with the typical RV crowd?), so the local security used it as their staging ground. We arrived early, spent the day relaxing and working, and walked over to the concert just before it started.
I imagine everyone has heard of Lady Gaga, but she’s most famous for the outlandish costumes she wears on a daily basis. She is a freak and openly embraces it, and she calls her fans “little monsters” and encourages them to love themselves and be true to their creativity. Anyhow, her fans have a tendency to dress crazily or mimic some of her most memorable outfits when they attend her concerts, so we were looking forward to the people watching almost as much as the opportunity to “just dance”… it lived up to expectations (but we weren’t allowed to bring our camera inside so our photojournalism of the event is unfortunately a bit limited).
The day after the concert we drove a few miles to Camping World (one of only two locations in the entire state of Washington), because we desperately needed to buy another roof fan vent to replace the one that got broken by hail in Lake Tahoe. We also got a handy RV atlas (one that shows elevation; take that, iPhone!), a new bike rack that will replace our cheap one that threatens to spill our bikes every time we drive, and a brilliant little cover that should protect our bikes from rusting in the elements.
Camping World allows folks to stay overnight in their parking lot, which we took advantage of — in fact, we got a space that opened onto one of their huge areas of grass! We’re definitely used to putting Koa on leash to take him to the bathroom, but sometimes it’s so much more convenient to just let him out the door to do his business and hop back in. He’s great at boundary training (he won’t go through the house door or get out of the car without us giving the “free” cue first), and he’s really starting to understand that he needs to stay on the grass and can’t walk off the sidewalk or onto concrete. We trained this at the dog park we used in San Diego, but he’s surprisingly good at applying the same concept to other spaces (which is good, because border collies sometimes have difficulty generalizing — they’re too observant or think too hard and categorize the situation as entirely new (you’re saying sit? ok. you’re saying sit but your hand is an inch higher? i have no idea what that means)).
The parking lot emptied out once Camping World closed, so we played soccer with Koa on the grass. For exercise we usually throw a ball for him, or sometimes have him run alongside our bike, but soccer is conveniently well contained and easy to play in small spaces. Also, he loves it so much and gets remarkably tired from short spurts. We still haven’t taught him to specifically move the ball with his nose, but he intercepts it and stops it with his mouth and chest, so although he can’t bring it back yet he’s vigilant to keep it from escaping wherever he thinks it belongs in the first place (his favorite is to intercept the ball mid-pass, pounce, stop it, then lay next to it wagging with a “I don’t know what to do with it now, but I got it!” grin on his face).
We’re still trying to think of clever ways to keep his mind entertained and provide enough exercise on the road, but the variability of each location often makes planning ahead a challenge. While it’s different than having a high-energy dog in a traditional house, though, thankfully it really hasn’t proven that difficult to get him exercise.
