June 2017 - Next Stop Always

Crater Danger!

We were rejuvenated crossing the border from California into Oregon (if you didn’t read about our drama surrounding the rain in northern California you can catch up here). The view of the Smith River on the drive in made us remember exactly why we heart Oregon (Bend, Oregon is our first true possible forever home site).

When you full time RV, you have to get a feel for how much distance you and your road posse can handle without going nuts. Some people are destination driven and don’t mind full eight to ten hour days of driving to get to the places on their bucket list. Not us–if we go past the 6 hour mark we are likely to go into full meltdown mode at any time. So, we make it a point to plan stops with this drive time in mind to keep our crankiness at a minimum and our marriage (mostly) unscathed.

Following this logic, we had a plan in place for our arrival into Oregon. We were going to overnight at Cave Junction, investigate Oregon Caves National Monument the next morning and then head on up to Crater Lake National Park. However, driving into the sunshine and being mesmerized by the river made us rethink our plans. Our insides were screaming at us to keep driving past the caves (the town was barely a one horse, plus how could it be better than our first cave tour of this journey?), so we listened. We decided to drive a little over an hour more to hang out in Ashland, Oregon for a week and visit Crater Lake from there. We needed civilization for a bit…good weather, good food, and good wifi.

Once we decided to pass the caves (and made it out of the boonies into cell phone signal territory…constant struggle!), we whipped out good ole Google Maps. We proceeded to call every RV Park in the vicinity of Ashland and (yikes!) couldn’t find anything that had availability. We were starting to think our guts were wrong. We were losing hope thinking we were going to end up in a Wal-Mart parking lot for the night (which is fine when you need it, but not when you were looking forward to spending a week in a town). Fear not, Gary’s eagle eyes happened to see a brand spanking new RV Park as we were driving in to town. It just opened and was all green and pretty. You could practically see the skid marks where we pulled off the exit!

It was comforting to settle down and enjoy the week in Ashland doing some of our favorite things…

Being foodies

A mashup of the best of Rogue Creamery and Lillie Belle Farms Chocolates

Hiking on new trails

Braving the ominous looking clouds on Upper Table Rock Trail

Biking

It was exactly what we needed…our gut was on track after all.

Best thing we did?

Snowshoeing around Crater Lake. Okay, not the WHOLE lake. It is 33 miles around and I am pretty sure it would take days. That is if we didn’t fall down and freeze to death in either a tree well or a snow cornice as the rangers warned about with their scare tactics for tourists.

As we drove into the park we were expecting snow, but weren’t prepared for the sheer volume of snow! The average snowfall per year at Crater Lake is 500 inches. 500 inches! No wonder this is the deepest lake in the US.

We expected this to be a get out and see the beauty and get right back in kinda stop. However during the drive in, we tuned in to 1610 AM to listen to that obnoxiously scratchy announcement every park has and found out we could rent snowshoes to hike around the lake for only $16. Totally us! Thankfully, being former southern California peeps that are still afraid of a slight chill, we over-prepared with lots of layers of clothing.

As we rented our snowshoes and routed our course, we became intent on getting around to a couple of lookout points. It was about two miles to the second one, Wizard Island overlook. So, four miles total. No problem, we hike this distance all the time. However, as we climbed up the snow covered hill and viewed the vastness of Crater Lake we started to wonder if we should have packed a lunch and some survival supplies. About a mile in we realized that trudging in snowshoes and a bunch of warm ass clothes while huffing and puffing at altitude is not the same as hiking. It was brutal! We did make it (barely) to the first overlook, Discovery Point, but not without taking a hit. Gary broke a pole and gave up altogether on the snowshoes.

Even though it was tough, the beauty of Crater Lake surrounded by snow made it worth the arduous trek.

That is Wizard Island in the background by the way. Not sure that we missed anything at all by not making it all the way anyway!

Best thing we ate?

One of the cool things about traveling to different areas is checking out local farmer’s markets and discovering what is grown in different regions. At the Rogue Valley Growers Market we hit the jackpot with fresh morel mushrooms! Gary used to forage for these as a kid, so it was a treat to find them in a farmers market in Oregon. We snatched up a bag before they were all gone and fried them up that night in the Airstream.

What we learned?

Go with your gut. When we both felt that our stop wasn’t quite right, we discussed and made the decision to move on quickly. We followed our instincts and had a relaxing and enjoyable week in a fun town and still got to see our main attraction, Crater Lake, without having to stay overnight in an RV Park in the freezing cold.

Next Stop: Oregon Small and Smaller Towns

These Mushrooms are Bananas

Our route had us continuing up the California coast. We were prepared for redwoods and ocean views, but not for the depression of continuous rain. We know, we know California needs the rain! But come on…our towels in the Airstream never dried out! We definitely praised the sun gods when any little bit of sun trickled through the forest…

There were multiple campground stops as we made our way up to the tippy top of California…Duncan Mills, Mendocino, Myers Flat, and Eureka. You would think driving along the coast in California that sand would be sand and ocean would be ocean, but in Northern California, one town beach after another can be totally different…

Like in Jenner where the Russian River meets the Pacific

and Glass Beach in Fort Bragg where sea glass is the silver lining of ocean trash dumping in the 50s and 60s

and Moonstone Beach in Trinidad, CA

or even Gold Bluffs Beach, in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Here Roosevelt Elk are sitting on the grassy/sandy part of the beach with the ocean just behind the trees (promise it is there!).

Best thing we did?

You would think the answer to this question would be hiking among the majestic trees. With driving roads like Avenue of the Giants and walking through the Redwood National and State Parks we were indeed amazed by all the trees labeled Big, Giant, and Gargantuan, wait that last one might not be on a actual sign, but after five or six hikes we saw them as they were…trees.

Extremely large trees, but still trees. So, our eyes began searching for other things in the forests we conquered. Banana slugs intrigued us for a hot minute (mostly trying not to step on them). They seem to slither around on the trails like they own the forest!

While neon yellow slugs may be interesting, mushroom hunting became an obsession for us during these hikes. Let’s be perfectly clear, hunting not foraging. We were certainly not prepared for eating them just yet given we could die if we make the wrong assumptions. However, searching for mushrooms is like looking for Waldo or staring at those posters where you have to make yourself practically cross-eyed to see the image. Once you start looking you see them everywhere and you can’t stop.

Best thing we ate?

Olives.

Yes, olives. Not the kind you popped on all your fingers at Thanksgiving as a kid or the briny kind stuffed with blue cheese that you dunk in your dirty martinis as an adult. These were wood fired Castelvetrano olives at Saucy in Ukiah. Wood fired = mind blown! They were mixed with caramelized orange zest and fennel, roasted garlic, and chili to give them extra flavor, but the true depth came from the seared olive flesh.

These olives are important because they were not only yummy, but also represent our motto “Next Stop Always.” You might think that it simply means always investigating new places, but it is really a reminder for us to strive to learn and grow. To never get stuck being comfortable just because it is known. That is where the olives come in…Gary never liked olives…ever! They were too briny, vinegary (remember the oysters) and just pure unappetizing to him. But, following our motto, he tried again and loved these! So, remember to always be open — maybe you just haven’t yet experienced something in the right way.

An honorable mention must go out to the dessert we had at Café Beaujolais in Mendocino simply because it was called Candy Cap Mushroom Banana Cake. Um hello, mushrooms, banana slugs, have you even been paying attention??? Not necessarily the best dessert of all time, but they made it with Candy Cap mushrooms, so they get an A plus for creativity.

What we learned?

Rain and RVing don’t mix for long periods of time. Once in a while it is fun to hear the rain bouncing down on the aluminum roof and have it sooth you to sleep. But, if you are going to be in it for very long you need a dehumidifier, covers for your fans, and a good therapist to talk you out of the depression.

Oh that’s why all the full time RV peeps stay in in places such as Arizona, Utah, Texas or other drier states until the Pacific Coast spring fully passes. Oh, well, live and learn!

Next Stop: The Beaver State

Less Moola, More Fun

Not sure if you have noticed, but people going out and chucking the matrix life in favor of full time RV living is a thing. There is even a show about it now called Going RV.

What makes living on the road every day in an Airstream the size of our former bedroom appealing? Well, for one thing we have found the freedom we dreamt about while working 70 hour plus weeks in the matrix. Another reason is that our time here is not guaranteed. So, why not live the life we want NOW instead of waiting for one day down the road for traditional retirement.

We are lucky ducks to live in a time when there are plenty of opportunities to make money on the road with just a computer, a semi-decent internet connection (gotta love wifi boosters!), and a chair. This chair can be sitting with a view of giant redwoods, of bison roaming in front of Grand Teton, or in front of waves at the Gulf of Mexico.

What makes the full time RV lifestyle doable is that you aren’t tied to a mortgage and everything the matrix lifestyle requires, so your money goes way further. It doesn’t take much to have an amazing life. You can control expenses by boondocking to camp for almost free and use that money for exploring.

While boondocking isn’t for us, we stretch our budget by challenging ourselves to create the best experiences with the least amount of money. Our time in Point Reyes was a perfect example of making a five star adventure with a small amount of dough.

First off, we were in fancy schmancy Marin County, a food lover’s paradise. There was a specific food tour that piqued our interest, but it was $200 per person. No thank you! However, to our surprise they detailed all of the stops on their website. So, we crafted our own #TeamTary food tour by picking out the places that seemed like our jam.

First Stop: Heidrun Meadery, because sparkling, of course!

Their mead is made with the traditional champagne process, but from different varieties of honey instead of grapes. We tasted mead from honey that came from carrot blossoms to Hawaiian macadamia nut blossoms and everything in between. It was amazing to taste the difference that just the source flower makes. The best thing was the tasting fee was waved if you purchased three bottles, so it was time to make room in the nooks and crannies!

Second Stop: Say cheese!

What follows a bubbly beverage? Why free cheese tasting of course! Did you know there is a California cheese trail?

We had to stop ourselves at two (Cowgirl Creamery and Marin French Cheese) because yes, you can eat too much cheese. The downfall of Airstream living is there is no room for our fat pants!

Third Stop: Hog Island Oyster Farm

Here you can get oysters that came from the sea that day for 50 cents per oyster…way cheaper & fresher than any restaurant.

You will have to wait to get further down this post to see Gary’s how to (or how not to) become a shucker video.

Last Stop: Did someone say gelato?

Our dessert stop was at Palace Market for Double 8.

No, not water buffalo gelato! Water buffalo MILK gelato, big difference!

Wait there’s more! Our Point Reyes stop wasn’t just about food. Point Reyes National Seashore is an amazing place to walk off all of the calories. The lighthouse trip alone is equivalent to going up 30 flights of stairs!

I don’t know why we don’t look winded in these pictures. We definitely had to rest more than once during the trip back up these crazy stairs!

You can also spend time searching for animals not only gray whales from the lighthouse view, but there are also spots on the seashore to look for the Tule elk, elephant seals and the illusive dairy cow.

Best thing we did?

Learned how to shuck an oyster. After watching this video you may question “learned”, but don’t worry, after shucking (and eating) a dozen more we are now shuckmasters!

Best thing we ate?

The chocolate version of the water buffalo milk gelato soft serve. A small cone was $1.69…we would have paid $5, budget be damned! We ate one (almost) every day and practically cried on the last day when they were out!

What we learned?

Life is what you make of it. Period.

Next Stop: California’s northern coast

Hit the Brakes!

We were riding our high from our time in the Utah National Parks, but were starting to feel a little like two year olds that were really overdue for naptime. To get to Utah we had driven straight across the 40 with just overnighters then hit the ground running upon arrival in Moab with no lazy days, just go go go.

So, stopping in California wine country (Paso Robles and Carmel) was a welcome respite. Not to mention we could restock! BTW this is how you do wine storage in an RV…every nook and cranny:

Paso Robles was the first stop back in Cali and it was the first time we stayed in one location for a full week. Plus, it was somewhere we had been several times before so we didn’t have a lot of “newness” to investigate. This turned out to be very interesting…

After a couple of days of being low key a lot of feelings started bubbling up…oh crap! We had been on the road for two months and this was the first time we slowed down. The gravity of what we are doing started to sink in…we were outside the matrix and it felt uncomfortable. The first two months we were like kids running around like school just let out for the summer. We felt great! However, with this downtime we had itchy feelings like what are we supposed to be doing every day if we didn’t have an epic hike to do? Could it be that we were actually whining about being B-O-R-E-D? We never thought we had time for hobbies before this. We were always working or if we took a vacation it was a full steam ahead #teamtary style adventure. It was time to work these feelings out!

So, we used this couple of weeks to learn how to chill. We checked out fun and interesting neighborhoods, drove up and down PCH and just admired the spectacular views.

Learning who rules the roost in the town of Arroyo Grande

Figuring out the fuss about Santa Maria style BBQ in San Luis Obispo

Gary even found himself a hobby and bought a guitar.

Best thing we did?

As we meandered from our Paso campground to our spot in Carmel, we stopped by Hahn Winery for an ATV tour. We were super excited that they had RV parking even though we did have to go three miles down a bumpy dirt road to get there! No, I am not bitter about having to rehang all of our clothes that got jolted off the hangers!

Whatever, bring on the wine!

Best thing we ate?

Our favorite restaurant in Paso Robles is Artisan. We go there every time we visit. This time, after having their brioche toast with a mushroom sauce and a poached egg on top, we decided to make a copycat version at home. We added our own spin on it of course by topping it with bacon! We must confess, below is the picture of the one we ate at the restaurant because ours wasn’t a looker, but was definitely tastier!

What we learned?

Time on the road can catch up with if you aren’t careful. Since you are out there at new places all the time you can run yourself ragged feeling like you need to see and do everything. We know now it is important for us to schedule some downtime at each stop moving forward. Time for hobbies (or for discovering hobbies) and time for relaxing aka PUZZLE TIME! For any of our RV peeps note the yellow felt under the puzzle. It is an awesome puzzle roller upper so our dining table can do double duty as our game table in our tiny home.

Next Stop: Point Reyes National Seashore

Utah ROCKS! and rocks and rocks…

As you know (because you are reading every blog post of course), in the last post we were on the east coast and this post is about Utah. What, What, Whaaat??? Our original plan was to do the western US first. Gary had it all meticulously mapped out. Until we got rerouted to the east coast due to circumstances beyond our control. We initially thought, let’s make the best of it. We can do the eastern US first. We were going to do it anyway in a year. Why drive over 2,000 miles back to the West Coast to do our original route? Sounds reasonable, right? The problem was, it just didn’t feel right. We were just off, a little lost and trying to figure out a route that we wanted to do at that point. We were almost pushing ourselves to just figure this out because it sounded ridiculous to drive all the way back to the west to do the original route. But here’s the thing, we chose this life and to exit the matrix so that we could do the ridiculous and not just what we were supposed to do. So, it isn’t ridiculous to follow our passion, it is mandatory. We realized we are learning how to let go of doing what we are “supposed” to do and do what we want. We still struggle with this, but at least now we are asking ourselves what we want to do and recognizing this is important to live our best life. Apparently we are channeling Oprah right about now.

Well, we are glad we followed our instincts. Utah is up there as one of the most amazing places we have been. It is a playground of national parks and monuments!

So, brace yourself…there are going to be a lot of pictures in this post. As we left our first stop, Moab, we thought “wow, this place was amazing, but how much more interesting are a different set of rocks?” Well, very interesting it turns out. Every time we thought we had seen enough, the next place wowed us with its awesomeness. From arches to hoodoos we continued to be amazed at each new park.

Best thing we did?

With multiple epic stops in Utah, we can’t limit this question to only one thing. We have to tell you our favorite from each stop…

Moab (Arches National Park & Canyonlands National Park)

You would expect the best view for us was in Arches National Park . No, for us the best one was in Canyonlands National Park. But, some of that is probably because of the crazy adventure we had to get there in addition to the beauty. It started when we read in our Lonely Planet National Parks book that a sunrise hike to Mesa Arch is a must do activity. It was about 45 minutes away from us so we got up at 5 am to drive and hike through the dark. We were so excited to see the breathtaking sunrise view through an Arch. The closer we got, the more excited we were. When we arrived at the trailhead parking there were only a few cars in the lot with people just starting the trek to the arch. Score! Looks like we will get a good view! So, we stumble on the mesa arch trail using Gary’s headlamp and my iPhone as our light. We get to what we think is the end of the trail as we barely make out a huge drop off cliff ahead of us. We claim our seat on some rocks and set up the camera. We didn’t know exactly where the arch was, but it was still dark and we figured as the sun came up we would see it out in the canyon. We hear more and more voices and get a little antsy sitting on the cold rocks, so Gary takes a walk around. Well apparently the arch was down below us and all of the good picture perfect spots were taken! We couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the absurdity of us being so careful to get there early that we missed the perfect spot entirely. Here is our view from our perch above…

Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce is known for its hoodoos. While they are amazing as a panoramic view from a distance, our best view was hiking down the Navajo Loop trail to the bottom of the hoodoos and walking among them, gawking up at their prominence. It was like looking up at the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower…ants among giants.

What would have topped this off would have been to get to hike through “Wall Street”, the only slot canyon in Bryce, but it was closed off because it was not passable. At least there is something left to look forward to next time!

Zion National Park

Our final stop in Utah was the great Zion National Park. We were ready for another dark-thirty morning adventure. Gary thought it would be funny to show me some of the scary YouTube videos on the hike called Angels Landing thinking that I would be too afraid to try the hike. Little did he know, I was all in for this one. There are no words for this hike, so I will leave you with the video of our adventure. Click on the link here: Angels Landing Hike

Pretty crazy, right? The one hike we didn’t do that is probably just as challenging, is The Narrows. It wasn’t passable when we were there because the water was too high, but we are definitely going back for this one. Gary tells you a little about it here:

Best thing we ate?

Susan’s pot roast! We were so thankful to get a chance to visit my friend Susan and her family. They took such good care of us during our moochdocking time there. Not only did they have space for us to park our 28′ Airstream in front of their house, but they also had hook ups for electric, water and sewer. Fancy!

We usually take pics of our food, but we were so busy having fun with Susan and her family that we didn’t capture the food, but did get a picture of the amazing chef.

What we learned?

One of the things that was hard for us to figure out at the beginning of this full time adventure is how to find the right camping spots that fit the lifestyle we wanted. It has taken us a while to narrow that down, but Utah is helped us to do just that. We initially thought it was only about having a great view, solitude and being right smack in the middle of nature, but found out we like our creature comforts too! We want to be able to read HuffPost in the morning with our coffee or go out for a nice dinner once in a while. We aren’t doing this for a weekend or a week’s vacation where we need to disconnect to forget about life for a while. We are doing this full time for two years. So, for most of the time (not always) we want internet and a bit of a town and sometimes when you only focus on a great view you lose something else like cell towers. But we don’t want to be in a parking lot either. So, in Utah we had different types of locations and it helped us hone in on what to look for in future camping sites.

Moab: View, middle of nowhere, no connection to the outside world

Another thing we learned is that in National Parks the early bird truly does get the worm. Since we did a couple of early morning hikes, we found that the break of dawn is the time when there are the least amount of people out (many parks get over 3 million visitors per year, mostly during the busy season). Also hiking gets hot! Being out early, plus dressing for weather that is 10 degrees hotter than you expect is key.

Next Stop: Vino!