Wingin’ It

If you know us at all, then you know we are planners…HUGE planners.  Not weekly meal plan or synched iPhone calendar type planners. I am talking spreadsheet loving, whiteboard obsessed master planners.  Our plans even have sub plans and each new plan has a name (sometimes even theme music).  For us, this is a perfect example of something that is a good trait, but became almost an obsession.  It was something we knew we wanted to tone down as we embarked on our journey.  Little did we know we were going to get a quick nudge from the universe to learn how to do this…

We (Gary) had it all mapped out.  Months were spent zooming in and out on Google maps trying to tailor the perfect route to stay out of bad weather and stop at all of the destinations that we have always wanted to check out as well as the places where we may want to settle down.  Since we had two years, of course we would split the country in two and knock out the west first (since we lived there), then head to Florida for the winter before making the east our second year route.  A perfectly logical and efficient plan.

We were on track at Joshua Tree to head to southern Utah and then came a detour…a family matter had us on a beeline for the east coast.  So, the master planners had to wing it!  After an overnighter in a Walmart parking lot (not our finest night of sleep, but it worked) we ended up in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Best thing we did?

Sledding down the dunes at White Sands National Monument! This experience is one of the stand out things we have done on our travels so far.  So simple and childlike, but so much fun!  We promise you will not be able to watch our video without laughing along with us.

Video link: Sledding White Sands National Monument your typical sand you would find at the beach. They are made up of gypsum crystals and it feels velvety soft and cool your feet.

Park Pro Tip: (Yes, the “pro” designation is being used a bit early in our journey).  We checked with our campground and borrowed sleds so we didn’t have to buy them at the park store. Plus we got into the park for free with our America the Beautiful pass.  Fun and free…SCORE!

Best thing we ate?

When we first got to Las Cruces we were perusing the local magazines with restaurants and things to do.  We happened to see an article on the best places to get elote in town.  If you haven’t ever had elote it is basically grilled corn on the cob, maybe cut and served in a bowl with chili powder, salt, butter, and cheese as toppings (YUM, right!). Seeing the pictures in this magazine with the title “The Best Elote in New Mexico” spurred the hunt for us.  We thought we would do our own tasting to see who was the best.  Well it was a bust to say the least!  We trekked from one location to another to find each one was either closed or had changed to different restaurants altogether (including one very sketch taco place).  We had gotten ourselves so geared up for this that we decided to change our mission to making a great southwestern dinner with an elote or an elote-ish dish at home in the airstream.

Mission accomplished!

What we learned?

We started out way too early in the year for anywhere other than SoCal or Florida.  If you are from one of those places it is easy to forget everywhere else is cold!  Most of the fun things haven’t started yet because:

  1. It is still cold
  2. Tourist season hasn’t started
  3. Everyone else is working, silly

Even though this area has 360 days of sunshine (awesome) the cold is a bit off putting.  So, next year we will make a plan to stay south with our flip flops on a bit longer!

Next Stop: The Lone Star State

Glampers Beware

It is amazing to me that living in California for nearly 20 years we had never been to Joshua Tree.  This made it the obvious first national park stop on our way out of SoCal.  The added benefit was that it was only a few hours away from San Clemente, so we could get a few miles under our belt pulling the fully loaded airstream without taking on a whole day of driving.  As Martha would say “this is a good thing”.

We had only done one practice trip of any significant distance prior to going all in on this 24/7 journey.  I know that sounds a bit crazy, but that trip was smooth as silk.  Our towing set up was perfect and everything rode great! The optimists that we are high fived ourselves in our minds and thought of course we nailed it and we can do this!  During the journey to Joshua Tree we quickly learned that there is a difference between doing a weekend vacation in an RV versus towing everything you own in one.  There are many different adjustments to make to get it “just right” and you can’t do that going 65 on the highway.  So, we stopped more times to make adjustments than people traveling with kids stop for bathroom breaks.  Still a majority of the time Gary was white knuckling it behind the wheel!

I don’t know if we were crazy or brave (probably both), but we were also going to take our first crack at “dry camping”.  That means no hookups at all.  No electricity. No water. No sewer. Let me make this clear WE ARE NOT CAMPERS.  We are people who love to travel and being able to bring our home (and our creature comforts) with us.  I guess that makes us glampers, but you have to admit we are fully committed glampers!

We wanted to take advantage of amazing park scenery and stay inside Joshua Tree National Park.  That meant we had to bring in our own water with us and leave if we filled our tanks and had to empty.  We also would get to test out our shiny new generator.  We weren’t exactly roughing it 🙂

Little did we know that the Joshua Tree campgrounds get packed on the weekends.  There are two campgrounds in the park that take reservations, but the rest are first come first serve.  Since we were too late to get reservations we decided to take a shot on the first come first serve spots.  We quickly learned for those spots you either get super lucky or come in on a Monday/Tuesday instead of Thursday/Friday to get a spot ahead of the weekend campers.  After grilling the Park Rangers and waiting it out a bit like stalkers at the ranger office we ended up in the super lucky category and got a great spot in Indian Cove Campground.

Once we got settled we realized it was the first time we felt like we were experiencing exactly what we envisioned for our journey: national parks, amazing scenery, and being right smack in the middle of nature outside the matrix.

  

Best thing we did? 

Hiking of course!  We did a few short hikes on our own and saw the obligatory Skull Rock and Arch Rock (a teaser before heading to Arches National Park).

  

But, the best hike was spending time with friends Ziv & Jackie when they came to visit us from Pasadena for the day.  We hiked to Barker Dam…it was a short hike with a beautiful oasis at the end to reward us.

The best part though was how Jackie & I can still be as silly as five year olds.  We wanted to take a fun pic of us jumping above the giant boulders, which in hindsight required a coordination we did not possess.  At least we made ourselves laugh with our gagillion attempts to get the perfect posed jump.

        

Thankfully our hubbies have patience for us and Gary was able to capture at least one perfect pic:

Best thing we ate?

This is easy…we are persimmon lovers and have even planted our own tree (when we had a house that wasn’t on wheels of course).  While checking out the local farmers market in town with our friends before lunch, we got to try wonderful artisan bars made by Greyback Granola with ingredients sourced from local farms.  The Persimmon Pecan Raisin was redonkulous! We bought a quite a few of them to keep us going during our airstream adventures.  But, I have to say the Apple Lemon Clove was surprisingly good too.

What we learned?

Visiting National Parks is expensive!  Investment in the America the Beautiful annual pass is 100% worth it.   It is $25 -$30 to get in to most national parks and the pass is only $80 and is good for all national parks.  Best money we spent so far!

Another important learning was those old school paper manuals are important when you don’t have Google at your fingertips!

Since we had no electricity at our campground, our fridge should have been running on propane.  Well, apparently that is only if the connection is working!  Day one we were too busy/exhausted to notice, but the morning of day two it was obvious all of the food we just bought was getting warm.  Sure enough our fridge was not working.  This was something we should have thought to test on our practice run…no wonder it went so smoothly!  After multiple trips into town to get wifi and YouTube potential fixes, we finally got our fridge up and running.  Too bad it was two days too late!

The last thing we learned on this stop was to be aware of the generator use windows and use them every time you can!  Saving water was easy for us, but we didn’t realize how quickly we could use up our battery power.  One night we were in the dark with our iPhone flashlights trying to get ready for bed.  Thank goodness we had those charged otherwise we would have been like cave people trying to see with actual fire!

Next Stop:  Detour…East Coast bound

Taking the Red Pill…

Our adventure begins in San Clemente.  Not far from “home” in miles, but light-years away in lifestyle.  Our goal is to exit the matrix – take the red pill with gusto and never look back.

This idea started last year when we decided we needed to do something extraordinary while also making our day to day life simple – we first thought about moving to Italy and restoring a house (love) and we still may do this later.  However, the more we thought about it, we hadn’t even really seen the country we live in yet.  Also, at heart we wanted to find a place where we could eventually settle down (that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg like so cal!), enjoy things we have always dreamed of doing when we had more time like gardening, woodworking, etc. and have a base to travel the world.

Gary, the researcher that he is, came across YouTube videos, blogs and all sorts of information on people in RVs traveling the country and living full time. Some favs are The More We Explore, Mortons On The Move, and Gone With The Wynns  We didn’t even know this was a thing, but it checked so many boxes for us…

√ adventure

√ travel

√ eas(ier) than figuring out the visa situation for traveling out of country

√ a way to figure out where we wanted to settle down (eventually)

For some reason this living full time in an RV didn’t sound crazy to us…it sounded amazing.  The lifestyle seemed to fit us…we don’t have a lot of material things (we tend to buy houses vs household stuff).  Also, since we have worked together from a home office over the last five or so years we knew we could be together for a crazy amount of hours and not drive each other (too) crazy.  It was a quick decision because it just felt right.

So, we spent a few months prepping:  finding an airstream and truck to pull it with as well as paring down everything we had and moving into storage what we wanted to keep.  We (mostly Gary) worked on planning the route we were going to start out taking (West Coast first, then East Coast) and come February 6th of this year we kicked off our journey.

First Stop: San Clemente State Beach, California

This stop was more strategic than anything else.  We needed to be close enough to load everything into the airstream and finish up anything else we needed to do in the OC.  The first feeling we had was relief…finally after months of planning and what felt like we were waiting for so long, we were finally out of our boring apartment and living in the airstream for real!  This initial week was very exciting because we actually did it, but it was also still stressful at times as we were running around trying to get everything done before leaving this place forever (or at least until we come back to move our storage stuff to our forever home).

Our intent on this adventure is to learn and grow through our experiences.  We will use a few questions at each stop to take a breath and reflect so we can document our travels to be able to look back and remember what we did and how we felt.

Best thing we did?

Saying goodbye to friends.  We spent time having dinner and catching up with friends before we left.  During our time in Southern California we learned and grew so much and we appreciate the friends we met along the way.  Even though we were saying our goodbyes knowing that we wouldn’t see them anytime soon, we know we are lucky to have technology to keep connected along the way.

Best thing we ate?

This is easy – our first night full time living in the airstream we of course had to have a celebratory toast with something fizzy.  Queue the Prosecco and charcuterie.  Somehow it tasted better in our 200 sq ft space than in a fancy restaurant.  Plus we had an ocean view from our spot! We hope to bring out our inner foodies as we go through different towns and get a chance to try local specialties.

What we learned?

First of all, we learned we were still in the matrix.  Even though we were physically living in the airstream, we were still packing in every minute of every day driving in traffic, doing errands, and basically stuffing a week’s worth of tasks into every day.  Slowing down will be a process and we have to recognize that and set the intention to do so.

Some more practical tidbits we learned:

  • While rain is soothing to sleep to, it creates wet sand and mud which tracks everywhere in this small space.  A good doormat and swiffer wipes will be key!
  • We thought we were making great decisions about paring down and what we were taking…we tried to utilize space the best we could with collapsible bowls and spices in magnetic jars, but how did we end up with a 5 lb bag of rice and an espresso machine that takes up the entire kitchen counter??? We were able to let go of the rice (otherwise I was going to have to use it as a pillow), but the espresso machine stayed.  We will either make new friends with it by offering coffee shop quality espresso in the remote national parks or make enemies by frothing milk at 6 am and waking everyone up!

Next Stop: Joshua Tree