Update from Brownsville Texas

It's been a few days since we have had easy Internet access, so I had to put updates on the back burner.

The trip from Junction to Brownsville was fairly stressful. We managed to slip between the storms, but were hit by a 35-40 mph headwind about an hour before Corpus Christi. The headwind reduced our speed to about 50-55 mph and the truck was really working to maintain that speed. Once past Corpus Christi and headed South, the headwind turned into a side wind. That got scary very quick. I started getting scared for our safety and pulled off in Kingsville Texas about 2 hours short of Brownsville. We spent the night in a small RV park listening to the wind pound the trailer. Later in the evening when the wind died down there were military jets taking off and landing (touch and go's?) every few minutes until 10:30 or so at night. They were doing maneuvers just a few hundred feet over head, so we didn't get a heck of a lot of sleep until late. I was really getting pissed off about the jets - they seemed to jet a lot of joy out of going vertical right over the RV park and rattling the windows. We picked a shitty spot to stop, but with the gusty wind we had no real choice...

We got up early the next morning and after securing a spot at an RV park for the next month, headed to Brownsville. The wind was still pretty strong, but not as gusty or scary as the previous day. We saw some air conditioning shrouds on the side of the road. Ripped right off the roof of another RV by the wind. We also had to stop at one point to secure a piece of the underside of the van. The wind had broken off a 2 foot piece of plastic shroud which was grinding on the road and thumping on the bottom of the van. I used a couple of zip ties to hold it together.

Brownsville is a lot bigger than I had imagined. It has about the same population as Eugene Oregon where we started our journey. It's more spread out I think though... The first couple of days were perfect weather. Nice and sunny and a steady wind from the East. The humidity is very high, but the wind off the gulf keeps you cool during the hottest part of the day.

Last night we got hit by 3-4 thunderstorms. One of them early this morning had 45 mph gusts along with spectacular lightning. Not a lot of rain with the storms, just wind and lightning. I was afraid of the high winds... They kept me up very early this morning watching the weather channel. North of us a couple hundred miles there were tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings, but no warnings this far South. It looks like we may have a couple more days of storms and then the weather is supposed to get sunny and breezy again. Until then, we're exploring the area and getting things cleaned up and organized so we don't feel so cramped in the trailer.

A good day

It seems that we left the bad luck behind. The truck and trailer are performing perfectly. We only went a couple hundred miles down the road and now we are within 1 days driving distance from our first goal of Brownsville Texas. We'll probably break up the last section into 2 nights, so the next couple of days should be really nice.

The girls have been doing homework while we're driving so they can spend every minute at the RV parks/campgrounds playing. They seem to be enjoying the trip so far... They are very excited about the possibility of learning how to surf in the Gulf of Mexico.

We managed to slip right between two fairly big storms. At the moment it is beautiful and sunny with only a few light clouds in the distance. The forcast is for more sun and a clear and beautiful evening. It's slightly breezy and a very comfortable 82 degrees outside.

There's a river just outside the RV for the dog to play in, so I've been making trips down to the river so she can swim. It's a pretty nice spot to park. It's been a while since Zoe has been able to play without having to be on a leash.

The girls spent some time at the playground. I saw a bunch of little frogs hopping all over the place and pointed that out to the girls. They immediately went on a frog hunt... About an hour later they called us on the walkie talkie to say that they had not seen any frogs... They finally found a few, but were unable to catch the little dime sized frogs - they are VERY quick. After they gave up I went down to the river and caught them a larger frog so they could check it out.

Back on the road

We're in Ft Stockton Texas this evening. I was a bit tired after the past days excitement, so I decided to cut the day short. It doesn't help our travel time that we keep forgetting to change the clocks when we cross time lines.

It took a little time to install the 2 new tires on the trailer this morning. I could only remove one of them at a time with the single jack we have with us. I also had the spare tire replaced just in case. All together it cost about $300.00 for the 3 new tires. That has cut into our travel money a bit, but we all feel better knowing that all of the trailer tires (including the spare) have all been replaced now.

We had a bit of a problem with the grey water line since the handle for the shutoff valve is broken off completely. I knew that we had some grey water stuck between the valve and cap, so we used a bucket to catch what was in the line before hooking up the hose. It looks like we'll be able to make things work until we have time to make some real repairs. At least we're not leaking fluids or anything at this point. I am a bit depressed about the damage to the trailer, but I keep telling myself that this is not my dream trailer and that it's better for these things to happen to our temporary home than our more permanent one...

The weather has been cooperating nicely. All of the tornado activity we heard about yesterday has been North of us and we've managed to slip between all of the major storms. I think we'll have yet another nice day of travel tomorrow. We had originally planned to make it to our first destination within 2 days, but after the tire incident, we have decided that shorter driving days and longer rest times are in order. That puts us out at least 3 days possibly 4 if anything else comes up.

Blown Tire Update

I tried installing our spare tire. It looks new, but turns out that it is very old and the seal between the tire and rim is no longer good. It will not hold air pressure. The spare is also a smaller tire on a smaller rim, so even if it had held air, it would have been the wrong size. We found a tire shop here in the little town of Fabens Texas. They do not have the tires we need in stock, so we have to spend the night here in the closed down truck stop. I took the blown tire and spare to the tire shop. They will call in the morning when the tires are mounted. Once we have them back here I will remove the other left tire and take it in to be replaced as well. If all goes well, we will be out of here by 9 or so in the morning.

Considering all of the places that the tire could have blown, we were very lucky. I talked with someone that oversees the property we're stuck on and explained our situation. They have no problem with us spending the night, so we can relax on that issue. As for the tires... Well, I am replacing both left tires and the spare with a taller tire that will match the others. The guy from the tire shop said that he could mount a taller tire on the smaller spare rim so that if we had to use the spare in the future it will at least be the correct size. By tomorrow all 4 tires and the spare will have been replaced. I don't imagine that we'll have any more tire trouble this trip.

I did some minor surgery to the trailer to see if I could put things back roughly where they belong... Nope. A big section of the trailer siding is missing and will have to be replaced with new sheeting. Thankfully most of the damage is to the black smooth metal, so I will be able to patch and paint the repairs to match. That will have to wait until we have a place where I can do some serious metal work. I managed to get the fender back in place and used some self drilling sheet metal screws to hold it until I get a chance to fix it more permanently.

It's hard to show the damage to the trailer with pictures. The last picture is of the finished repair job. I hammered and pulled all of the remaining aluminum sheeting back roughly where it belongs. There's quite a large chunk of metal missing and I doubt that I would be able to find it alongside the road if I went looking. The trailer will just have to live with the scar until I am set up somewhere where I can work on it for several days...

So, here we are. The girls are playing the Nintendo and Becky is napping on the couch. There's nothing to do now but relax and get some rest so we can be ready for whatever tomorrow brings. I'm planning to watch a movie, drink some beer and get to bed early...

Blown Tire

We got about 15 miles South of El Paso and Becky called me on the walkie talkie to say that she thought that one of my tires looked like it was going flat. I turned off the cruise control and then felt a slight jerk. I heard a bunch of rattling and hit the nearest off ramp. I could see in the rear view mirror that a section of the RV wheel well was sticking out. I pulled into a big lot (abandoned gas station) to check out the damage.

One of our left trailer tires disintegrated almost entirely and did some pretty major damage to the side of the RV and wheel well. Luckily the grey water valve and connector were not damaged, only the grey water pull vlave was torn off along with the housing and some of the side of the RV. The wheel well is also pretty torn up, but as far as I can tell, no damage to the interrior of the RV or electrical system. The brake on the wheel that went flat doesn't seem to be working either, so it could have done some damage to the electrical on the rear axle... I'll have to do some checking with my test light to find out where the electrical was damaged. It's possible that it's not been working for some time - I can't see any damage to the wires...

We're fairly lucky - we have a motel across the street and there may be a tire shop in town that can help us get back on the road. If not, we're only about 25-30 miles South of El Paso, so we will be able to get full services tomorrow and for tonight we have everything we need to spend the night if necessary...

There's a big storm brewing on the horizon and I can hear thunder in the distance, so we made sure that the trailer was parked in a place where I can work on it and be out of the sun and rain if it starts pouring on us... The bad part of being under the roof - our solar panels are blocked from the sun, so we are running entirely off battery power until we move. We'll see if my 2-3 day calculation was correct or not. We've become spoiled with abundant power the past few weeks.

A long day on the road

We left our friend Alan in Quartzsite and headed farther Southeast today. We had planned to make it to Lordsburg in New Mexico this evening... After a 45 minute delay in Phoenix and another 1 hour 20 minutes in Tucson we decided to call it a day as the sun was setting. We checked in to an RV park in Willcox Arizona for tonight. Total driving today was about 8 hours.

We'll adjust the rest of our stops or try to make up the time tomorrow. For now, it's time to do a little laundry, relax and take care of business... Everyone is tired from the drive.

Checking in

I have not felt much like posting the past few days. It's been pretty hot and uncomfortable, so the days have been spent more or less sitting in front of the cooling fan and trying not to move around too much. Today is cooler and with the cooler temperatures comes a bit more activity, but it is still too hot for my taste. Tomorrow is supposed to be even cooler...

We can go for 4-5 days before we have to dump our waste water tanks and refill with fresh water. Today we had to dump the tanks... It only takes us about 15-20 minutes to secure everything for travel, so it's not really a big deal to move the trailer. Emily has been very interested in the whole supply and waste water systems of the trailer. Despite the nasty smell, she hangs out with me when it is time to deal with the tanks and seems to have a very good understanding of how it all works now. Becky and Emily took care of filling our fresh water tank while I carried our garbage over to the dumpsters. Here in the long term BLM area the dump station and fresh water are free if you have a BLM permit. Alan bought us a 14 day permit when we arrived, so we've had the luxury of staying here for free.

I managed to get our water fixed today. Ever since LA we've had a problem with water coming out at a slow rate and our brand new water pump had been getting louder and louder. I took the pump out of the system and tested it. The pump is fine as I expected. I think the pump supply line from the water tank was clogged. I blew back through the system until there was no resistance and then put the water pump back in the line. Sure enough, lots of water now. I moved the pump to a new location to minimize noise while I was at it, so now we have lots of water and you can hardly hear the pump at all. Much nicer for the kids since their bed is directly over the water pump and the noise had been waking them up at night sometimes.

Alan and I took an afternoon hike up the mountain. The air was a lot clearer because we had a very brief rain (like 15 minutes) that took a lot of the dust out of the air. We could see several mountain ridges off in the distance from the top of Quartzsite mountain. We also went walking down the wash in search of a nice walking stick for me. We found lots of potentially good sticks, but I didn't see one that I really liked.

Becky and I have been checking for our packages on a daily basis. I expect that we will see at least the larger one tomorrow. The smaller one may take a couple of days longer. Once the packages arrive we will decide if we want to move over to the BLM area by Yuma or head Southeast toward our next long term stop in Texas.

Too hot

It's getting very uncomfortable here in Quartzsite. Our little thermometer has been reading 100+ in the afternoon ever since we arrived here. We have to get some supplies shipped to us, so for the next week or so we need to stay put until they arrive.

The solar panels have been keeping us fully charged despite our best efforts to use more than double the electricity that we originally calculated we would need. We've been using both ceiling fans and our evaporative cooler all during the day. It turns out that we're pretty much fully charged by 11:00 in the morning. By the time the heat sets in there's no need to charge the batteries anymore, so we let the fans pull everything that the panels can put out.

We did some shopping today. We picked up a few days groceries, some spray bottles, and some cute little hot pepper lights for our canopy. Tonight we're planning to to a taco feast outside, so we thought that the little pepper lights would add to the festive mood.

I am doing my best to stay inside the trailer in front of the cooling fan. We're taking turns spraying each other down with the spray bottle and making sure that everyone including the dog gets lots of water. Everyone's grumpy and wanting to move on to a place where we can jump in the water if we get too hot. Everyone has been saying that the weather will be getting cooler in the next couple days. I hope that is the case - this heat is pretty miserable - especially if you want to get anything done.

A visit to the past

Alan took us for a visit to some local petroglyphs and some grind basins. It's very hard to imagine life back in the time when these things were created.

Everything is so different now and the thought of someone bothering to leave markers for family and friends or even to stop on a regular basis to make food is very difficult to imagine. Here we are standing in 100+ degree sun and little shade... You can tell that at some point there was abundant water in the area, but it's not hard to see now why these people moved on to greener pastures.

The grind basins were pretty cool. There were several (at least 5) that I could see. I did something that will probably piss someone off - I cleaned out all of the dust and rocks and fed the dog a nice big bowl of water in one of the grind basisns. The small grind basin made a perfect water bowl... I figure that I put the past to work for me now in the present time. No damage done, but I'm sure that someone will give me shit for it.

This afternoon we're trying to stay cool. I got an insert for my evaporative cooler and as I write this I am enjoying the nice cool air blowing on me. For those that don't know what an evaporative cooler is - it's better known as a swamp cooler in most of the US. It evaporates water off of a medium and makes nice cool air (15-20 degrees cooler). It only takes 50 Watts for the fan and water pump. We can run it off of the electricity produced off just one of the 4 panels that we have and it makes the 100 degrees feel more like 75 degrees...

A day in the desert

It's been a full day... It's our first full day in the desert. Things did not go exactly as planned, but then again, we didn't have a lot of plans, so I guess it all went exactly as it was suppsed to go.

Our day started a bit late (for me anyway). I usually am awake at around 4:30-5:00, but this morning I didn't wake up until around 7:00. We made some coffee and spent a couple of hours hanging out with Alan and some new friends. It was a gorgeous morning. Lots of wildlife around - including the elusive bunnies that Alan is always talking about. They're hard as heck to get on camera, but I managed to get one off in the distance. In the lower right corner you can see something dark and bunny-like headed top speed toward the bushes... You'll have to trust me that the blur is actually a bunny. They're quick little buggers.

We're camped out a few hundred feet from the wash. Alan helped us to find a spot relatively close to his camp so we could piggy-back off his internet access (Thank you Alan!). It's quite a trip to be out here in the middle of "nowhere" and have high speed internet access. Better than most of the RV parks that we paid more than I want to admit for.

Our day was pretty mellow compared to most. Alan and I took a bike ride through the desert and did some exploring - we found a new indian site that is not too far from our campsite. We rode into town and had lunch, stopped off at the post office, made a quick trip to the book store and then rode back from the far side of Quartzsite back to home. Not sure how far we rode today, but I'm guessing about 10-12 miles.

In the afternoon Alan and I took on the bike project. I thought that the two of us might be able to figure out the problem(s) with the new back wheel for his bike. We spent a couple of hours shooting the breeze and working on the bike. I believe that we have the problem figured out and resolved at this point. Not perfection, but peace of mind and a working finished product that will resolve the main issue of weak and easy to break spokes...

The temperature was a bit hot today. At the end of our ride the temperature on the digital thermometer under the awning read 102. It feels much cooler because there's no humidity, but it was hot and uncomfortable in the sun none the less.

We spent this evening relaxing and talking about the day, the future and what we all want from life. Despite all of our differences, it still amazes me how similar we all are in our core needs...

Another Disney day

We had to move the trailer first thing in the morning since the RV park we are staying at couldn't keep us in the same spot for 3 nights in a row. They also screwed up and only got us 3 nights instead of 4 as we originally requested. They seem to double book a lot of folks so they can stay packed every night... Because of that, we're going to bug out today and pass on a third day of Disneyland. We pretty much did everything that we wanted to anyway, so there's no real need to go again.

We spent the afternoon at the California Adventures park. We rode a few rides and checked out a few of the exibits. At 8:00 when they closed we headed over to Disneyland again to watch the fireworks... Turns out that they don't do fireworks except Friday and Saturday (and sometimes Sunday) except during the Summer when they do them every night [rolling eyes].

Today we head for Quartzsite to hook up with our friend Alan for a little while. We're so ready to get out of this big city dump...

Disneyland

I'm exhausted...

We spent the majority of the day at the Disneyland park. We started off with the 2 rides I remembered most from my childhood - Pirates of the Carribbean and the Haunted Mansion. We got in fairly early in the morning, so there were no big lines yet. The pirates ride was actually better than I had remembered it. The haunted mansion was OK - only because I play with Halloween decorating and found a lot of the scenes a bit too corny for my taste.

Disneyland is best for the girls. Both Becky and I found it to be a bit too... Well, I don't know... It just seemed too geared toward profit. Everything is about selling you something. All of the major attractions start and end with a store trying to sell you something. The most obvious one was "It's a Small World" where the exit of the ride is through the small world toy shop. All of the other's were surrounded by no less than 3 shops selling something or other related to the rides or photos of you riding the ride...

The cost of everything was through the roof. We had some plain cheese pizza at one point and each slice was nearly $7.00. 3 slices of really bad pizza, a bowl of bland pasta and 2 sodas ran us $34.00. We tried our best to avoid the whole shopping scene, but the girls really wanted some mouse ears, so... another $32.00 for 2 paper hats with plastic ears. I could go on and on... It's all window dressing.

The girls are having a lot of fun. They went on their first real roller coaster. I believe that they are addicted now and looking for bigger and faster coasters.

It got too hot for us today. I think it hit 90 degrees. Around noon, the girls started complaining about their feet - they both had a blister from wearing slip on shoes with no socks. I ended up carrying Emily across the entire park back to main street because it hurt her to walk with the shoes on and I didn't want her walking on the hot pavement. I found bandaids & bought some mickey mouse socks (I won't even mention the price ) while they sat in the shade at one of the restaurants. That seemed to fix their feet.

By 2:00 there were so many people that it was 1-2 hours of waiting in line in the sun to go to any major attraction, so we called it a day...

The girls spent the evening in the pool at the RV park. A pretty good day all in all.

Tomorrow we hit California Adventures...

Made it to Anaheim

We made it. Today we spend the entire day at Disneyland. I will try to get lots of pictures and post a few here. High speed internet costs $3.95 per hour or $7.95 per day where we are staying - rip off! So, I'm using dial up over the modem this morning. Tonight I'll dial out and upload a few photos.

The truck made me nervous yesterday. Coming up the longest hill before LA the transmission started howling. It got better when we decended the other side, but it made me worry a bit none the less since I was already taking it easy on the transmission and keeping it nice and slow on the hills. Before we take off East I want to take a look at the transmission and make sure that everything is OK.

More later...

A day at the aquarium

It's early morning and I can't sleep. It's free calling time for cell phone modem, so I thought that I'd post about yesterday's trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and upload some images...

We left the campground for the aquarium at about 9:00 in the morning. Parking was easy to find and since we were a bit early, we went to a little restaurant and had breakfast.

The aquarium is very impressive. It cost us about $80.00 for all 4 of us to visit ($25.00 for adults and $16.00 for kids). We spent about 3 or 4 hours exploring and playing. There were lots of hands on things for the kids to do.

Everyone's favorite exibit was the jellyfish in the drifter's gallery near the outer bay area. There's just something very interesting about the way that jelly fish move and the way the lighting and music in the area immersed you in their world...

The outer bay had some of the biggest fish I have ever seen. I don't know if the glass makes them appear larger or not, but some of those fish looked twice the size of the people watching them. There were a couple of divers in the tank that appared to be working on something - they looked small in comparison to the size of the fish swimming around them too, so I think that the fish were actually that big...

The girls spent quite a bit of time at the touch pools. They really enjoyed being able to touch the little crabs, starfish, sea slugs and a wide variety of plants. There was a glass tunnel nearby that would have a simulated tide surge splash over it. Lots of kids would scream as the water rushed out and over the glass like a big wave hit or something.

All in all we had a good time. Becky and I are still getting over a cold that the kids brought home from school a few days before we left, so we're a bit low on energy...

Today we have many hours of driving to reach Los Angeles. We're staying flexible, but we'd like to be close by late afternoon so we can get an early start on Disneyland tomorrow. If all goes well, I'll be able to post an update tonight.

Monterey California

We made it to Monterey yesterday afternoon. What a cute town...

Today we'll be spending most of the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We're camped out for 2 days, so we'll leave for LA on Saturday morning sometime.

We traveled through San Francisco on Highway 101, so we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Erika took lots of pictures with the digital camera on our way across. At the far end of the bridge I missed my turn off and ended up down at the wharf. Signs everywhere said no trucks, buses or vans with more than 8 passengers... I did my best to navigate back to 101. We ended up going the wrong direction and because of all of the detours and closed exits, I almost ended up having to go over the bridge twice. The very last exit before the bridge was open, but then we had to go under the bridge with a clearance of only 11 feet 7 inches. We roughly measured our rig before we left at 11 feet 5 inches... I was VERY nervous about the height restriction, but backing up and turning around would have been just about impossible. With several tourist cameras and camcorders pointed squarely at our rig, we crept under the bridge. Apparently we are under 11 feet 7 inches, because nothing happened. Our radio antenna scraped a bit on the far side, but that sticks up a foot or so more than everything else and is designed to bend over if hit, so we came out unscathed.

The rest of the drive down to Monterey was uneventful. Highway 17 was pretty steep and made me worry about the truck a bit, but it pulled us up, over and back down the other side without any difficulty.

We're staying at a great campground on one of the hills in Monterey. The road here was steep, winding and at times 1 lane, but it was worth it. The fees are only $20.00 per night and there's hot running water, and RV dump station and a great big park for the kids to play in.

Everyone is doing fairly well and (despite a cold) we're still having a lot of fun. The girls were a bit dissappointed that we arrived in Monterey so late in the afternoon yesterday. They had thought that we were going to visit the aquarium right away, but we decided that we'd just spend another night and take the whole day to explore the aquarium.

A long day

We started off this morning with some breakfast with both Becky & my sisters. There was some good conversation and a creamer incident that made everyone laugh quite a bit.

We hit the road around 10:00 and headed South. It was pretty much a solid driving day. I decided that we were not going to try for Monterey today, so we found a likely stopping point just short of San Francisco. Everything about the drive was great up until we hit the outskirts of Santa Rosa. Then it was 5-10 MPH for many miles... We hit the edge of Santa Rosa at 3:30 and it took us until 4:45 to travel 15 miles to Petaluma where we decided to spend the night and avoid the rest of the traffic.

I don't know how people can live with traffic that bad. It seems so silly to have to sit in traffic day in and day out just to live in a bigger town... I have so many issues with big cities and traffic is only one of them.

We tried calling our relatives in Portola Valley nearby. I thought that we could pop in and say hello on our way through, so I left a message on their answering machine. We'll see if they get the message before we're already South of here.

Despite the traffic, we found a place to stay that had a huge playground, so the kids had a chance to climb and run around after a somewhat long day of driving. I am relaxing by myself in the trailer with the dog while Becky is hanging out with the kids at the playground.

So far our only minor problem has been that we lost a marker light somewhere between Eureka and Santa Rosa. It fell off at some point, so I will have to find a replacement somewhere during our journey. Not a big deal at all.

Tomorrow we head through San Francisco and down the coast to Monterey where we hope to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If all goes well, we'll be there around noon and spend the entire afternoon enjoying the sights and sounds...

A visit with family

Yesterday we left Crecent City at around noon. We decided to do our laundry while we had the opportunity, so we spent the morning taking care of laundry and cleaning up the trailer. We took the scenic route around the pass and were treated to some very spectacular views and wildlife (including a family of deer that we managed to get a picture of).
We also stopped off at the beach for about 20 minutes or so to let everyone stretch and play in the sand. Zoe (our dog) wore herself out carrying large pieces of driftwood around the beach.

The truck is still running great and we've had no surprises. It's hard to believe sometimes that everything that we own is rolling along behind me. There are times when I can't even tell that the trailer is connected to the truck. I am glad that we chose a truck that was overkill for the weight of the trailer.

We had a good visit with my parents last night. We visited them up at their home on Kneeland and all went out to dinner at a fancy Mexican Restaurant. As always it was beautiful on the mountain. We all received some going away/house warming presents that will come in very handy on our adventure.

This morning we're off to breakfast with Becky's sister so we can meet and say goodbye before we head south. We might also be seeing my sister there too if we can arrange it this morning.

It started raining last night here at the coast. I was hoping to be far enough South to bypass the storm, but it looks like we'll be spending the majority of today's travel on wet roads. Not too big of a deal, we will just take it slower than normal. It looks like once we get a few more hours south of here we'll be back in the sunshine.

I've got to get ready for breakfast. Hopefully I'll be able to post more later...

First Day Away

It's our first evening on the road. We had planned to stay at a casino in North Bend Oregon, but we got there around noon and everything was going so smoothly that we decided to keep going. Our next goal was the Wal-Mart in Crescent City California, but when we got there we saw signs all over the place that said "No overnight camping". So, we back tracked a few miles and parked our rig at the local KOA. A bit expensive if you ask me, but we've got full hookups and high speed internet access, so I guess that is the price you pay for "roughing it"...

I am impressed with the truck. Plenty of power and nice and smooth. No surprises. We were treated to some pretty fantastic weather and views of the ocean. I prefer the winding road of highway 101 along the ocean to the straight and speedy interstate 5.

Tomorrow, we head into the Arcata/Eureka area to meet with my parents before we head further south. It's only a couple hours drive from here, so we'll take it slow and maybe spend an hour or so on the beach somewhere to let the girls explore and the dog run around.

All is well tonight. Some wine, beer and early bedtime will make this evening a relaxing one.

Today is moving day

It's been a whirlwind of cleaning, packing, arranging and preparing. We're finally ready to go. Yesterday the last of the big stuff made it's way into the back of someone Else's truck and drove off. We're entirely mobile now. Everything that we own fits into the truck, trailer or minivan. We had a mini celebration last night with our friends and neighbors across the street. It was nice to stop and visit for a few hours.

I have one last issue to deal with today before we can head toward the coast and south... Yesterday I was going through my checklist and found a problem. One of the tires on the trailer is not a trailer tire - it's a car tire that's only rated for something like 750KG. It looks flat, but in fact is overinflated. The rest of the tires are rated to carry several thousand KG and will be fine. The car tire needs to be swapped out before we go any distance. This morning I'll be calling around to see who has one and if they can replace the cheap tire with something that is rated to carry it's portion of the load safely.

That's the big news for today. We're ready and able to hit the road. Internet access may be an issue, so we'll see how often I get a chance to post. We will be heading to the coast and then South. This first day will be a fairly short travel day (only a few hours) to warm us up for the longer days and make sure that we have time to deal with any problems that might come up. I'll keep posting here with updates as I have time.