North

Let me start by saying that we ARE super happy to have taken this RV adventure. That said I will tell most of the whole story that it is not all roses and rainbows. =-) The plan for our second leg of our trip was to head north though California. The first stop, which was not exactly north, was San Diego. I had booked a reservation at Silver Strand State Beach on Coronado Island several weeks before we left – two nights in a RV campground right on the cliff’s edge of the ocean. Sounded cool. The drive from Prescott was way longer than we expected and by time we rolled in, the gates were locked with no one to let us in. Bummer, they closed at 7:00pm and it was after 9:00pm. Everyone was tired and probably crying, I can’t even remember now. So we drove back into downtown Coronado and found a side street to park and went to bed. In the morning, we loaded the boys in the stroller, got out Piper’s new scooter and headed out to explore the area. It was a beautiful morning, we had a nice walk along the boardwalk and later met up with our friends Breanne and Kevin to play on the beach and eat lunch.

We decided that we liked parking close to the town instead of at the RV campground anyway. In fact we found a prime spot right next to the beach, there were no signs saying we could not park overnight, so we decided to stay put and not use our reservation after all.

We enjoyed another stroll along the boardwalk, found some gelato and headed back to our ocean view sleeping quarters for some dinner. One of the cool things about the RV world is having a microwave! But the microwave only works if we are plugged in or if we rev up our generator, which is super loud and obnoxious. This was probably our mistake, but we decided that the kids needed some frozen veggies heated up, so we fired up the generator and our already obnoxious view blocker got even more annoying to the big brick houses across the street. It was only for 5 minutes, but the damage was done and around 7:15pm we got a knock on the door from officer friendly who was actually pretty cool about informing us that the city of Coronado has a city ordinance against sleeping in your car. We finished our dinner and got the kids in their PJ’s while we contemplated our next move. Not only could we not go back to the sneaky spot we had slept the night before because they would probably be on the lookout for us, but we also could not go back to our original reservation at the campground because the gates had already closed for the night. We ended up driving south to the next closest town of Imperial Beach. It wasn’t the nicest neighborhood, but no one bothered us, and we woke up with another new town to explore.

This next day was Calvin and Jett’s birthday. Luckily they won’t remember their first birthday because they spent the day in the car as we drove to LA. We were headed to a conference for the next couple of days near the LAX airport and had planned to stay with our friends Chad and Melissa so we could see them while we were in town. We knew they lived by the airport and we wanted to go to a beach before we got there, so we picked Venice beach which was somewhat close to LAX. Venice itself was a really cool place with all the walkways and bridges along the canals giving us a sneak peak at all the amazing architecture and landscaping of these multimillion dollar houses.

We walked around, played on the beach then decided to head over to the Dicky’s house. Bad news was they actually lived near the other airport, so our long day of driving just kept on going. We had some added stress that our battery all of a sudden went dead, so we didn’t have lights or water pressure anymore and we didn’t know why. We finally got to Chad and Melissa’s where we could plug in to charge our battery and even though it was late and already past bedtime, we still wanted to treat the boys to their birthday cupcakes.

We strapped them in their highchairs and let them go to town. Jett loved his cupcake; he was all smiles and gobbled up every bite. Calvin squished his cupcake in his hand, then started crying and threw it on the floor. He eventually warmed up to it and ended up eating it all up too. After this mess a bath was in order and finally we got them all in bed. The next turn of events will hopefully be funny someday, well I guess it is already almost funny now, but only because of Chads reaction to the bonehead move we had by trying to level our camper van in his driveway. Yep, as we were trying to get the van up on our leveling blocks, a little gas, wasn’t doing the job, so a little more, then a little more, then BAM the camper van hopped right over the leveling blocks and we crashed right through his garage door. $#@%&*(+=$ !!! Sorry again Chad and Melissa!

After that quick/expensive visit at the Dicky’s we headed back to the LAX airport hotel where we planned to park for a few days and switch off going to the Byron Katie New Year’s Cleanse. The good news was we were able to plug in and recharge our battery at Chad’s house, the bad news was it died again after about 2 hours of being parked and there was nowhere else to plug in so we had to improvise with no power. This meant no lights, water, heat etc. And the first day it rained almost the entire day, so me and the kids were stuck inside while Dave was in the hotel. Fortunately we had all our new Christmas toys to entertain and actually we all did pretty well. The workshop was really interesting and gave us lots to talk about as we road tripped our way home. The funny thing about our battery was, just as we were packing up to leave, Dave was shoving the stroller in the outside storage bin and all of a sudden the lights came on. Unknowingly he hit a breaker switch which was inside the storage bin. We realized later that when we were in a hurry to leave our illegal parking spot back in Coronado, we must have hit that same switch with the stroller (It was a tight squeeze).

Our journey home was slowly working our way north stopping in San Louis Obispo, Carmel, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. We really enjoyed finding a somewhat level parking spot 2 blocks off of the main downtown strip to sleep for the night, so in the morning we could just get up and walk out the door to explore the new area. We did have to find a RV campground in Carmel because we needed to plug in and recharge the battery. Usually the battery would recharge when the car was driving, like it would in the car engine area, but for some reason ours doesn’t. We will have to figure that one out, because we love camping off grid. As well as RV campgrounds with hook ups are expensive, we followed our GPS directions to one and again it was after office hours so we just pulled in and would pay in the morning. The price was $65!!! Oh well we had to plug in and we used more than our fair share of water as we had to dump our grey and black water and flush out the barrels too. The other thing that was going on this evening was rain, it started raining hard as we left downtown Carmel and by time we got to this campground the top of the skylight above the boys bed had ripped off and exposed their bed to open air. Luckily their tents were mostly off to the side, but the mattress was soaked. Dave had to climb up on roof in the pouring rain to cover the opening with a plastic bag. Luckily the bag held for the rest of the night because it rained and rained all night. Dave’s pillow was not so lucky because there was leak that ran down the wall near his head. Chalk it up to all the little things that went wrong in the camper van!

This is Bubble Gum Alley in San Louis Obisbo and Piper sporting her new scooter.

The next day we headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was super fun. They had a special exhibit of sea dragons that were so beautiful and interesting to look at. The kids loved the play areas and we all loved the jelly fish displays. The kids were exhausted by the time we left there and took a late nap on our drive to Santa Cruz.

The rest of the trip went pretty flawlessly, though we did lose power again on our last night camping. We were near Redding and it was a really cold night and our heater stopped working and so the kids woke up super early, probably freezing. The beautiful thing was we actually got all three kids to snuggle in with us and they all actually fell back asleep for a while. That has never happened before, it was so cute. We decided to drive the rest of the way home from here. It made a really long day in the car, but the kids did great. Jett basically slept the whole way home. Calvin whined a little, but zoned out listening me tell Piper stories and read books. The other key to success was Piper’s Christmas present from Grandpa Richard and Grammy Lynn…an IPod touch! We put a few learning games, and books and Pipers all-time favorite a Dora movie. She loves this thing and so do we! In moderation of course, but this thing helps create a peaceful driving experience…at least for a little while.

We rolled into home around 7:00pm, ate dinner and hoped to get the kids right to bed so we could start unpacking. But they were all wired and excited to be home, so we had to get in a few games of “duck, duck, goose”. Especially the boys couldn’t get enough of the freedom they had to crawl around. We probably set them back a month or so from walking because on this trip it seems like they were always either strapped into a stroller, a car seat, an ergo or a high chair. With the tight quarters in the RV they didn’t get a whole lot of floor time.

So now we are back, getting all settled and really appreciating what a nice, spacious, warm home we live in. Overall this was a great experience, we learned a lot about the camper van and made some wonderful memories along the way. Lots went wrong with the van, but (except the garage door) they were all minor and we were able to roll with the adventure of it all. We are excited about future excursions both short and long in length. We love having everything we could possible need with us and organized in cupboards. It is so convenient and makes camping with 3 kids possible and especially enjoyable.

It's good to be home!