Sacramento, CA - Livin' The Dream

We meet a lot of people on our journey and sometimes get to talking about lifestyle. People ask where we are from and we say - well, we used to be from Iowa but now we’re from our motorhome, wherever it is parked. Many get a twinkle in their eye and wistfully say, ‘Livin’ the Dream.’ And we have to agree. We are truly living our dream. It’s not everyone’s dream but it has been ours for several years and now we are living it.

I have to pinch myself to realize that it all is true: that Gary and I are actually traveling throughout the US in our RV. That we have the time, the money and the health to do what we are doing. We have all of those and we also BOTH have the desire to do what we are doing. We meet other couples who have the first three but not the last: either one or the other doesn’t like to travel, doesn’t want to live in a tiny tin box or maybe they can’t get along in such a small space - there’s no place to send the other for a ‘time out.’ And, that’s why so many RV’s are for sale with so few miles on them: either they don’t have the time, the money, they health or they can’t agree on their retirement. We bought our RV from a couple who only had 10,000 miles on it but the wife’s health gave out. And, this story is repeated with just about every RV on the ‘used lot. But, we are lucky: we truly think that we are living the dream and are loving every minute. We talk with lots of people who have this dream but for some reason or other, have not been able to achieve it. We have and can’t imagine doing anything else at this time in our lives.

We had been snowbirds for 5 years and had thought long and hard about full-timing in our RV. Every spring when we turned our RV back towards Iowa and our home, we had wished that we could keep on with our journey, seeing what lay over the next hill, the next mountain. However, Gary’s father was still alive and we decided to stay in Iowa for our summers while he was living. When he died in January this year we realized that we actually could do this, that we could now full-time. But we had a house that was full of possessions, though we had slowly but surely throughout the last few years gotten rid of many of them. We probably had fewer possessions than many but we still had to find a ‘home’ for them.

Looking back at our 2013 summer, I’d probably say that ‘all the pieces fell into place’ and now here we are, on the road. Easy, right? However, if I close my eyes, I can see the long days we spent in our house getting it ready for sale and getting our possessions out of it. It wasn’t all as easy as ‘falling into place’ but it did move quickly and was easier than I had imagined it would be. By August, all that remained was to deposit the checks for our home and our possessions. Whoo-eee.

We finished up some things we had to do in Iowa (like doctor appointments), said so-long to Jack, my brother, to Cathy and Tom,Gary’s sister and brother-in-law, who would soon be on the road in their new Winnebago View, and our good friends, Shirley and Jerry, who would soon be on the road in their new Winnebago Tour and we were off. (We have a Winnebago Journey - Are we all Iowan’s or what?)

We have seen so many wonderful things and have so many still to see. I realize that we might not see and do everything but we’re sure going to try to see as much as we can. And, full-timing is more fun than I thought it would be. Right now I am writing this in one of the Sacramento libraries, next week we head north to see the redwoods, after that it’s the Oregon coast and Washington, all things we have not seen before but we’re on our way. New roads, new adventures, new campgrounds, count us in.

Paicines, CA - Hiking Again

Today is Friday, our last day here in Paicines and we don’t want to go back to the coast since it’s a good 1 1/4 hr drive over and back so, what to do? I’m sure you know the answer to this question. Why not hike in Pinnacles again? We enjoyed the caves and high peaks trail so much that we decided to do it again - a first. We seldom hike a trail twice in a year, much less twice in a week. But, it was challenging, fun, had great views and had a variety of terrain. Besides, I can get much better pictures than I took the last time we hiked here - I won’t take any pictures with the lens cap on and I’ve got the right settings for the camera so the pictures will be bigger. Even these old dogs can learn new tricks.

We decided to hike clockwise, just as we had on Tuesday with the caves first. Since I didn’t think I would enjoy the caves as much if we did them after the heavy hiking, we decided to do the hike the same way as Tuesday. Same hike, different pictures.

We still had to step from rock to rock in the bottom of the cave.

I looked up at the right moment and saw the sun glinting through a crack in the rocks above.

Here I am in the middle with my headlamp on.

The CCC built some marvelous steps in the deep interior of the cave with switchback. This has to be the only cave with switchback steps in it. Here’s Gary letting some others pass him so I can take a picture of him on the ‘trail.’

After the cave was the hike up the hills to the High Peaks where the CCC had blasted some footholds into the rocks so we could climb over them. At times the trail is definitely single file.

Gary is actually standing on a small bridge that the CCC built here before the trail takes a sharp left and heads down the rock face.

And summiting is always marvelous (from now on, it’s all downhill - wheee. )

And, we enjoyed this hike as much as we had the previous one although, I will admit, it was as gruelling. We especially enjoyed the sections that were more wooded than we are used to in the desert Southwest where we do most of our hiking.

We met a woman who had just retired at the top of the high peaks. She was hiking with her daughter and, as we talked, she peeled an orange. Then she said, ‘let me get rid of these peels’ and she turned aside and began to toss the peels into the rocks. ‘No’, we both said and explained to her that orange peels take 30 years to disintegrate and that she shouldn’t toss anything into the wild: not into forests, not into the oceans, not into the local park. Like your own yard. ‘Here, we’ve been picking up some other orange peels we found on the trail - we’ll take yours too.’ Interestingly, we had picked up lots of orange peels as we had hiked up the trail, tossed there by another careless hiker. And, we put hers in the bag with the rest.

What a dichotomy. Here is a person out enjoying nature and she wants to toss some garbage into it. I suppose the problem is that if adults don’t know enough not to toss trash into nature, how can we ever teach kids?