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
