Packing While Living in our RV

 Our house sold in 4-days, that was over a holiday weekend. Our realtor asked if we knew that it was a holiday and I replied “no, our calendar isn’t around so I had no idea”. It didn’t seem to make a difference and we went into a 30-day escrow.

We moved our RV to our oldest son Nate’s house. He lives on a farm and had room in the rear under a huge tree.

We had lots of loose stuff to pack or not to pack. What could we fit into the RV along with ourselves? And, it wasn’t just us. In 1 month, we’d have 4 grandkids for a grandkids trip, so trying to have space for everyone in addition to stuff was a challenge. We set up 3 tables under the trees and started pulling stuff out of the RV. I had boxes, tape and plenty of bubble wrap. Items either went into a box or into the RV.

Packing was underway

Additionally, we had to take our Ferrari up to Northern California to have the motor put in. This was a 2-day ordeal but worth the effort as we will (hopefully, after 2 years) have our Ferrari running.

Ferrari was leaving Bakersfield one last time

Leaving the Ferrari at the shop

As it turned out, it was a nice time at our son’s. Every morning the parade would start, as we called it. 1^st Jasper would come in the RV and just sit down at the dinette table. He had some quiet time and would just sit. The Emilio would come in to see what we were doing. Sometimes they would eat breakfast and sometimes not.

Usually, Zaya would stop by to say hi and a couple of mornings Bel came with her cup of coffee. I’d stop when the kids came by as I don’t know when that will happen again. How lucky we were!

Bekki would often come by several times during the day. We’d drink coffee or margaritas together, especially when I was particularly frustrated. Our friend Kim came for 1 last taco Tues and we all sat outside for a meal. Nate stopped by when he could but usually, we needed his help with one thing or another.

Jasper had to show his costume for a party

We are glad that we were able to make those memories.

Airing Ourselves Out

 

Newly Freed- Footloose and Fancy free

A friend, who knows who it was by now, said that I needed to blog as the events in our lives are changing.

Well, here I am, sitting in our Jag while Dale drives down Highway 101. We just had a wonderful little getaway and I am enjoying the last of our, wind in the hair, moments.

Looking out over the Pacific

So, to back up a couple of months, we were attempting to get ready to go to Canada for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, we’d had problems with intruders and we knew that the hot summer was fast approaching. Additionally, we’d been talking for years about moving to Canada. We made the decision to sell the house and move on.

We contacted the realtor we’d worked with and she told us what we needed to do to get the house ready to sell. The house needed to be painted throughout the entire interior, new butcher block countertop and a new shower floor.

Nice new paint, new butcherblock countertop

Moving, lots of things were packed away.

It took some time but we got mostly moved out into 2 storage units and our RV. The RV is still heaped with stuff but it will be gone thru eventually.

Moving from a house into a 200sf RV is not easy at all. I don’t think I’d want to be a permanent RV’er as I’ve lived in it while working for weeks on end. Plus, there is no room for my sewing machine or Dale’s model airplanes that he has partially built, or anything else. We had to decide which clothes to pack up, where to store our silver, photos, negatives and on and on.

I am taking my big scanner, DVD’s and CD’s that have photos as this is a good time to transfer those to a newer media. We also have books bought recently that will fill in the time.

For about 3 weeks we spent every day packing and going thru stuff, Dale in the garage and me in the house. Finally, a friend said that we should just stop and go away without the RV. Just go away and “air out”.

We saw that it was going to be really hot for a couple of days so packed up the Jag, put it on the car trailer and hauled it to Atascadero. Funny thing, our good friends happened to see us driving along, chased after us to say hi. 

We then drove up the highway until we reached cool ocean air. We did not bring any food, just a couple of bottles of wine and our credit cards.

A view of the Pacific

One last ride before the big move

We’d really wanted to go to Big Sur and camp but opted for a hotel, then spent a day driving down Hwy 1, past Big Sur for a leisurely lunch at Nepenthe. This was a getaway that we needed.

Lunch with a view

We still worry that we have made a good decision, our house is a beautiful home and repainted, we’d really like it. But it is too big, it is too hot in the summer and expensive to keep cool, the air quality is really bad and sends me into coughing fits, and I feel safer in Canada. But having lived in the house for 25 years it is easy to become complacent and it is tough to make a major change. However, we are sure that we will be fine starting a new life. It’s scary and exciting!