Progress Report - The Turning Around Point

As part of our retirement planning, I created a map to guide us on our first journey. We left on March 15th and knew that we would have to be back in the Monroe, Washington area by Sept. 7 for my crafting retreat. I based the map on my experience with traveling during our working years, and because of this it was way too ambitious. We had been warned to not travel too fast when first going full time or we would get burned out. After the hectic preparation and sale of our residence, re-homing all of our belongings and me finishing up work through a harsh winter, we were more than ready to slow it down.

The green line on the map was our hypothetical first half finishing up in Moab, Utah (our current favorite place to camp) and the return trip is the purple line. The yellow highlight that runs along the coast in Oregon is our actual path as we decided to stay on the coast and slow things down. Slow it down we did, to the full three weeks we are allowed to stay at each Thousand Trails (TT) property. This slow down means we've only made it as far as centerl California, noted by the pink line "San Benito". Next Wednesday we will turn around and head back up to Oregon. We changed our route when we realized that the total eclipse on Aug. 21 is heading across Oregon and we can be staying at one of the TT parks for it. 

The other reason to turn around is that it is just so darn hot! We're talking week long stretches in the hundreds with two days peaking at 110.  That is just too hot and miserable for us and we're not even to southern California yet.

Here's the hillside on the way to Pinnacles National Park.

In the fall we will look at heading down alond the green line into Reno  with the goal of Wintering in the south, staying in the Josua Tree area, then heading to Arizona. Northern Arizona is one of the places we are thinking of buying a property and heading there in the winter makes alot more sense! We need to get on a schedule were we return the Pacific Northwest in the summer.

Have I mentioned how friendly the deer are here in San Benito? They are everywhere, especially in the evening. There are lots of fawns right now, they are so cute. The adult deer are small so the fawns are tiny.