we are home!!

After 333 days on the road, 9 provinces, 22 states, 30,000 KM's...we are home!!

We managed to live fairly peacefully in our 189 sq ft motorhome for 11 months which is a huge accomplishment in my opinion!  Life will slowly start to go back to normal...we move back into our house on June 1st and will be able to spread out a bit...moving into 3400 sq ft for just the 3 of us seems a little extravagant but hey, we will all get our own bathroom and play rooms!

We are staying in mom and Ken's driveway for the month of May, Michael is slowly migrating into the house to sleep at night etc, but Terry and I are determined to get our full year in in RV!

I will still be updating the blog on a regular basis with some stats and facts from the trip...stay tuned and thanks for watching!

Heading Home!!

We departed Astoria, Oregon yesterday morning in the pouring rain...it had rained and rained on our parade for 3 days in a row and our plans to take our time in Seattle were not panning out...We almost made it to Seattle and alas...it was still raining...

Since we were at the tail end of our journey and we were quickly running out of money and going into debt (which is not what we had planned on doing) we made the decision to NOT go to Vancouver Island for the month of May...we are heading home to Terrace....we should be arriving home this weekend!

We have mixed emotions about going home earlier than our 1 year but we did have 11 excellent months!

Astoria, Oregon

Astoria, Oregon

Seattle, Washington

getting closer to Canada!!

yay!

Canadian Customs

Oh Canada!

great to see Grandma in Langley!

The Redwood Highway

After 3 grueling days on Hwy 1 we finally joined up again to Hwy 101, The Redwood Highway.  We drove down the Avenue of Giants and stopped for a walk in the enormous old growth Redwood forest...wow..these trees are huge!

We spent the night in Eureka and met Joel's brother-in-law, Solomon, I guess he is my cousin-in-law?

After a late start we drove through the Redwood National Park.  Terry and I drove south through here on our Harley trip on our honeymoon in 1997, it looked different heading north this time!

The Redwood trees are absolutely massive, we thought that we had huge trees in the northwest with the Sitka spruce but the Redwood tree is the tallest living thing on earth!  The average height is 100-250 ft with the tallest one ever recorded was 379 ft tall!

We stopped at a few touristy places for some photo ops, Michael got to see a 35 ft tall Paul Bunyon and Babe his blue ox!

Pacific Coast Highway, California

We have followed Highway 101 and then Highway 1 from Carpenteria, just north of LA up past San Francisco along the coast.  Highway 101 was a freeway most of the way and then once we turned off onto Highway 1 it also had parts that were designated a freeway.  It was great to see parts of San Francisco again, we were here 4 years ago and recognized a few things.  Michael and I walked out onto the Golden Gate bridge but it was so foggy out we couldn't see much...

The best part of Highway 1 was after we crossed the Golden Gate bridge, through Sausalito, then up a few hairpin corners to Muir Beach and winding our way along the coast...wow....we are now camped in a private RV site in the woods right on the San Andreas Fault..yikes!  Who would have thought that our little 23 ft motorhome would be having such an adventure!

The weather is foggy and cool, we are not acclimatized yet for out normal weather after spending so much time in the desert.  (My sinuses are actually starting to feel better, I had hoped that the dry desert air would have solved my sinus problems but all the dry air actually made them worse...ahh...feel the moisture..I can breathe again).


California a very expensive state to be in compared the others that we have traveled through.  Fuel is up to $4.50 ga and camping has been $35 for a cheap place and $52 for a so-so place per night! 

we finally made it to the Pacific again!

Carpenteria, California

San Francisco

San Francisco

fog obscuring most of the Golden Gate bridge

the Golden Gate bridge

Hwy 1

steep cliffs on Hwy 1

PCH Hwy 1

Apple Valley, California

We spent 2 days and 2 nights at my cousin Joel's place in the Mojave Desert.  Joel, his wife Angel and their 3 children, Judah, Ethni and Silas have lived there for 5 years.  Angel is from California and grew up not far from where they live today, Joel is a BC transplant and now an American citizen.  The 2 older children were very happy to meet Michael, their big cousin!

Joel took Terry, Mike and I out to the desert to go target shooting.  Mike and I have never fired any guns before so it was a big eye opener for us!  Mike was pretty impressed, Joel let him shoot a .45 automatic handgun; a 9 mm automatic and a Smith and Wesson assault rifle.  Americans sure love their guns!

We had a BBQ on the 2nd night and met some of Angels family.  Joel built a HUGE picnic table to seat all of us, the dimensions were 12 ft by 5 ft, maybe we will have to build one for ourselves too!

Mike all ready for shooting

Terry and the assault rifle

Mike with the 9 mm

Joel showing Mike how to hold the rifle

watch out terrorists!

Ethni

Judah

Silas

Angel, Terry and Joel and the huge picnic table!

cousins!