After a couple of weeks of playing hide and seek with LAPD parking enforcement in San Pedro every 72 hours, we hopped on the saddle and went back to our old stomping grounds for the weekend to do some proper camping with some old friends at Lake Casitas.
In 18 days, we will have packed everything we will need into the Airstream and head east. Although the first 5 nights will be spent in a Vegas hotel room, we are nonetheless leaving.
Back in mid-May, when Luka was just a month old and we were still living in Ventura, we took him on his first Airstream trip as a test to see how he would handle living on the road and also to check out the local KOA Kampground that we have never been to after living there 12 years.
Since we left our old house a little more than 3 weeks ago, we have relocated to the part of Los Angeles that is referred to as South Bay. That is the area between the LAX airport and the Port of LA. Specifically, we are in San Pedro. And if you are a local, you would know that it is pronounced ‘Pee-Dro’ and not ‘Pay-Dro’.
Since June 9th, we have been living in the Airstream on the driveway of our old house. Technically, we are full timing in the Airstream but emotionally, it didn’t quite yet feel the same. We had a lot of work to do to get our stuff packed up and cleaned out and it took all of the time we had to do it. Today, after 4 trips with U-Hauls and 11 days of driveway living, we finally departed our beloved home of 8 years and left the town that has embraced and sheltered us for nearly 12 years. This time for good.
All packed and ready to roll.
It has been a stressful couple of days so far this week. A lot of things have gone as planned but some have hit snags that we fortunately were able to overcome without any major disasters. First of all, we finally were able to close escrow and take possession of our new house.
Last night was our first night in the Airstream as our full time home. Because of some problems with our buyer’s lender, they had to extend their escrow closing day. You’d think we are glad to have a few extra days to move out, but the changes in plans are actually a bit aggravating. We have had our plans in place and this was not going to change them.
People are here at the house today making last minute repairs and fixes for the new owners. In the meantime, I am sitting in my breakfast nook/office trying to work in the middle of a construction site.
The Mish is spending one of her last few days at this house with some new visitors working next to her.
We are now just days away from moving into the Airstream full time and we are no where from being ready. We took 2 truck loads of boxes and miscellaneous stuff to storage but our house still pretty much looks like this:
We decided shortly after we came home from our 2010 trip that there would be another cross country trip sometime soon. When it was going to be, we didn’t really know. What we did know is that we had to tie up a bunch of loose ends and make sure that the next time we head out, we could stay on the road for as long as we wanted to.
This is our view from the bedroom window of the Airstream the morning after we got home on June 8th 2010.
Now that we are a family of 5, traveling in the Airstream is a bit more challenging than before. Our last extended trip was our tour of the southwest in the fall of 2011 when we attended the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Since then, we have installed new solar panels and added Luka to the roster of our road trippers. Both additions worked out surprisingly well in their first outing a couple of weeks ago at our local KOA. We intentionally opted for a dry campsite to see how much the solar panels can handle. Although it does not completely replenish our batteries daily with only 100-watts of maximum output, it reassures us that we will at least put enough juice back in to run the bare necessities.
During our last visit to the shop, we asked the guys at C & G Trailers to install our solar system for us. But rather than buying a complete turn-key solar system, we did some shopping around and put together a basic system of our own.
