OC For The Holidays - Huntington Beach, CA
Huntington Beach, CA
Where I stayed
Adam's Parents House
Ok guys, the Tumbler blog site we started with so easily let us accidentally delete our first post and we quickly realized that it just wasn't the site for us. But just in case you weren't one of the lucky few who were able to read it, here's your notice that we are are now Californians!
We moved from Oklahoma due to the Supreme Court ruling in June 2013 which gave us full marriage rights both state & federal if we would move to a state that recognizes our Iowa marriage and California was that state for us. So back to the OC we went and are actually still in Huntington Beach at the moment. We're officially all moved out of our townhouse that we've been in for the last 6 months and now are staying at Adam's parents house for the holidays, well we are calling it the holidays since we weren't able to make it back to Oklahoma for them so we're making the best of it. We're enjoying our time, but our fast approaching unofficial hit the road full time date is coming full speed and is currently set for January 21st. So soon, yikes! Yup, if you hadn't already read in that long long lost blog post we are taking our lives into our own hands and gonna live it to its fullest! We are headed out on the road with a goal to see every beautiful place that God has created, well within driving distance anyways. HA HA!
Last month we sold everything in our 2 bed townhouse at the beach here in Huntington, bought a 2003 GMC Yukon who we named Fay (due to her faded paint on one side which we may or may not one day have repainted) & a 2001 Wanderer 25.5 ft Travel Trailer who we named Dorene and we along with our Pit Bull Lola are hitting the road full time! We are so excited we can hardly stand it. And although we are experienced tent campers from our AWESOME Blue River trips to Tishomingo, OK a couple times each year with all of our closest OK friends, we really have no knowledge of "RVing" ESPECIALLY NOT FULL TIME! So I'm sure we'll have some interesting stories to tell.
There's so much to learn from exterior anti-leak maintenance, to solar power which you gotta learn from scratch if you ain't had no learnings on it, to OH WAIT I gotta dump my own poo? Ummm can we rethink this... Lol, just kidding we have the hoses and attachments and have watched some YouTube videos and feel confident. Well Adam does at least, Chad is choosing to stay away from that job. But what Chad is unaware of is that Adam is gonna make Chad clean the roof at our first stop. It's gotta be done by hand and being skinny has it's downfalls in this area as bigger guys create sky lights in the roof and we already have two so we're good in that dept. Oh well, we'll both of lots of individual jobs that we're gonna have to learn to love. It's just part of the adventure!
But reflecting on the last month although at times felt like we were pulling an unhitched trailer on a major highway, overall we had a good month. We listened to Christmas music every chance we got while packing, shredding, EXTREME downsizing and preparing for the garage sale. We even had the tree up until the very end to remind us what the season was or since we're celebrating now IS really about, in fact it was one of the last items to go and was still lit until it had to be moved with what few things Adam's folks have graciously allowed us to keep at their house here in HB. Heirlooms, Keepsakes, and what nots as Chad's grandma would have called them. We don't want ya to think we didn't make any time for fun in December. We had a couple get togethers with our friends here including a movie/game night with our close friends Michelle & Romy. We even took a trip to DisneyLand with Michelle courtesy of free tickets provided by her work for volunteering during the Disney Half Marathon back in July when we filled and handed out cups of water to the passing marathon runners. That was an experience we won't forget and a fun one! Plus it got us free tickets to Disney and who can beat that especially since they are almost a hundred a head.
We also got kidnapped by Michelle one night to drive around and look at Christmas lights. It was weird with the windows down in 70 degree weather looking at palm trees all decorated and fake snow on people lawns, but it was a blast and am so glad we got to experience that in for our first Christmas here. It was a treat and much needed while preparing for our future full time Boondocking lifestyle. And for any of you wondering what that term "Boondocking" means, it is when you dry or disperse camp on public land, in federal parks or wherever aloud out on your own in most cases in "the boonies" which is where the term came from or so we've read. It means that you are out on your own on open public land without ANY amenities in most cases and possibly in VERY remote places in the middle of nowhere. So no water, sewer, cable, wifi, and in a lot of cases no cell signal. But after hours of learning how to create our own electrical power plant with solar, Adam thinks he's got it down so we're gonna give it a go and if all goes well we should be able to power our 32" LED TV, DVD Player, MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone, and all our other gadgets including our Wii & PS2. Well Maybe not all at the same time, but you get the point. That coupled with our good ole camping knowledge and some propane to make things a warmer and we are gonna try to live as closely to our lives now as possible just in a smaller space that we can take and place anywhere to make our view whatever we want it to be at the moment.
We plan on looking into selling things at flea markets, on Etsy.com, eBay, etc. Whatever makes us enough to get down the road to our next destination, but are going to give growing our own traveling garden a go and will be posting about that later as we start that fun but rewarding chore. We are not completely crazy and know we'll have to supplement cause we can only carry so many plants with us as they add a lot of weight that we don't want to drag all over the country. We'll figure it out along the way. But if you would like to make a donation to our travels you can click on the Support My Travels link on this page and even a few bucks gets us some food, gas, or even laundry money to keep going although we are going to see how washing our own clothes by hand goes to save on expenses. AGAIN, WE'LL SEE!
There are a few things we know FOR SURE and that is this: Me and Chad love each other and don't want to spend 8 hours or more away from each other every day working our lives away to afford things we only get to enjoy for a couple hours each day only to have to move them around from place to place and dust around them each week. These "things" aren't worth it to us, WE ARE and we realize that these "things" will not be going with us in the end. Every day is a gift, that's why it's called the present and we are gonna live every second God has given us with no regrets and we're gonna do it together because loving others is what God wanted us all to do whether it's your spouse, relative, friend, or a stranger on the street that you've never met before. We actively choose loving others, being happy, and living life to the ABSOLUTE best of your ability during the time we've got cause once it's gone it's kinda a forever thing. So here we go, show us what you've got to offer Lord, we're at your mercy!
We look forward to our very first stop with our entire rig, but haven't made ANY definitive decisions yet on where it will be yet so stay tuned! We are going to stick with this site as it's a much better platform for what we were wanting and that's just to let our family and friends know where we're at and what we're up to so we don't have to call each and every one of you every time we setup camp to let you know we made it safe and sound. That would take HOURS if not days and we don't need anything cutting into our margarita time. LOL!
Talk to you all very soon! HAPPY NEW YEAR, we hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and brought in 2014 with a positive outlook. Thanks for checking in on us, we love you all!
-Chad, Adam, & Lola Thomas