Back in the Pacific Northwest

We spent a nice day Tuesday driving up the Oregon Coast, then overnighted at Lincoln City and this morning drove up through Portland. It's a lovely time to drive through the countryside with all the fruit trees in bloom and daffodils and spring flowers scattered about. It's nice to be back in familiar landscapes but we are finding it very cold. It seems that Spring is very late this year and we even heard a forecast today for snow at higher elevations in Washington State.

We're looking forward to seeing Jamie this weekend if he can find a window of time between studying for his final exams. Then it's over to Victoria and a return to our normal life. I expect that we'll have a couple of weeks of confusion as we re-enter but we are looking forward to being back. Our house and our garden will need some attention, not to mention the paperwork and bills to sort out. After three months on the road we're eager to dive back into our life. The dogs too will be glad to get out of the “rolling kennel” and spend more time in the outdoors.

We undertook this trip in the spirit of exploration, not just of Mexico but also to look at possible ways of spending the winter now that we are semi-retired. Harry's idea was to find a way to get “two summers” a year, and we certainly fulfilled that goal. However, we've found out that we don't really want to spend one of them lined up in RV parks, no matter how lovely the weather. We found that RV parks have a lot of rules and a lot of established cliques. Also, there's a real lack of privacy in these places, where you can hear conversations from both sides, and the close quarters created difficulties for us in exercising the dogs.

We were surprised to find how many people in the RV parks actually live there year around. We met some people who had been “homeless” for a couple of years or more. Some of them travel around and stay for a while in different parts of the country, and then move on I guess. It makes sense if you enjoy the RV lifestyle and it's certainly cheaper than buying a house.

Our goal was more to get away in the winter though, and we have an idea for next year that doesn't include Mohita. We're going to look into an apartment rental somewhere in Mexico for a couple of months and drive down in our van. If we go to Mazatlan, it's only six days drive from Victoria and with the gas savings alone we can pay for motels on the way. But that will be for next year and perhaps another blog. As for this one, it's coming to an end. Unless there are more adventures or mechanical failures to report, you can assume that we'll be back in Victoria this weekend. Thanks for sharing our journey along the way.