If you’re new to the west coast, like us, you have no idea what an atmospheric river is…more charmingly called a Pineapple Express. And yes, we felt like we were on a train called the Pineapple Express barreling down the tracks as our camper noisily rocked and rolled in nearly 70 mph winds for over five hours! Twenty-seven times the water carried by the Mississippi River was dumped on a portion of California in just a couple of days. The southern CA region is currently enduring a catastrophe as a result of all that water including deaths from falling trees. We are in northern CA where most of our experience involved high winds along with a lot of rain, but not the amount of rain they saw in southern CA. Power outages, downed trees, confused cows. When walking on the base running track last night we noticed an entire section of aluminum bleachers was blown across the track (gouges on the track) and ended up upside down on the football field! During the chaos our cats, Cleo and Nemo, continued with their daily tasks like nothing was happening around them even though we were at times pacing around watching for damage.

Much like our life on the road, a recent hike to a small waterfall was longer than we expected, full of surprises and choices, exhausting and rewarding beyond words. The trailhead was down a gravel road, over several cattle guards, through beautiful California cow pasture and woods. The hiking trail was 5.5 miles roundtrip. We went into it with absolutely no information other than Google showing two miles each way. That’s it! No mention of the uphill grade the entire first half of the walk. No mention of the cow patty minefield. No mention of the fork in the path that made you select one of three routes with no clue as to each path’s obstacles or destination. For the record, we chose the middle path. This ended up being another breathtaking hike where we ended up walking for miles completely alone. And right on queue, just when I started to get a little creeped out, Greg asked what we should do if we were approached by a mountain lion. I replied by stating that maybe we should’ve had that information beforehand…Then we remembered the bandana we saw at another park that had survival instructions printed all over it: snake bites, bleeding, bear, mountain lion…we are going to buy that thing and I’ll tie it to myself.

Before we embarked on this journey we had some ask what we are going to do once we have seen everything. Won’t we get bored? We wonder how that is even possible. We are afraid that we WON’T see enough in our lifetime! We could spend a year in every state and still have things to see and learn. We are grateful for the experience and for the constant reaffirmation that we have each chosen the right person to accompany us on this journey. We are privileged to be able to more broadly experience the sights, sounds and smells that make up our little sliver of the universe. Even after six months living in 198 square feet with another human and two felines, we cannot imagine living any other way. We do realize that at one point in the future we may have to slow it down or even settle down, but we will live to the fullest until then!