FINALLY!!!!!!!!

After 3 years of planning, it's T minus 0, we finally hit the road. But I'm getting ahead of myself so let's back up a few days to Friday. Our last days at work. Donna actually put in a full day, including a lunch break send off by her co-workers who made the great card pictured above. I promised to return on Tuesday on the way our of town to say final goodbyes. Heading into the weekend all we needed to accomplish was packing up the house, moving what we had left into storage, and packing up the RV, oh wait, the RV was still in Watsonville. So it was off to Watsonville Saturday to pick it up, and hey as long as we're there, dinner with Brother-in Law Kenny, and Donna's sister Lynn, to celebrate Kenny's 50th birthday. That would leave Sunday to pack and then move it all in storage Monday. I had gotten a 5X10 locker that surely would hold what we had left. Not the case! We packed it to the rafters barely having room for a last toolbox. What we thought would take 4 hours took 8 and we returned to an empty apartment exhausted and ready for bed. Moving the airmattress in from the RV to the floor we soon discovered that it had developed a leak. About midnight and 3 inflates later we strolled in our pajamas across the parking lot to sleep in the RV. Months of sitting unused had left the 12v battery dead so there was no power. We were awakened before 6am by the sprinkler hitting the bottom of the van but that was ok we needed to load up and start cleaning for a 12 noon departure. With 5 minutes to spare we finished loading and hit the road. Well sort of. First stop goodbyes at Oracle, where they had taped off 3 prime parking spaces just for us. After that we headed north in gale force winds across the bridge and stopped in Tera Linda for goodbyes to more friends. We reached the Petaluma KOA in time to park then head out to dinner and goodbyes with Amanda. So total miles traveled the first day 70. But we're ON THE WAY! "Chappy Trails to Us"