Outbound at last!

Outbound at last! Rough start...a little bumpy, but we made it all the same! The last couple of days of leaving the house and packing up the rig couldn't have been more stressful. We had more "stuff" to go into storage than we planned on, we had furniture that was thought to have been sold, but wasn't at the last minute (so what to do with it now?), plus when we gave the last day for the utilities, we didn't expect them to be turned off at 6 AM, then on top of all that, it decided to rain! Rain in Escondido? It never rains here!! So, of course when we are trying to load clothes on hangers, in drawers, etc, it rains! It got to the point that we just started jamming things in where ever we could find space to put them, who cared if it made sense or not? We'd deal with it later. By 5:30 PM we were exhausted and knew we had to quit for the night, done or not. Luckily, we had saved the "special" gift the Zoo had given us (thank you Tim!)...a one night stay at the Sheraton Harbor Island Hotel. Thank you San Diego Zoo! That was the true beginning!! Arriving there in our 35' rig, they showed us where to park it, and greeted us with warmth and kindness. We looked like two drowned rats drug in from the storm. When we presented the gift certificate and the reason for it, along with the craziness of the day, Dana was beyond kind! She upgraded us to a mini suite and gave us a card to their Club Room for breakfast the next morning. I nearly collapsed in her hug. After a wonderful hot soaking tub, great room service crab cakes, a comfy bed, sunshine to wake up to in the morning and a beautiful view off the balcony to look out on to, we were new people, ready to face the world...or so we thought!! With the last little bit loaded up, we headed off to get the completed toe-set on the Toyota truck we will be pulling. What I thought would be a quick "here's the lever to pull to release, and here's the hook to attach" show & tell, turned out to be a 2 hour, complicated training session! Ever notice how life's "simple pleasures" turn out to be complicated to create? Geez... That accomplished, we (finally) set off for the trip to the Bay Areas to spend the holidays with our daughter and family! Yahoo! It was already late in the day before we set off, but we wanted to at least try and get as far as we could, with plans on stopping at a rest stop along the way. Jack finally pooped out in the wee hours of the next morning, finding a cozy spot in one of the rest areas with all the other "truckers". We crawled into bed and fell asleep in our clothes. After a few hours sleep, and the truckers up and moving, we decided to get ourselves together as well. Thus we discovered our first challenge - with the slides not out, one can't get into the closet or the drawers under it! Oops! That means no access to clothes! Not good. I could see that some "pre-planning" would have to be thought out when we were going to be in situations where out slide outs were not possible. Never the less, that was for the future, and this was now and I needed new clothes! My first melt-down! Jack reluctantly opened one slide long enough for me to grab some clean clothes and then quickly closed it again (in fear that this was not allowed at a "rest stop"). Soon though, we were back on the road again, with no further mishaps. When we arrived at Alissa's she was in the process of picking up our grandson from school, so we called her to let her know that we had arrived. Jack joked with her that we had "taken out the carport" in the process of parking...but she didn't get the joke and thought he was serious! She was white by the time she reached us! I told Jack he needs to polish up his "teasing style" and not send our kids into panic every time we are out on the road! Welcome to our first stop-over... Wednesday, December 14th, Marie