1500 Miles

Our drop date to leave the van in LA was moved up from September to August 25th!  No time to go back to Flagstaff and re-organize so we made a mad dash through California and covered 1500 miles in 5 days!  The great thing about this is we got to see a lot of good friends along the way that we previously thought we wouldn't see!  Some of our oldest friends from our California-livin' days!

Susan and Saul!

Thank you to Saul and Susan for a great workout at Mad Dawg Fitness and the night's stay with coffee and kitties - great to see you guys continuing to thrive in Redwood City!

Lunches and dinners and coffee and workouts in Santa Cruz with lots of good friends!  It was great to be back in Santa Cruz - thanks for a great "old times in Santa Cruz" visit Adrian and Kim, Nicole and Tosh, Pat, Ian, Miranda and Tyson!  Great to see all of you!

The "Spur"!  We used to eat here when we would come and visit the original CrossFit gym crew back in the day!

Highway 1 in all it's glory.  Awesome to be able to drive that route from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara!  We even got sightings of dolphin pods jumping several times!

 Anna and Ronnie!

Santa Barbara beach and an old time merry-go-round!  Great day with our Bakersfield mountain biking buddies! We sure miss these guys!

Ron and Candas!

Big thanks to Ron and Candas for letting us re-organize ourselves on their front lawn in Valencia!  Great to see more friends from our Bakersfield days!  Ron and Candas got to meet Tanner the day he found us in Oildale (hence the breed "Oildale Curbsetter"), they taught me how to road ride on Round Mountain road, and Candas and I had great "no-princess" tours to climb and ski in Mammoth.  Good memories!

Good bye to the Adventure Mobile for awhile...heading into LA to put it on a ship bound for Chile.

Time to drop our adventure home off in Compton... Wait.  What? Compton?!  Yes, we were pretty anxious about that, but it turned out just fine.  No shady deals in a chop shop. We didn't drop it in the 'hood. Just a normal warehouse in a light industrial area.  It's now off on it's own adventure, sealed into a container on a ship bound for Valparaiso, Chile.  We will see it in October (hopefully with all our belongings intact)!  For now....we get to return home to Flagstaff for a few weeks before we head out for a few stops around the globe before we head South!  More posts to come in mid-September.

Old vs new FJ's.  Got to rent a new FJ to drive home from LA, and then get to drive the old one now that we are home!

Welcome home!  GORGEOUS sunsets and the Cruizer greeted us and Bruce and Jane welcomed us home with a wonderful home-cooked dinner and Heather had her big bed waiting for us!  We are HOME with our people!

Our West Coast Friends and Family tour closes and we prepare ourselves for the next chapter of this year-long journey.