Bye bye Badger

After 4 years and 4 weeks it is time to say goodbye to Badger and the RV lifestyle.

We actually agreed the sale with Lori and Alan a month ago, but they let us keep him for a while so we could sell off the bits they didn't want and make our onward travel plans with a bit of notice. It also gave us a chance to see Pris and Bill again as they arrived in the south for the winter on Friday. It looks like badger will spend his next few years in the desert hauling their collection of dune buggies, quad bikes, dirt bikes, rock crawlers, boats and other toys. They had a Jayco before that she really liked, he wanted a diesel and it turned out they were driving past the entrance to the campground on their way back from the Arizona playgrounds, so it was almost destined to be....

We are now on a bus to San Diego where we will catch an early flight tomorrow for a few days in Washington DC, then next week we fly to Hawaii. We have 2 weeks booked on the big island, 2 weeks over Xmas and New year on Oahu when we hope to meet up with one of Maria's old work friends and her husband Nicki and Mick, who we last saw in Florida. We still need to work out the other islands after that.

Pris and Bill have kindly agreed to look after the Suzuki while we are offshore, so we will meet them back in Palm springs sometime in January to reclaim the Toad warrior, then south to Mexico and central America...more details in a few days.

Beach sand to desert sand

From Menifee we decided it was about time we chilled out on a beach for a bit so we headed down to Silver Strand State beach in Coronado, about 10 miles south of San Diego. The 8 mile strip of land has the Pacific Ocean on one side and San Diego Bay on the other. The campground was just a tarmac parking lot with water and electric hook ups at each site, but the beach and ocean were literally less than a minute away from our door.

It was lovely to have a nice cooling breeze during the sweltering temperatures of the day. I only paddled knee deep in the ocean as the water was too cold for me (I know, I'm a wuss) but Mark would go in regularly to cool down. He did say at one point that everything below his teeth was frozen. The sunsets were amazing and here are just a few:

After a week chilling out at the beach, we headed inland to Palm Springs and the campground where we started our US life on the road 4 years ago (and where we met our good friends Pris and Bill).  The day we arrived it was 110F/43C which was still a bit of a shock for late October. The temperatures have been unseasonably high due to the Santa Ana winds which also fueled the wildfires.  The sunsets here have been quite nice too:

and so is the wild life. This roadrunner wandered very hesitantly through our site. I think it was on the lookout for Wylie Coyote :-) 

  

Saw this and thought of me....

It just spoke to me.