Now you may be asking how this plan came to be. Three years ago, Jose purchased his first RV for a few thousand bucks, Choo Choo, a beater 1987 Rialta the size of a custom van. Starting with day trips to Zion National Park and Navajo Lake, our trps began to lengthen trips a bit venturing to Arizona and California. Being on the road has always been in my blood and it wasn't long before the Jose caught the RV bug; and naturally Matilda, Eclipse and Maguire were ecstatic!
It was little surprise that planning future road trips soon became the focal point of conversation. Then one day, a friend of ours moved to Alaska, and we thought, hey, let's take a trip to see her one day. Then, Jose found a book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon; it's a recap of Mr Moon's travels around the perimeter of the states in a modified van that included a toilet of sorts and a cot. Neither Jose or I really liked the book, but we loved the idea and soon this type of trip became our goal.
About after a year of getting to know the in's and out's of RVing and realizing that Choo Choo thought it could but probably wouldn't make a 15,000 mile trek around the U.S., Jose decided it was time to get serious and buy a "bigger boat" - I mean, RV. He found an affordable Itasca Sunstar with more power and head room in California. "So we all packed up and moved to Beverly" - um, drove to Santa Clarita to trade Choo Choo in for the NTRPRZ - to boldly go...(sort of). We changed the name of his GPS from Gabby because she was SO annoyingly talkative to Uhura in hopes that the GPS would develop a more sophisticated personality more in line with the speedy NTRPRZ.
As many of you know, we planned the trip for 2012, but unforeseen back surgery for Jose arose and took precedence. We weren't positive if the trip was completely cancelled or just postponed. Jose thought it was a lost dream, but thankfully as his recovery slowly progressed, the topic returned to the center of attention. And we really started gearing up for it even though many obstacles turned up along the way. And now, barring any impending disasters, we are doing it!
