Feeling ready?

We leave THIS WEEK!  In four days!

Do we feel ready? What a loaded question - simply because there are so many facets to being ready in this case - so I guess there are several answers.

YES, we are ready to hit the road. Bob is ready to be done working. We are ready to see new country and to feel the open road.

I keep asking myself if I'm ready to be done living in this valley - and I do feel nostalgic about it. There are things that I had wanted to do - even things that I thought I would do every week - that just haven't happened. There are museums I haven't visited. There are restaurants we haven't tried yet - and a bunch that I wanted to go to again! There are neighbors I have not returned to visit to practice my Spanish. AND I did not ride the train! The historic Fillmore Western train ride will have to wait for my next visit.

We really do love living in southern California and yes, we most definitely want to do it again. BUT we want to live closer to the coast the next time. We want to be close enough to the beach for daily walks and we would like to be closer to the kids. So we are doing some research of possible places to set up camp the next time.

And are we ready for the big trip? Are we prepared? In the past, getting ready for a big trip usually meant this huge checklist of preparation - packing decisions and actual physical packing. Well, this time it is different because there are few decisions and seemingly very little packing. The decisions have already been made about what to take because they are already with us. Things are already packed away where they belong - except for the things that we have allowed to pile up on the shelves in the little shed we have here. Yesterday we tackled that shed and got our stuff sorted and packed and stowed in the cargo hold.

Actually, since this is our first time to do this, we don't know exactly what preparations we need to be doing, but we will learn. Besides packing the cargo - which we did yesterday - there will be a certain amount of rearranging and securing things in cupboards and cabinets so they are safe to travel. There will be odds and ends the day before like folding up the lawn chairs and tables and packing them away. Then the last-minute things before unhooking the utilities and hitching up the truck - like making sure TV and computers are safely and securely stowed away and loose items are cleared off the countertops. And there's that one bin that tends to fly out of my closet on the road - that must have some new moorings - or maybe a new home.

Oh, yah, there is one other part of being ready and that is planning our route and our schedule - or deciding to let it be flexible and unplanned. In this case, we are doing a combination between planned and unplanned. For the first several days, we have a bit of a schedule to connect with people along the way up the coast - friends and family in northern California, Oregon, and Washington - so we will need to get to those places at certain times. But then once we cross into Canada, we don't have a schedule except for hoping to arrive in Alaska before summer solstice - which should  allow a fairly leisurely pace.

So are we feeling ready? Yep, I think so. Are we excited? Most definitely.