Kevin and I made it up to the Mount Shasta Thomson Cabin on Sunday night.  It was really cool to see the remodeled areas, John and Euginie did a great job!  We froze our butts off and later discovered the inverter in the trailer blew…. So we decided to cut the last day and drive all the way to Seattle.

Kind of bittersweet to end the trip, it has been quite an adventure.  This trip started out rocky, we were questioning our desision to even take the trip!  Friends and Family have been the highlights, thank you all for opening your homes to us! The second half of the trip (after christmas) was our favorite, the weather and sights were perfect.  We had our share of disappointments; Kevin spending countless hours in a dental chair, missing out on the north east completely, and bad weather.  But I will not remember those details when I think back to us traveling the country for almost three months!  We plan on doing the northeast in the future, and we would love to explore the southwest more.  But with the comfort of a huge rig!

Now we face another adventure, real life and being responsible….. We have been bracing for the overwhelming feeling since California…  I have to say I am looking forward to ‘09.  New President, indoor toilets ( I peed outdoors more this year then I ever have my whole 26 years.), possibilities of Seasonal Palate, and Kevin’s job opportunities.

Goodbye for now, you goofy bloggers!

 

 

We want to thank all of you for checking in on the blog, and for your comments.  We may or may not continue writing with updates on life, check thekteam.wordpress.com for any of that activity…

 

Eating at Bouchon

We found a great campground just outside of the town of Napa. After setting up camp we drove through the little towns and ended up in Yountville. We got a table at Bouchon, Thomas Keller’s ‘casual bistro’. It was a fun French bistro with a trendy crowd. We had some wine, butternut squash soup (kicked my soup’s ass) and an endive salad. Also fell for the distilled, sparkling or tap water trick… Can’t believe I had forgotten about that one. We spent $14 on just the distilled and sparkling water alone… Kevin went to the car and got our water bottles, we made sure to get every drop of that water! Kinda funny. We walked around and got dessert at another bistro down the road.

13000 miles on those tiny trailer wheels

Plan on staying in Mount Shasta tonight.

 

Elephant Seals

Everyone told us the best drive is Hwy 1 along the southern half of California. Let me be more specific for them… You must, must drive this road before you kick the bucket at least from LA to San Fran. We spent the night in Big Sur, a redwoods forest/coastal park. Kevin went for a bike ride while I checked out some galleries and beaches. Pretty cool little area, but it would suck in the crowded high season.
The drive the next day was awesome! We stopped at a pull off and watched a colony of elephant seals, several had just given birth to pups! We stopped at a lighthouse and checked out the rocky coast. There were areas where surfers clogged the road along with the people watching them! We had a pit stop at a local farmers market and had some of the local fair for lunch!
We drove across the Golden Gate and took hwy 121 to Napa. An area we drove through/camped earlier on this trip, but did not get enough of!

Kate on the "beach" just south of Big Sur

 

Kevin and the Big Sur

 

where's the movie premier? the stars are here!

We swung through LA to see another one of Kevin’s cousins, Ben and his gal Kim. They are going to UCLA and live just blocks from some serious Hollywood action! We went out for some Thai and they showed us some of the neighborhood.
We wanted to camp about an hour north of the cities, but lost track of time driving around Hollywood trying to find the big sign…never found it.  We stopped off a small road that was taking us to Malibu on the coast. We woke up to a beautiful top of the mountain view of the ocean and sunrise!

 

The closest thing we could find to the Hollywood sign!

 

Gramps broke his neck right before thanksgiving, but he's getting better!

It is soooooo nice here! Sunshine, warm, reminds me of the summers before Seattle! We got into Campland on the Bay on Tuesday evening. Kevin’s Grandpa Elly and Aunt Jean both have rigs here at this camp. We set up camp and walked over to see them! It was fun camping around family, usually we keep to ourselves and answer to the attention of the trailer…..
Side note: The teardrop is very special in the camping world, so we have been told hundreds of times. This trailer gets so much attention, any time of day. There have been times I am trying to get coffee around and we get a crowd wanting to talk about the trailer. 97% of the time Kevin handles the speech, he used to think it was cool, I think he’s over it now… If we have one more person tell us they saw a show on the travel channel on the teardrops…. Most of the people are cool, 50% of them have bad timing, we often hear long winded travel stories…
Anywho, back to the sunshine and 80 degrees! SUCKERS! We dragged Elly and Jean to the Zoo with us! Really cool zoo, we were there for hours and saw about 75% of the zoo. Good thing we took the bus tour first thing! We ended up building a campfire and having salmon that night.
We can’t say we didn’t drag our feet in San Diego, we slowly packed up and then hit the beach for an hour!

Here's one with aunt Jean!

 

 

Kevin, Joanne, and Lynn

Finally reached the New Mexico border! We actually left Texas liking it a lot more then we ever had before. There were beautiful rocky mountains and cool looking cactus, our favorite was a purple/pink low palm looking cactus. We later found out you can break off part and transplant them, really wish we had know!

 

We kept trucking through to Phoenix, Kevin had called his cousins, a few hundred miles back and found out they could hang out that night! We made it to Kevin’s cousin Joanne’s house. She and her fiance Matt were there along with their daughter Grace, but we missed Jared on this trip.  Aunt Lynn, Cousin Nathan and his daughter Caitlin were also there! It was great to see some of the Smiths (Kevin’s mom’s side of the fam ). Joanne and Matt are getting married in April, sounds like it is going to be quite the Smith event. Thanks for finding some time to hang out ☺

Shawn, Averi, and Trenton

The next morning we got a chance to have breakfast with Shawn White and his two little ones. Sorry we missed Candi, but it was fun to see them!
Off to San Diego! (Not to rub it in, but I’ve been wearing shorts and a tee shirt all day!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello! I'm a little purple cactus! Take me home!

 

I thought it was bigger...

We have been in Texas for three days now, man, this is a big state.  Back in November we said we were going to try to avoid Texas altogether…. now we are driving across the widest part.  It actually has surprised us, we like Texas a lot more then Kansas and South Dakota.  

river walk

 

 

 

Our first night was spent just west of Houston and then we drove into San Antonio.  Great town.  Our main reason for stopping there was Kevin’s cousin, Nick, who is in doing his navigation training at Randolph AFB. ( same training/place their Granddad did in WWII )  We checked out the river walk, it was really nicely done.  Lots of plants and trees, restaurants, and there was an art fair going on too.  We also checked out the Alamo ( an old fort ) looked kind of cool, but there were sooooo many people there, we didn’t stick around. 

 

Kevin pointing at Texas, Nick being a smartass (he's from San Fran)

Nick was able to get us a room on base, really cheap, nice room!  We got the bikes down and Nick joined us and showed us all around the base. Kicking myself for not grabbing the camera.  We went out later that evening for TexMex and met up with some of his buddies at a pub.  It was fun, Thanks Nick:)

 

We drove 8 hours yesterday and we still didn’t make it to the border.  Maybe today!

 

downtown Mobile

Another long drive, we went through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and just the beginning of Louisiana.  We stopped in Mobile, AL to stretch our legs and grab lunch.  Now that, is the dirty dirty south!  Not to say that it was a dirty town, it was thick in…. I don’t really know how to describe it… so we’ll just go with dirty dirty south…

 

Anywho, We set up camp just 12 miles from the french quarter of New Orleans.  We headed in to town the next morning, drove through St. Charles street and saw some great houses.  We parked at the French Market and had Beignets and coffee at the famous Cafe du Monde.  We walked through the markets and then took our self guided walking tour of the french quarter.  We

ran into a local who wanted to show us around, he showed us a great spot for lunch and where the ‘Brad and Angelina Crew’ hung out!  

 

 

Beautiful Balconies were all over the French Quarter

We drove by some of the cemeteries and took a peek, but we were told they were not tourist safe… day or night.  We found one of Emeril’s restaurants and stopped in for happy hour.  It was ok, no one was there and our apps were ok…. maybe it was an off night…

 

We wanted to see the lower ninth ward, where Katrina hit hardest… After three years this town has done a lot of cleaning up and rebuilding.  But, this area still has a long way to go.  As you may have seen on the news, there was an X sprayed on the front of the houses.  Numbers were added in each section of the X to tell who checked out the house, the date it was checked and how many were found dead.  Quite sobering to still see the X on all of the houses.  Some had tried to scrub the X off, or paint over it… most had left them….  

This used to be a neighborhood, but now most of the houses have been taken out right to the foundation.

Some of the neighborhoods looked like third world countries, rubble and empty stripped houses all around.  I visited ground zero a few months after 9/11 and I have to say the lower ninth ward was just as heartbreaking.  We did see the houses that Pitt helped build, they stick out like a sore thumb because all the other houses in the area had to be demoed to the foundation.

One of the new houses donated by Brad Pitt

 

Bourbon Street Sign

Guess who?

 

future of seasonal palate!

We weren’t sure if we were going to go down to Flordia.  The company that has my dream catering trailers is based in Tampa.  They didn’t open up until the 5th… but I really wanted to see the trailers.  We were there the morning of the 5th and stayed for 5 hours looking through trailers, configuring equipment layouts, and quotes.  Tom and Nancy were very helpful and answered a billion and one questions!  

lunch stop

 

 

 

We were only 45 minutes from Winter Haven, and for all of you who don’t speak pilot, that is where Jack Brown’s Seaplane base is!  There was no way Kevin was going to miss that!  My big sis worked there for a while and I had visited her a few times and met the Brown’s crew.  It was great to see the base and Kevin took a cub out with Tristan Raab!  

We drove the rest of the day to Tallahassee.

 

Blogging in the rough

We parked on the north side of the big bridge and biked across and all through downtown.  We really like Charleston, it has a similar feel to Seattle… but lower cost of living!  Maybe we’ll see more of her later…

 

biking on brick

 

eating at Magnolias! I had she crab soup and fried green tomatoes!

We ended up staying another night at Charleston, we didn’t feel like driving so late into Savannah… but the campsite we were at was really cool, we had streams on both sides of us!

Anywho,  got into Savannah for breakfast and walked around.  We continued on to Tampa, long drive!  

 

Savannah's parks

 

cool Savannah houses, but nothing compared to Charleston houses!