Our new home

Our plans shifted back and forth for a little while... do I try and get a job immediately and try to get to Florida in as short a time as possible, do we take time off and do the living on the road deal that we've talked about for so long. In the end of course the latter won and having made sure that our Pilot was tow worthy when we bought her we were ready to go shopping.

The '06 Honda Pilot has a max trailer weight of 3500 lbs and what that will get you in a hardwall trailer is snug. Very snug. Considering it will be me (6'2"), Cady, 2 energetic boys and a very energetic Golden Retreiver puppy, very snug doesn't cut it. That led us to reconsider the popups. We had been leary of pop ups due to the perceived hassle of setup and teardown plus their generally best use being during warm weather. The '08 Fleetwood Saratoga highwall that we wound up with stood out from the pack as much roomier and substantial feeling than its peers. We took her on a maiden voyage out the Olympic Peninsula to get used to all the new tasks and systems. Overall the most thrilling of these has to be emptying the dreaded black water tank. Dum dum dum dum. Thank god for the goop that you have to keep in the tank to keep everything smelling fresh; turns out the whole thing wasn't that bad.

Setup and takedown is no big deal. It's not yet totally second nature, it doesn't want to close exactly the same way twice yet, but I'm choosing to groove on the ritual aspects of it. As we move out and everything finds its home it will only become easier.

Cady suggested on the way out to the Peninsula that we should name the trailer and Valen blurted out "Suzie", it stuck. On the way home we saw a really amazing rainbow near Tacoma and her full name has now become Suzie Rainbow. I'll post some photos of Suzie later.
I'll post some pictures later today to give everyone a sense of our new home.