Happy Holidays from Skippin' Town!

Dear friends,
Wishing you a very Happy Holiday from New Rochelle, New York, where we are enjoying a brief respite from our cross-country adventure.

It's freezing cold here, but who cares when you're under a real roof!? Yes, we have at times questioned our sanity in taking this trip, but we do expect to return with renewed vigor to part II of our travels.

Over the holiday, we will catch up with some posts that never managed to get written.

In the meantime, we wish you, your families and friends a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, etc, and of course a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.

Love from Claire, Daniel, Sophia & Lulu

Bathing baby

Here is a photo of our Lovely Lulu in the bath. Yes, she still **just** fits in the sink of the Airstream's amazingly feature-filled bathroom, which sits across the back of the trailer.

Daniel thinks it's not good use of space, and spends hours daydreaming of converting it into a bedroom, but for now it is intact and works a charm for bathing a 7-month old baby.

Back to bedmaking

Try as he might, Daniel couldn't stay away from DIY - or bedmaking - for long.

During our two-week stay-cation in Santa Margarita Lake, he designed and built bunk beds for the Airstream. This has totally transformed our life inside the trailer: Sophia, who sleeps on the top bunk, now has her own room, Barbara will have her own room when she comes to visit, and during the day, we have a whole new place to put stuff!

Thanks to the Santa Margarita Lake KOA for letting him borrow the drill!

Some of Daniel's paintings

Napa Valley and the Badlands

Marshmallows and pancakes

Still on stay-cation

It’s now been almost two weeks since we arrived at our campground, the one at Santa Margarita, for almost two weeks.

The KOA staff now feels like family (they said they feel the same way), and we’re getting the monthly rate.

We’ve lost track of the days and were surprised to find out last Friday that it was the weekend. Once we found out, we got excited. New people! Kids for Sophia!

There was a decent influx of new campers, and the ones we became friends with was a big group of university friends reuniting from all over California. Spread across four or five of the cabins, they numbered thirteen adults, four or so babies and two kids aged 5 and 9.

Meeting them on our morning walk to the showers, Sophia and I were immediately invited to join them in the evening. Which we did, after watching ‘Shrek II’ on the computer.

They were all really cool, telling us about themselves, how they met, what their couple/family/friend formations were….and apple pie.

I got on really well with one of the girls, Krystyn, who had taken here older daughter out of school to spend three months with her husband in Switzerland. Now that she has a new baby, she's on extended leave from work. Hopefully we'll all meet up in LA.

One guy in particular could not understand what we had been doing for the last ten days. Once pressed, we couldn’t really say.

We’ve been doing lots of laundry, working on Sophia’s birthday party invitations and our Christmas cards, and getting our car looked at every couple of days.

The fuel pump has been replaced, with the mechanic saying the other new one we got before setting off from New York may not have really been new. He also replaced some other, smaller parts, so the ignition is working really well.
Today, he’s trying to figure out why we get occasional misfires, and why the ‘service engine soon’ light sometimes goes on. This, they are doing for free, since we’ve become such good customers.

Given today’s torrential rain, they even dropped Lulu and I off at the local Starbucks – to give updates, they call Daniel and send me email updates. Sophia and Daniel are back at the campground working on building bunk beds in the Airstream.

We’ve explored the area quite a bit, visiting nearby San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles and Atascadero – this last one we now know like the backs of our hands, and people are starting to wave at us.

Yesterday, we could no longer ignore Hearst Castle, the Mediterranean pastiche dream home of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Set up on a rugged mountain overlooking the Pacific, built tirelessly by the architect Julia Morgan and home to many a glamorous party back in the day, it was pretty impressive.

With a very theatrical lady as a guide, the tour was 1 hour and 45 minutes long and followed by a highly produced movie on a giant screen.
We would have liked to hear more salacious anecdotes about all the Hollywood people, politicians and titans of industry who hung out at the place, though.
Here are some photos.

We do have to get a move on, however. There is beautiful coast to explore, Santa Barbara and its vineyards to visit, and friends waiting for us in LA.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

A very American Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving, we were in a charming café with terrible food, watching Glenn Beck, a talk show host on the Fox Network.
The episode's main premise was that the Founding Fathers of the USA had originally meant the country to be based on ‘Life, Liberty and Property,’ but that this last theme had to be changed to ‘Prosperity’ because of the slave issue.
He then went on to echo some conservatives’ view that the Constitution and other historical documents have been misinterpreted, and as such, require new study.
Beck was very concerned that the Pilgrims, whose arrival and eventual flourishing Thanksgiving commemorates, would be very upset if they had seen their ideals trampled upon by the Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular.
America, he continued, is a country of individuals, whose allegiance is to themselves and their families, and reliance on the government for support will only weaken the nation as a whole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests


In contrast, we felt pretty good about America. Laura and I have both spent many years living outside the country, so it was nice to be back.

Thanksgiving is a flexible holiday celebrated across religions (though you don’t have to bring God into it if you don’t want to) and cultures, so everyone’s welcome to garnish their thankfulness and meals with whatever they please.

The main thing is to stop for a day, to give thanks for all the nice things in we have in our lives. With no gifts or cards.

Oh, and you get to stuff yourself as well, since it’s also a harvest holiday.

Laura brought a delicious selection of cheeses, which she garnished with dates and the crispiest crackers. We wrapped lots of food items (wild Alaskan salmon, sweet potatoes, garlic and onions, chestnuts) in tin foil, and Daniel cooked all of these to perfection in the campfire. I made wild rice and tried to emulate Olivia’s amazing Brussels sprouts, which are cut into strips and sautéed with loads of garlic and seasoning.

We drank wine, tore off Kalamata olive bread, and all was well. Once it was dark, and we were roasting marshmallows, Laura looked at her watch and was shocked to see it was only 6:15.

That’s the thing when you’re camping in winter – it gets dark suddenly and you think it’s bedtime, but it’s always way earlier.

Once we had retired back inside the Airstream, Laura suggested we revive the American custom of going around the table and saying why we’re all thankful.

I started, saying I was thankful for this year off, an amazing opportunity to spend serious time with my wonderful husband and beautiful daughters.

Laura said thanks for the chance to study again (she’s pursuing a Masters in Spiritual Psychology and an eventual Doctorate in Relationship Counseling.

Sophia said thanks for the marshmallows.

Daniel declined to participate in our sappy tradition.

Lulu looked at us all, in pursuit of more food.