Mile 276 - Hwy 20, CA

California.

We’re driving due West straight for the coast on Hwy 20. Sarah is showing Matchbox Twenty how they should’ve sung their songs and I’m enjoying the conveniences of our new mobile home.

The scenery is the rolling hills that lead to the coast. I heard about these hills when my family moved to California when I was 6. Mom said California had beaches, surfing, Shamu, and Golden hills. Since Philadelphia ‘s Hills are either covered in Green Trees or White Snow, Hills of Gold captured my young imagination.

As we prepare to leave our home state in our rear-view mirror, it’s fun to take a second look at the landscape that is our everyday. We’ve got wildflowers that spruce up our freeways, coastal fog to keep our mornings chill, the tallest trees in the nation, migrating monarchs, the promise of crashing waves nearby, and some of the best winding roads to escape into.

Sarah likes the smell of redwoods, flip-flops year round, salty sea air by the coast, and driving from the Bay to Chico to open her door for a comforting heat hug of Chico air. 

California’s Pretty Rad.

Mile 156 - The Deer, CA

It was a dark and scary night on Hwy 45. The Saaron caravan was close to their first destination, and it was much later into the night than they had intended. Aaron was in his car, Stormin’, following Sarah in the fateful lead position.  They had been communicating via walky talkies and SUDDENLY Aaron saw Sarah swerve back and forth to the left and then to the right. Aaron was preparing to deal with a quick end to their journey.

The walky talkie squalked, “WHOA WHAT WAS THAT? WHAT’S GOING ON?”

Sarah regains control of the truck and pulls over.

“I just hit a deer” she quietly responds as images of Bambi flashed through her mind.

Back near Aaron, the deer thankfully scampers off without a limp, missing only a few hairs taken by the bumper from his front left shoulder.

Saaron assesses the damage of the green machine and breathes a sigh of relief with the realization that they had escaped relatively unscathed.

Back behind the wheel, Saaron thinks of the important lesson they have learned this night. They have chosen to take to the road and leave the comforts and safety of Oakland behind them.

On the road, even Bambi can ruin a perfectly good night.

Leaving

Goodbyes…they suck.

After months and months of planning, building, packing, re-packing, and getting excited for our adventure, the departure day came and we realized that we were going to have to leave our friends and family for a while. The biggest downside of the trip. Booo. The last week was spent doing the “last” of everything. The last day at work, the last time at church, the last dinner with our Sara(h) dinner club, the last family dinner, Aaron’s last Wednesday morning meeting, the last dinner with the Foster’s, the last Hotsy Totsy’s with Josh and Jen, the last campout with Adam and Mel….last, last, last. And we started to get really sad and considered just living in the truck in California…But wait! We’ll be back someday, probably older, wiser, dirtier and with less money…but we’ll be back.

In all of those conflicted feelings is excitement for this adventure and hope that you all will experience it with us via our blog. So until next time…goodbye.

 P.S. For those of you who are thinking this is all a secret plan to move to another state, we have placed our collateral assurance of return below:

Rad Trip Map

Here it is! The Radtrip has begun!
The one thing everyone wants to know is "WHERE ARE YOU GUYS GOING?"

We really want to plan as we go, so we still don't have a good answer. Instead of choosing a route, we have saved every location that we have heard of on a google map and we'll plan our weeks from there. Check out what we have thus far, and let us know if we're missing a must-see. Thanks for following our trip!

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