Packed to the Roof – moving back to CA

Moving back to CA

So... we had planned to move back to UT and sell the motor home. However, what we plan doesn't always happen.

The RV didn't sell...​

Back in September I took the bus back to CA to sell the RV. My car was waiting for me. I did a really good deep clean on the RV and fixed a few things in preparation. Well short story – I found a buyer at an incredibly low price, they gave me $500 down as a deposit and then I needed to get it to pass smog, which took me a few days to get that to happen. Once I had the smog certification in hand, I called them up and set up an appointment for the following day to have them come pick it up and finalize the sale. That was the last time I heard from them. I called and texted a lot and got no response, I waited as long as I could before the campground kicked me out, and even slept in my car two nights just to give them some extra time to contact me. So Mary… if you read this, I’d love to find out what really happened. It feels weird to have had them just disappear, but what can I do?

Goodbye Little Honda

I put the RV into storage and went to UT for a few months – and then it was time to move back in. Having two cars with the RV was nuts – we had to go back and forth to get the other vehicle every move which didn't make sense for a family on the road.  So we sold my Honda Civic car and have the family van.

Getting back to California...​

We were left with a dilemma – everything we had except a few small dishes I used as a bachelor pad in the RV while I was "selling" it had been packed into a moving truck and hauled off to UT. We needed to get at least our bedding and some essentials back to CA to live in the RV. We had several options to do so:

• Rent a moving truck again: $600+ (rental, gas, etc) and drive down two vehicles.
• Get a trailer hitch for the minivan and pull a small trailer. Tamsyn's dad said he had a trailer hitch that would fit a Dodge van and we thought this would be a good option.
• Pack very lightly and just buy everything we need again

Or... there was one other option...

We are pretty tight on money right now, so we ended up just going hill-billy style and tied stuff on the roof. We borrowed a roof storage box for the roof from Tamsyn's parents, and a canvass carry bag from Michael's parents. Plus we tied two plastic totes on the roof. It looked quite crazy and was just missing the rocking chair on top.  We were quite a sight!

Thousand Trails Cabin​

We get a free cabin week each year with Thousand Trails, so we used that while we moved into the RV (plus it would expire)

Anyway, check out the quick video showing the roof rig. And a quick tour of the cabin. (It was filmed at night when we arrived so it's dark, it doesn't really do it justice.)