After an amazing long-weekend in Big Bend, we were off to El Paso. But not so fast…..

We were slowed down a bit by one of Woody’s shoes. He said he was never buying Nike again 🙂 .

Thank God that we “just happened” to have enough of a signal to call somebody. We have warranties and roadside assistance that came with Woody but they don’t do any good if you can’t call out! After having no call signal almost the whole time in Big Bend and our first hours on the road, this happened at the perfect time/location.

We were also so grateful that we all handled it well. B took a walk along the railroad and the kids and I just hung around waiting.

It only set us back about 3 hours.

Speaking of hours… I have a lot of fun each season when the time changes. I love to drive B crazy asking things like, “what time is it right now yesterday though?” 🙂 …. so imagine B’s delight when we got to switch time zones again! El Paso is in mountain time so when we arrived there we had crossed over time zones twice on our adventure.

El Paso was supposed to be a stop to see white sands national monument and other hiking spots but instead, because of the wind, we just worked, did lots of laundry and school work! Not much else to say about El Paso except they love their ice cream as much as I do! (3 different ice cream shop options in one shopping center) and we met another full timing family with the most adorable kiddo that RR had a blast with. Those young boys LOVE RR! (and we got amazing sunsets in El Paso too! Just in parking lots.)

And then imagine B’s joy when we went to Arizona for a night as we made our way to California. AZ doesn’t “do” time changing but we were there on time change Saturday night. Oh it was fun, for me! I genuinely got so exhausted trying to figure out what time it actually was and where we were haha that I ran out of ways to ask B time-change questions haha. Good thing it was the weekend so we had nowhere to check in at any certain time.

For the stop over night in Arizona we stayed at our 2nd Harvest Host spot. The first was an animal farm in Florida, this one was a winery.

The Windmill Winery was right outside Phoenix (so close to where my sister used to live!) and was a beautiful setting that locals visit or book for weddings and events. They had the most delicious wine and the Lord painted another amazing sunset! It was a perfect half-way spot for us to stretch out, enjoy some live music, and get a good night’s sleep before another day or driving.

It’s fun to think about all the different views I’ve seen out my bedroom and “living room” windows. Here were Arizona’s:

Who knew Arizona had so many fields!? It’s so green before the summer heat comes!

The drive to Cali was pretty and easy. The landscape is so diverse. The blue skies and clouds and hills and mountains – it’s all just been so pretty so far!

We loved all the tall cacti in AZ and the wild flowers in AZ (and Texas) and Cali are amazing!

They’re all having a “super bloom” and it is very beautiful. Great time to be traveling the country! My pics haven’t been able to capture how gorgeous the wild flowers are yet. Sorry for all the butterfly guts on the windows. Because of the super bloom there are *ridiculous* amounts of butterflies around and we can’t get them away from the road. We’ve tried :). They’re just everywhere.

We are staying in Desert Hot Springs for the month. It’s just full of beauty! I’ve said that too many times already. I expected it to be pretty – but I had no idea it would have such huge mountains around it, too. Snow capped mountains in the back with palm trees in the front!? Amazing!

I can’t even call where we are staying a “camp ground”. It’s a resort and what an amazing find! We’ve been enjoying the pool and mineral hot springs so much.

We’ve gone out on one “field trip” so far this week: the Coachella Valley Preserve – a desert oasis right on the San Andreas Fault. These hula girl palm trees tickle me! (They are fan palms and are the only palm native to Cali. Their dead palms don’t fall off but just hang down on them to form these skirts.)

For the 2nd time this trip we found a Snuffleupagus nature shape. Here he is with palms spouting out his trunk:

Having this little oasis in the middle of the desert is pretty amazing. I bet it feels great in these shady areas near the ponds in the heat of the summer.

California, like every other stop, has already given us amazing sunsets and now we’re up early enough to see sunrises, too. Just wow, huh?

I don’t change / filter any of these! The colors are just amazing. Look at last night’s fire ball sunset between the mountains:

The wind was SO crazy last night. It felt like it might just pick Woody up and take us away but I just peeked outside and everything looks okay! Valley wind gusts in a travel trailer are no joke. 🙂

OH!!! I have to share this!!! As soon as we landed at this RV park, we had to drive around and look for our own spot since they don’t take reservations. There were so few spots left but we finally found ONE that looked big enough for us. As soon as we parked the neighbors were out with their 3 kiddos! They are a homeschooling family (like us), with 3 kiddos (like us) , the dad works remotely for a company in RTP (like B), and they just lost their home in the Paradise CA wildfires. Of course this was orchestrated from the Lord. Pray we have many opportunities to encourage and minister to each other!

Thank you all for following along. We love you and miss you and wish you could be here too!