Since Christmas we’ve been moored at my long time friend Tom’s home in beautiful southern California. Tom is a kind soul and invited us to linger as long as we care to. This is a great boon in terms of saving money since we use less electricity, water, supplies, gas, and don’t pay lodging expenses while we mooch dock. Since Tom is a bachelor at the moment we also feel pretty comfortable lurking about his house which means lots of room and good TV/Internet.

View from Toms Poarch

Of course aside from the creature comforts and saving money Tom’s home is itself a beautiful place and close to a large number of natural and cultural land marks. The property he’s on was once an Avocado farm and it is situated atop a large granite hill among many others at about 1,100ft in elevation. There are citrus trees, and avocados, along with wild growing cactus, jade plants, and huge agave’s. You can pick a lemon off a tree whenever you need one, great stuff!

Pick a Lemon!

The wildlife is also fairly plentiful with ground squirrels, gofers and rabbits in abundance which means a good number of hawks, falcons, owls and coyotes to prey upon them. Snakes and lizards are also plentiful but this time of year are mostly hidden away beneath the house or in old burrows of other animals awaiting warmer temperatures. One particular falcon commonly roosts above our trailer loudly proclaiming his territory. As of the last week seems to have a new mate in residence with him.

The Falcon of Castle Crest

We were just about to roll out towards Arizona but Trail had some gift packages mailed to her that required we hang around for a week longer to receive them. Adventure calls to her so this week has been more challenging as we are low on local sights left to see that are relatively cheap. For me, that just means more time writing and gaming and all things sedentary that I take pleasure in. I’m good at lurking about but Trail needs to be in motion.

These are some big agave plants!

We should be out and about soon, headed for the Palm Springs area so we can spend more time at Joshua Tree National Park which is a truly fantastic place. I can’t wait to do a little rock climbing and spend some more time exploring its wonders. There are also some other places in reach of there to visit like the southern end of Death Valley which has some incredible rock formations of its own.

Jade plants and wild poppies in bloom on the grounds

From there we will be trekking south east towards Texas taking in the sights and exploring the warmer bits of the US. We haven’t decided just how far into Texas we plan to venture yet. We may make it over to the gulf of mexico, or we may end up coming back north before then. We are both eager to hit up the monumental parks of the west like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon but we will to wait until they warm up for the spring.

The Yamato at Tom’s place.

We have a vague outline of our travel by region into the fall of 2016 but not a lot of specifics. Generally in the spring and early summer its up through the great national parks of the west, then early summer we scoot through our old home town to visit folks, then up to Alaska for the mid and late summer when we come back to the lower 48. Then likely we start knocking out some of the northern great plains states.