Vista, CA

Our plan was to put the Jeep on the tow dolly early so that we could leave by 7 AM yesterday. The problem was that it was still too dark out and Josie wanted to wait for daylight. We finally got everything loaded and left Surprise at around 7:45. Not too bad.

Since it was a little dark and very hectic, we didn't get any shots of our departure, but the trip itself was loaded with stops in rest areas and one stop for gas. We decided to take the southern route on I-8 rather than I-10 as we thought the traffic would be less going that way. It may have been less traffic but the rental truck struggled on the mountain pass just east of San Diego. We had to stop halfway to the summit to let it cool down.

The rest area stops were a relief for both of us. Below are a couple shots taken in the first rest area shortly after getting on I-8:

We stopped at one rest area just before the mountains and it was just in time to catch the Blue Angels practicing:

They flew over several times while we were stopped and created the longest stop of the day before they moved on to a distance too far to capture good shots. We hit the road again to tackle the mountains. Josie did a fabulous job handling the truck and tow dolly. When we exited I-8 it was a lot of stop and go travel through some small towns to pick up I-15. If I had known that the GPS was going to take us that way, I would have stayed on I-8 until it intersected with I-15 in San Diego. It would have been longer, but much easier for Josie.
But, we made it to Vista.

The first stop was at WalMart to park the fifth wheel and truck. We then went to Budget to unhitch the dolly and remove the Jeep. Josie followed me in the Jeep as I drove the rental truck to Arcadia Place to unload. We arrived there at around 4:30 PM. We met everybody and immediately started unloading everything into our apartment. There was a young guy on the staff here that helped unload and we were done within an hour. The apartment is small, but we feel we can make it look like home. Below is a shot of the "before" look with all our stuff prior to setting up:

You can't tell a whole lot from that shot, so the "after" will look much better. The bedroom is small and our stacked washer and dryer are in the bathroom. At least there is a tub so that makes Josie happy.

We drove back to Budget to drop off the rental truck and stopped at WalMart to pick up the fifth wheel. We parked that in the back of our building to unload some more stuff we needed and left it there for the night. Our next stop was Target to get glasses and silverware for the apartment. We decided we weren't going to move things back and forth from the trailer since we plan to still use it on weekends occasionally and didn't want that hassle of moving things between the two places. The trailer will be ready to go whenever we want to use it for travel.

We got everything set up enough to take showers and spend the night in our new home. There still is quite a ways to go to be settled, but we have made a good start. We will be off today and tomorrow, and begin work on Sunday...