The first couple days on the road...

Hitting the road on day one involved making the journey all the way to Casa De Fruta… about 100 miles north. I admit it wasn’t a far away goal but it was a way to get some road behind us. I called them to ask if they had a spot open for the night, that was pull through, and that could accommodate a horse trailer with 3 sheep in it… also could we camp there with 3 sheep?

The girl on the phone had to go ask her manager but returned to say it was fine.

Casa De Fruta started as a roadside fruit stand but has become a roadside attraction with an RV park, a model train you can ride on, a restaurant, a carousel, a truck stop, 32 peacocks, and a candy shoppe.

At a previous visit to Casa de Fruta. Just hanging with peacocks.

We arrived after dark and got set up for the evening, clearing off the bed we were using for storage so we had a place to sleep and basically shoveling a path through the RV;  just doing the bare minimum to sleep.

When we awoke we were itching to get on the road again… right after coffee and breakfast. I drove the car down to the coffee shop and get some coffees and pastries, and candy, because why not? We gulped our coffees and downed our pastries (I would be more specific but I honestly don’t remember what they were) and started the RV back up. 

The extremely loud squeaking noise coming from the engine compartment lasted until we exited the park before it began to subside. “What the hell was that noise?” came Ashley’s voice over the Walkie Talkie.

“A loud squeaking noise,” was my super helpful response. 

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“No, just a squeaking belt.” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. As soon as I said it her voice come over again: “The windshield wipers just came on and won’t turn off!” She was yelling into the headset at this point. “Pull over and I’ll look,” I said.

Once we pulled over I looked under the dash to discover that I didn’t know anything about what under a dash is supposed to look like… I found the wires connecting the windshield wipers via a Google search and disconnected them. “Avoid driving through any rain,” I said, “And you’ll be fine.”

The only excitement for the rest of day two was the constantly escaping cats. Thankfully, Ashley had them in the RV with her so I didn’t have to deal with it. Obi (my cat) was the ringleader of the prison breaks. If I remember correctly they escaped 12 times that day. We eventually moved the cats into one of the hard carriers to better contain them.

Mom...we are literally dying.  I promise.  Let us out.

We made it pretty far that day, deciding to stop just before we got to Oregon in a little town called Weed, CA. We found this little RV park that once again welcomed our little menagerie, and welcomed a nice restful night.

Day 3 soon...

- Ric

Part two of Big BIG changes for Fiberton...

A baby lamb is a tiny bundle of cute that is constantly trying to escape or run around like a crazy person leaping off everything in sight as well as trying to climb on Adrian, our ewe.

Pauly was born on Easter some time late at night. We didn't notice until around noon on Monday. We saw a fluffball running around the field when we were coming home from buying moving supplies.

Little Pauly, our Easter baby

“Uuum, what is that?” Asked Ashley. “Is that a baby?”

“No, not everything is a baby.” I said snarkily, mostly because this was the 5th “Is that a baby?” in the past 3 months.

“Then why is it running around?” she continued.

“Balls! That’s a baby!” I exclaimed while jumping out of the slowly moving car.

Normally a successful baby lamb would be just another day on the ranch, but being that we were embarking on a three-day move up to Oregon the next day, it was causing a little stress (understatement).

“Should we call Christy?” Ashley asked, only slightly panicked. Before I could even say “Yes,” she was already on the phone. Christy and Mike were there within an hour, with oats, vitamins, and inoculations in hand.

After they gave us the ok to move her we went back to packing, we were leaving in less than 24 hours after all.

So little and cute! 

Our Friendlord came over to help us finish cleaning and packing for the move so it would look good when she came over to inspect it later (she’s cool like that.)

Pulling out of that driveway was hard, not only because we had a horse trailer being pulled by 26 foot Winnebago, but because we were already missing all the amazing people that we knew there.

JB loaded in the car watching Ash in the Winnebago in front of us

Leaving the driveway of our awesome little farm in San Miguel.
We were super lucky to have such a great place, with such wonderful Friendlords and
friends in the area.  Thank you all for everything!  

Part three with the road trip will come along soon....

Big BIG changes for Fiberton...Part 1

“Well, I guess we’re moving to West Virginia,” I said to Ashley after receiving the news, “I got accepted to Wheeling Jesuit University’s Respiratory Therapy Program!”

I should introduce myself, I’m Ric! Ashley has probably mentioned me before, but now she’s working like crazy (I’ll explain on what later) so I’m picking up the slack with my superior talents :-)

I am the hubby that Ashley keeps talking about. (On the right.)

As I mentioned above, I got accepted to Uni halfway across the country in a place I’d never heard of, let alone been to. I needed a change of career, or a career at all really. I have asthma and have been in hospitals quite often my entire life (I find them comforting… I know, weird, right?) and I have always wanted to be in a medical field, but didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse. I honestly had forgotten that respiratory therapists existed until I had a bad day at work and was looking for something better to do with my work life.

I decided to get the full BA degree, so I looked at schools that offered it, there were about 48. And the top five were Ivy League and/or prohibitively expensive. But WJU looked right up my alley, so I applied. Not only did they accept me, but they gave me scholarships!

After we had decided to move there at the end of summer one of Ashley’s old friends called from Oregon and offered her a job on a campaign, it was a city council race that was highly contested and the candidate needed the best campaign manager that Eugene has ever known (I’m tooting her horn for her) and they asked her to come back to the Eug for “One more race.”

“.......... Should we?” Ashley asked me.

“Why the hell not? I love adventure, and excitement.” (That’s why I’d be a bad Jedi.)

After about two days of me convincing her that we could pack up 6 rabbits, 2 sheep, 2 cats, and an incredibly old black lab into Oliver (the cool name we’ve given to our 1986 Winnebago) she caved.

Oliver, our trusty Winnebago

It was official, we had less than a month to pack up and get to Oregon. We discussed it with Ashley’s parents and after they helped us decide it wasn’t a ridiculous idea, we began telling people with “The Friendlords” (our friends who also happened to be our landlords) and then Mike, Christy, and their friendtern (their intern who also happened to be their friend) Tiffany, and lastly our jobs. We began frantically packing and doing dump runs in between our last shifts at work. 

We pulled Oliver around near the house and bought a 2-horse trailer made sometime in the ‘60’s to haul the sheep (Ashley’s dad Dean drove her, like, 4 hours north just to pick it up because it was SUPER CUTE and also half the price of any other ones we saw online). We started overhauling Oliver and converting the pullout bed into a full time bed and putting in the new entertainment center and bookshelf that I had built. (I just learned how to build stuff recently, so I’m bragging.) Once I had hooked up my Playstation, NES, Atari, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Wii, and my computer I was ready to go. (Unfortunately, we still had a whole house to move out of, hehe.)

The adventure will continue...