Follow the Sun

                                                           Two Become One

How showksiers "put up" the solar panels :p The panels can angle either way (when we are stationary) to get the most sun. This is especially helpful to make the most of the low winter sun and the short daylight hours. Now that we've been on the road a few weeks we know we can rely on the panels for enough power for the lights, charging phones, computers, speakers & cameras, running the water pump, and the toaster :)

We don't have enough to run our small 1500Watts heater. But the independence the panels afford us is amazing! Our happy lil hippy camper ❤️

Sunrise Time-Lapse (35 sec)

November sunrise on Assateague Island, Maryland... It was nearly 7am, and very windy.  But beautiful and worth rising for! The National Park on Assateague has beautiful oceanside and bayside campsites. We stayed oceanside, so we could have a true mid-atlantic East Coast sunrise.  Loving being here in the off-season and just having the whole place to ourselves! Hashtag private island.

Rhonda Baby!

**Disclaimer - we had a pretty eventful 2nd day on the road that we will share as well.  But let's wind it back to Day 1, written before things got too crazy...... 

Bonjour!! Comment ça va? In our second post, we are stoked to introduce you to our RHONDA! But first…. Where we are blogging from :) 

Sunrise from our 'bedroom' window

Ouff. Parked and level in deep in French-land, Québec! On our first night in Rhonda. Its COLD! We are staying at Claude’s property, at cool little Organic farm in Nicolet that we found on “Boondocker's Welcome”, a cool website that provides a network of people who are looking for a place to “Boondock”,(dry camping, basically, staying anywhere, not a regulated campsite) with people who have land or space for campers or RV’s, and want to meet new people and help others out who are traveling. Claude is really nice, has a great spot here. We have met a few of his kittens. He’s doesn't speak much English, so Steph (my Bi-Lingual Beauty) is doing much of the talking. Gonna hang here for the night, then on to New Brunswick tomorrow for Moncton.

So Rhonda… we made a little video today kinda giving a once-over of the old-bird. She's a beauty. Loves it. She's an 84 model and we got her in pretty good condition. She's dry, which is great as I have excelled at drilling holes in her, from the roof, to the walls and floor. Done quite a bit of work to her: We have installed solar panels (video to come), 2 100Watt panels connected to a 12 volt 3 battery bank, to power the DC system and also a 2000watt inverter for our AC stuff. i.e. computer/iphone/camera chargers, toaster etc. Also had to re-caulk all our windows and doors. New freshwater tank connectors with lock. Plumbing, uff, what a nightmare, we waited for about 4 days for a simple T connector from an RV shop, so we could connect the hot water tank, only to get it from another shop and find out after it was all connected that we had a hole in the hot water heater. What a fuckaround. Had to rip out the whole tank and propane system for it. Lost a bit of weight which was nice but no hot water, which is gonna suck on these cold days in New England and Canada. Oh well… gonna have to tough it out, puts hair on your chest right? Propane fridge seems to be woking fine, fingers crossed. Furnace works, again fingers crossed (as I am writing all this, the furnace went out, cute). We have a Carbon Monoxide/Smoke Detector combo, which will be comforting when going to bed with this 30something year old furnace kicking-in throughout the night. 

Fashion is cyclical right? We have done away with the 90’s cushion covers and brought back the OG, 80’s, plaid, rust-orange & brown covers. Lots of scrubbing and washing. Steph made a few new curtains with some thrift store fabric, using a sewing machine older than us all. SO Yea all in all its came together, with our long wait from the Visa people.

So tonight is gonna be a real test to see how long the DC system works for, throughout the night. The furnace can’t draw that much power from it, to run the little fan, but we will see…. nothing like a little body heat to keep us warm, right!?

Ok well we dont have any WiFi tonight so not sure when this will go up, hopefully soon! Thanks for tuning in and hope we can get some of these vids edited and posted as well!!

J

We almost had to take this lil one along

Here we are!!!  Join J & I as we learn to blog :) So many journeys have brought us to this, all culminating (as they tend to do!) to our 'Here & Now'. We are both entering brand new travel territory with this adventure - tackling the East Coast in our beauty lil camper, Rhonda. Together, we are looking for "our" town....  A place to call home. Will we find it? Part of me is secretly afraid we won't ever find "our" spot; always searching for a perfect (unrealistic) combination of all the places we have lived. But alas, facing fears is part of it... and I am also afraid of how I will cope with only 3 little compartments for clothes! LOL the struggle is real.

J & I will both share in creating posts. We hope you can enjoy our different outlooks & writing styles; his & hers perspectives. We want this to be a space to share our journey with you.  I want to share the good (of course!), but also the challenges & frustrations.  I know J is excited to share a lot of the tech & construction side (i.e. the amazing solar power set up). There is inevitably going to be yoga going on, and I sure hope we get to do some water sports too!

After our nearly 22 months USA visa process - read "a lot of time apart as we couldn't live & work in the same country" - we are beyond stoked for this adventure together.  Not just being happy & excited FOR each other, but being really stoked WITH each other about the same project. People always asked how we managed the distance. Well the answer is that we were always working for a common goal - us. We were just coming at it from separate angles. But yeah... YEAH! Just a little bit excited to be back at this thing called 'life' side by side again :)

First thing's first, I guess - to start at the beginning. Our beginning. If you know us already... feel free to peace out, since you probably already know this part! I'll try to make it a quick & trimmed mash up of the last 8 years. Our friendship started doing a waterski show in Malaysia in 2007. We skied together again later in 2007 in Germany, and then found ourselves both working at Seaworld in Australia in 2008.  Our romance started sometime then, in the spring of 2008, which was really the fall, since we were in Australia.  We fell in love really quickly, and had moved in together before the end of the year.  When the waterski show at Seaworld came to an end-of-an-era closing - having their last show after 38 years - we flew back to North America in August 2009... Not without an extended layover in Fiji, when J proposed on the beach! 2010 had us back in Germany, waterskiing at Holiday Park for the last time and planning our Hawaiian wedding. October 12th, 2010 we said 'I Do' next to the ocean in Maui with 55 of our closest friends and family there to celebrate with us. A real dream come true!  Within 6 weeks of the wedding, we were both offered a 13 month contract performing in Waterworld (the longest running, #1 live action stunt show in the world) at Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan.  This was another dream come true - talk about dharma, for my yogi friends out there. We wound up staying in Japan for 3 whole, unreal, amazing, incredible years! The end of our time at Universal Studios Japan coincided with the start of my Spouse Visa application which would (finally, eventually, maybe even any day now) allow me to live with J in the USA. This process is now 21 months and counting.  This "visa period" has been strange for our marriage, but also a time for personal growth.  J went to do Waterworld in Singapore. I went to India to study yoga and obtain my teaching certificate. I went back for my first Canadian summer in 13 years, where I waterskied for Canada's National Show Ski team, and started Suptopia - my SUP yoga business.  In the fall I headed back to India to teach yoga, while in the winter J moved to L.A. to be one of the few performers who has done Waterworld at all 3 locations. We spent most of the spring together in L.A., but I took time for a few yoga courses in Texas & Florida, before heading back to Canada for Suptopia's second season.
Throughout about the last half of this story, we have continually been asked "where will you settle down?".  Honestly, we haven't had a clue! The East Coast seemed to be nearby-ish to most of our family and we often talked about an epic road trip to find a great spot to settle in. Our definition of 'nearby' got somewhat looser after living in Australia, Germany and Japan, lol. When J came to visit at the end of August "the" East-Coast trip came up again... Was it time? Should we do it?? A couple bottles of wine, and a shared twinkle in our eyes decided that we should.

Next blog post, we promise to properly introduce Rhonda, our 1984 Bonair "glamper" - in all her magnificent 80s glory :) The full tour.