Oh My did we have a bit of an adventure coming home from San Diego!!!  We were driving our new, old van (a 1989 Ford E150 van conversion Steve’s parents gave us to use for camping) on New Year’s Day.  It only has 130,000 miles on it and runs great, or so we thought when we began the trip.  But when we got about an hour outside of San Diego it started overheating going up the hills.

We couldn’t reach Michael and Ariane to decide if we wanted to turn around and go back to their house, so we let it cool off a bit and took off for Temecula.  Being New Year’s Day, even though stores are open to shop, there isn’t much available for car repair.  So, after searching around Temecula we continued limping up the highway a little stretch at a time.  The van actually did pretty well until we hit Rancho Cucamonga and then realized that since the rest of the trip was hills for the next 100 miles, we should stop pushing it and settle in for the night.

We stopped at a Sears garage and the very sweet crew there looked at the radiator and determined that we needed a new one and directed us to the best local shop which of course wouldn’t be open until the morning.  The boys fell head over heels in love with our puppy, Sequoia and any one of them would have taken him in an instant if we had wanted to let him go!  Sequoia is now 35 pounds and is 4 months old.  He lost his first puppy tooth on the trip and is growing up so fast!

We decided to explore the town of Rancho Cucamonga and went to dinner and a movie at a great mall called "Victoria Gardens" which is designed like an old town main street and you actually drive through the mall rather than just walk it.  They have sidewalks and the stores all look like fun old facades.  It’s really cute and it was hopping with the crowds.  We ate at California Pizza Kitchen, watched the end of the Rose Bowl game and then caught "National Treasure 2" at the theatre. 

Since we had the puppy with us a motel/hotel wasn’t likely to allow him in the room with us and I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of leaving him in his crate in the van, sooooooo….. I decided that we should have our Chris Farley "Living Down by the River in a Van" adventure and we decided to camp out in WalMart’s parking lot!!!  It was hilarious.  We got our "bedroom" ready by buying curtains and tension rods (color coordinated of course!) and setting the puppy up in his crate in the front of the van.  I slept great, Steve was much less comfortable but too much of a gentleman to let me know he was sleeping in a crack and rolling off his side of the miniscule mattress.

By the next morning, I was really pretty much done with this adventure, I wanted my shower, some new clean clothes and to watch some news, but the radiator shop would take all the way until 4 PM to be finished.  We were in Fontana (let’s just say a town that’s not quite as upscale and nice as Rancho Cucamonga) but we did enjoy a great Mexican take out lunch in between sitting, sleeping, waiting, walking the dog and waiting some more.  All I could think about was getting home to catch up on my emails and start the New Year’s creating.

We arrived home at 10:30 PM last night and I was never so glad to see home, EVER!!!  I think I’m done adventuring for a while.  But then I am thinking how we can make our van more comfortable for some quick summer get aways up in the mountains… hmmm…. perhaps a platform extension to allow a larger blow up mattress…..