Snowbird what is that?
Seriously! I always thought of them as Unicorns. 
We have lived in Colorado for about 15 years now and have enjoyed the weather here. We spend our summers camping with friends and exploring Colorado and Utah in our Polaris RZR.
On the other hand in the winter I spend as many days as possible on the snowmobile and the wife sits by the fire with the dogs awaiting for my return. Snowmobiling is about the greatest thing on earth you can do. It is the only time you have freedom to travel throughout the landscape. But doing it without your best friend is never fun.
The winter is not for everyone. I have tried many times to get the wife into winter activities and she just doesn’t like the cold. From skiing or snowshoeing to snowmobiling. She was just not having it. She is a warm weather kind of girl.
So last year we decided we were going to be Snowbirds for the first time. So we started making plans and trying to figure out where to go. We are both from Southern California, so that seemed to be the natural place to go. And now that the kids are all grown up and we are empty nesters it was time for something new.
And so, it was decided. San Diego here we come. My mom has a large enough house in SoCal that has a separate living area that we can stay in and have some sort of privacy. Our plan would be to make her house our home base and be able to camp on the weekends, exploring the area and spending some time in my favorite place Glamis.
The Plan
So, with a location decided on we had to create a plan. I am a finish carpenter by trade and knew there was no way we could survive 4 months without working. So, I started looking for cabinet companies in San Diego area that may be in need of a cabinet installer.
It was hard to get the right person on the phone. The gatekeepers/secretaries do there job well and I really didn’t have any solid leads. But we’re going anyways. I knew that if I could get my foot in the door and get in front of the owners I could easily get cabinet installation jobs.
We didn’t just want to drive straight through to San Diego. It’s 955 mile and 13.5 hrs. So we decided to break up the total drive time. We wanted to have a mini vacation along the way and visit a couple places before getting to San Diego and start looking for work. We made plans to stay in a hotel in Flagstaff AZ the first night . Then to stay at Lake Havasu State Park for a week before finally heading to San Diego.
Preparing for the Trip
There is a lot of preparation that goes into leaving for 4 months. But at least we weren’t leaving the house empty. My mother-in-law lives with us so we didn’t have to worry about turning off utilities or putting our cable on hold while were gone.
Although my mother-in-law was going to be staying at the house, there was still a lot of things that needed to be done. We had to have our mail forwarded to my mom’s house and stop our bottled water delivery service since MIL only drinks the small bottled water. Then there is snow removal. I had finally found the perfect snow shovel but aren’t going to be home to use it. Which meant we had to hire it out.
Packing, packing and more packing. It seems like it never ends. We have a 24’ toy hauler that literally has no storage space. 
There is just a small kitchen with very few cabinets and a tiny closet in the bathroom. But it has a huge open area where our RZR goes. So, our solution was to use Storage bins. We packed all our clothes, except for about 4 feet of closet hanging space, in to these bins. We had a total of 9 bins. There were a few with clothes, 2 were full of spare RZR parts and other random things we thought we couldn’t live without. They were stacked to the ceiling in the back of the camper right in front of the RZR.
And that is just the beginning
A lot goes on in 4 months of being on the road. So we will tell the story in 3 or 4 post. Hope you enjoy. Here are a few pics from our trip.
READ PART 2 : TIME TO HEAD OUT