I was well warned that the Pacific Northwest would be gray and rainy this time of year, so the weather we’ve driven into is no surprise at all.   It has been raining almost continuously since we arrived on Tuesday and the forecast says to expect no sunshine until Sunday at the earliest.

But that’s OK for now.   We are parked here to catch up on work and do a little planning for the future, not to play on the beach.   This sort of pause in the action is a part of the full-time experience.   We can’t take our next week for granted. We’ll wake up in the same bed for sure, but where will it be?

From the outside looking in, some people may assume we have a grandiose Master Plan which directs us.   Others wonder, asking us, “How do you decide where to go?”   The truth is that we have only the vaguest of Master Plans, and it is driven by basic influences, like the seasons.   As I mentioned a couple of days ago, in the winter we have to stay south and below 6,000 feet.   In the summer we head north and go visit family.   Other than that, we consider things like upcoming holidays, business meetings, rallies, or interesting sights guide us.   The school schedule is no longer an immediate factor since we plan to keep homeschooling for second grade.

For now, the season forces us west of the mountains, hugging the mild coast until we get into southern Oregon.   We can only go south from here, and so that’s the plan:   stay low and head south.   But then there are details to work out.   Thanksgiving is coming. Where will we spend it?   We’ll need a full hookup for the actual day, since Eleanor will be doing massive cooking. I’ve been collecting ideas and talking to friends that we might meet.

Another example: I need to meet some people in California for future articles and business meetings.   When will we be there, and where will we want to camp near major metros like San Francisco and Los Angeles?

And then there are the places we want to visit simply for the sake of visiting.   Yosemite will be at the tail end of the season, but we might sneak in for a couple of nights.     I’ve been wanting to have dim sum with Larry and Bill in San Diego.   We’ve got friends in Oregon and California to catch up with.   And we definitely want to spend a week or more in Anza Borrego.

We toss all these ideas, obligations, and wishes into a mental bag and let them all rattle around.   Pauses like the one we have had over the past two days give us a chance to look inside the bag and put everything in order.

Practically speaking, it’s also a chance to spend a lot of time online researching.   Sometimes you’ve just gotta surf for a few hours to figure out what’s ahead.   Parks, campgrounds, scenery, weather, events, postal drops … all the info is out there if you go hunt it up.   I make notes on alternative ideas, tell the Post Office where to forward our mail, and then hope for the best.

So we’ve done that and now I’m sick of the endless rain and sitting inside the trailer. On the San Juan Islands the forecast was for rain and 30-40 MPH winds with gusts to 60 MPH, so we stayed put.   But tomorrow we are moving.   I have the feeling that if I wait for a nice sunny day to tow we might be here all winter.