So we had been on the road now for 2 weeks. You may remember that we had left our son in charge of showings of our house back in Ottawa. Well he had given us a heads-up that a couple in the neighborhood had returned for a 2nd and then a 3rd look. He thought an offer to purchase was imminent. We processed this good news as we motored from Garden Grove to Oceanside, CA a distance of 100 km.
Oceanside is the quintessential name for a town next to the ocean isn’t it? However there is also WaterColor near Seaside on the Florida panhandle that we would discover a few years down the road. After all the driving, we were looking forward to spending a lazy week in Oceanside and hooking up with our friends Norm and Patty from Calgary. We had just checked into a nice RV resort not far from the beach when we received an email from Kyle that the couple were going to send us an offer to buy our house by email.
We were operating on wifi at the RV resort. We did not have a data/roaming plan. Dave received the email offer and got so excited that he could not remember his password when he went to reply. After 10 tries didn’t his Blackberry reset itself and so he lost all his email addresses, etc.. He remembers breaking out in a sweat even though it was not that warm on the coast that day! So there he was phone in hand trying to negotiate the sale of our house by email with a wiped phone. It was not lol but sol – swear out loud! lol!
Well somehow he got reconnected and traded emails back and forth over a couple of days with the potential buyers. Finally we had a deal! All done by email on a Blackberry on wifi in the Oceanside RV resort lol! Now we were truly going to Arnprior and could really relax.
We headed to a nearby mission and enjoyed the warmer air inland, the beautiful grounds and history lesson. All told Spain established 21 missions in California between 1793 and 1833. Their stated purpose was to evangelize Native Americans. Today there is controversy about their methods and the degree of success. As in Canada, there is evidence that many natives were treated harshly and died of diseases that they had no immunity against. St. Junipero Serra a Franciscan, founded the first such mission in California and was canonized by Pope Francis in 2015.
We returned to the coast to get together with Norm and Patty and their daughter Jessica. They were here for the winter. We had some good times together, played a round of golf and visited Escondido. Surprisingly on the coast it was not that warm – we needed a light jacket unless we could get out of the wind. Inland, like in Escondido, it warmed up 3 or 4 deg C.
Twins – A lady from Oregon was driving the Roadtrek on the left and spending her winter in the sun.
Preparations for a wedding to be celebrated on the grounds of the Luis Rey Mission.
We certainly enjoyed our stay in Oceanside but after a week, it was time to push on again.
mattersofthemoment 