Last day of driving, and I’m struck by how beautiful California really is. After two days of flat nothingness, I’m able to see the mountains and pine trees with fresh eyes. We’re lucky to live here.

On our drive home, we reflected on the different lifestyle inherent in living in a place like Rexburg, particularly for the children. The kids (and adults) were so beautifully trusting of strangers, and had full access and ability to just roam freely. Even the surprisingly young ones were allowed to just pop into the ATV by themselves and ride it around wherever and whenever they wanted. The group of kids all rode their bikes down to the river to swim with free reign, and there was a beautiful freedom that just let them be kids. The mother of the family we stayed with remarked on what a great place it is to raise kids, but for one thing -- she wishes she had the ability to expose her kids to people who are different from them, and let them see the lives of people from different places and different backgrounds. So we wondered, is it possible to give your children both? A free range childhood full of trust and safety, and the experience of growing up around diversity, so they’re both safe and challenged? I hope so.

On our way back, we realized that our previous plan to park the RV in San Francisco is a bad one, for a few reasons. Mostly, we don’t want to have to worry about somebody breaking into it. But it’s also unclear what the laws even are about parking an RV in the city -- where it’s okay, how long it’s okay for, and whether it’s okay as long as you’re not living in it. So we decided to find a secure place to park it when we got home. We did some research online and found a perfect place nearby in Alameda, with covered parking and security.

We didn’t roll into the Bay Area until late, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to park it near our place, so we spent the night at the Golden Gate Bridge rest stop we stopped at during our hashtag van life tester weekend. In the morning, we called our perfect parking place, only to be told they don’t have any space for us. We took the RV to the apartment unload all our stuff, and spent two frantic hours Googling and calling places until we hit the parking jackpot. Our main concern was security, and the place we found happened to have one spot open up THAT DAY, and has TWO police officers living on-site. How’s that for security. There was still something strange about rolling up to the place and having a cop in full uniform there waiting to check us in… “Are you Mike?”

All in all, the four day whirlwind ended up being the best thing we could do for ourselves. All of our fears, hesitations, discomfort about the RV were forced out of us. We got a crash course in RV life, and learned lessons it probably would have taken us months to take us to learn otherwise. We still have some things to figure out, and I’m sure there are plenty more lessons to come, but for now, it already feels like home.