25 years and 7 different homes in San Diego county. Really enjoyed living downtown, on the beach, on a golf course, and rural Rancho Santa Fe. Tried to mix it up and keep life fresh and interesting. Nevertheless, time for a change. We always liked moving around and exploring different communities, hence the attraction for the RV lifestyle.
Rancho Santa Fe
Its amazing how much stuff we accumulated but rarely used. At one point we had 3 chainsaws, one on a stick…and we lived in a city. Such a cleansing to sell everything on craigslist or give it away, which wasn’t easy in a gated community in Rancho Santa Fe. We were not interested in a storage locker…means we would have to return to the same spot and the value of the items would be less after a couple years of storage. Limited ourselves to a few pallets of possessions. Even then, it was still way too much and we will downsize further as we move into the RV.
We grew Zinfandel grapes and made wine. The last couple of years it was drinkable. Met a lot of wonderful people in the wine industry. For the most part, everyone in the wine industry is friendly and enjoys talking about….and drinking wine. We learned so much about crop management (planting, training, pruning, watering, number of clusters, pests, brix, total acid, soil, drainage, head management), harvest (birds, bees, timing), fermentation (temperature, yeast selection, nutrients, malolactic, extended maceration, punching down the cap, gross lees), storage (wood, glass, stainless steel, concrete, plastic), bottling, equipment (sprayers, crusher/destemmer, picking bins, oak barrels, stainless steel storage, pumps, tubing, sanitation, presses, bottlers, corks, labels, argon gas tanks, SO2 management, lab equipment), age (polymerization, microoxygenation), and most important…what we like in a particular bottle of wine. Eventually, we began to pick up on characteristics of a bottle; clarity, color, ph, tannins, ripeness/brix, stainless steel/oak, %alcohol, blends, extended maceration, malolactic fermentation that was done to a particular varietal. It became difficult to learn much about someones wine at a winery tasting room without talking to the winemaker. There is always a tale about location (sun, slope, soil), conditions (dry/wet, early or late frost or rain, temperature, pests), fermentation, length of time on and type of oak, and the ending by consuming the wine/story. Although we made wine every year for the last 10 years, only a few of the labels made it to this photo. Its fall in San Diego (Thanksgiving). Leaves get a little color, but mostly they shrivel up letting us know its will soon be time to prune for next year.
We made friends with Domaine Artefact winery (Joey, Mark and Lynn) in Escondido, California which was not far from our home in Rancho Santa Fe. They produce very good wine and are expanding as they are rapidly discovered. We dropped off some equipment and watched Joey rack wine from a barrel, then clean it.
Our long time good friend, Dan, invited us to the opening of MotoDeli in Encinitas by the coast. Its a joint venture he and others started after having a successful food truck/cater business. Their food is unique, not expensive, and amazing.
We cleaned out the house, had it staged to rent/sell, made repairs, had it repainted, and left 4 pallets to be picked up. The moving company no-showed. It took them 6 days before they finally picked up our belongings. We had to start driving to Florida. Thanks to our friends Toni and John, the belongings got loaded onto a truck.
We planned on taking 7 days to get to Fort Myers. This was a reasonable pace for the 2500 mile drive. We tried to sight see as much as possible. We visited “The Thing” for $1, Riverwalk in San Antonio, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Jake loved the trip. New places every day and squirrels to chase.
Finally Florida….ate stone crabs on Captiva Island.
