4. Santa Paula

It was 7:30 pm, we were emotionally & physically exhausted. We made our way down a winding, narrow road in the woods, & we pulled into the campground. The office was closed.

I called my friend, Holly, the one who sold us their truck & helped us start out on this new lifestyle. “What do we do – the office at the KOA is closed?” She told me to find the check-in board outside the office. I did…nothing there for us. A packet was awaiting another family, but nothing for us. She called a friend who still lived at the KOA, & that friend contacted their neighbor who works at the office. 

We waited in the dark. The kids asked, “What do we do if no one comes?” The sound of a rushing river was coming from somewhere. TJ & I were trying to figure out how we’d get turned around & get back out of this park if no one came – and where we’d go for the night. We had no legal residence to go back to and no clue where to take our semi-of-a-house for the night. It felt like we’d jumped off a cliff & were frantically thumbing-through the parachute manual, trying to find the page on “how to open your parachute” as we plummeted to the ground. 

Eventually, a woman named Kathy came to the office & let us in. She was so kind, & she found our paperwork lying on the printer. She called her husband to help us find our spot in the campground. We followed her & met her husband there. It was pitch-black, & they helped us try for an hour to back-into our spot. With other trucks parked close to the road, boulders, trees and low branches (remember, our rig is almost 14’ tall), it just wasn’t happening. 

Our kids were crying that they wanted to go HOME, but there was no HOME anymore. 

Kathy said there was one spot in the campground that we could camp in for the night, but someone else was scheduled for that spot the next day. We were so grateful. I think I cried (more). And so we set out to do another thing we didn’t want to do on our first trip: set-up in the dark. 

TJ, being the planner he is, bought an LED headlamp for just this type of unfortunate situation we hoped we wouldn’t experience quite so soon. I, being the great packer that I am, had packed that headlamp tightly away in our 5th wheel – rendering it useless. 

But we did it. We set up the damn camp in the damn dark and we were damn thankful that we had a place to stay for the night.