It's the last night at home, and we are as ready as we can be. Luggage packed with just the last few things to go in in the morning and an early night on the cards as we leave the house at 4.30 am to go to our local airport to fly to Amsterdam, then on to San Francisco -14 hours flying time.

It's about this time, we wonder what we have forgotten to do. The check list seems to get bigger each trip.

We went and had a meal with our daughter, Helen, Stu and baby Joshua tonight to say goodbye. We really miss all of our family while we are away, but you can't have things both ways.

We are going to stay a few days in San Leandro, with our friends Deb and Rich who are so good to open their house to us. We will have a few days to recover from jet lag, before we head north to pick up our rig, which has very kindly been stored for us by some lovely friends, Ed and Cindy for the last 10 months - very generous of them. We hope we find the rig in good shape - you never know what's crawled in and made itself at home. Fingers crossed all will be well. Cindy has said it's very dusty on the outside, which is to be expected. Terry will have to get it all washed and cleaned  before we set off on our wanders.

So, off we go again. California here we come.