The Wanderful + Emotibles The Many Moods of Mister Design Contest is now over. We had a lot of fun handing out Emotibles across the nation, but equally fun was the ability to design Emotibles online BASED ON OUR DOG! The contest, which was Mister inspired, was the neatest thing to us and we’re happy to have worked with such a creative company on this one. Mister had fun, strangers in the street had fun, and unsuspecting Emotibles fans had fun as well. After 805 entries, I’d say the contest was a success.

Hey guys, I started writing a short post for the Daily Photo, and was planning to write something here - instead the Daily Photo post turned out to be the longest post ever. Click HERE to read that one.

In other news: PLEASE email us or leave a comment with your T@B questions/inqueries. We posted a call for questions last week and have received only two questions so far for our T@B Tour video. What kind of crap is that?! I know you want to know “Where do you keep all your belongings in such a small space?!?!” and “Does that thing have a shower?!?” Well, we can’t answer those questions until you ASK US. ASK NOW!

Wherever we stay the night in the T@B, camping enthusiasts of all shapes, sizes, and dispositions approach us to talk about life on the road.  For them, watching the aqua blue teardrop trailer glide into a dusty campground is on level with seeing a sultry supermodel strut down the aisle of the Home Depot, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with power tools, two-by-fours, lollipops, and coconut oil.  California, in particular, is home to especially contented campers.  “We’ve been California residents all our lives, RVing for 25 years around the state, and we still haven’t seen all there is to see just in California!” said Russ, a laid-back RVer we met in Yosemite.  It’s rare to come across a single state that has enough diverse terrain to put it on par with a whole country or even a continent.  California is the place that’s got it all:  Rugged shores, sandy beaches, mountains, deserts, prairies, metropolises, small towns, farms, lakes — almost everything you can imagine is here.  That explains why we’ve been California-ing for over a month now, despite the fact that we’re only allotted three and a half months to see the entire country.  We will be pulling out of here soon, though.  Either tonight or tomorrow morning we’ll say goodbye to our current location of San Diego and haul our butts to Utah.  By December 21, we’ll be in Florida — back on the East Coast — then back to New Jersey on Christmas Eve.

California, you’ve been good to us.  Hey, why don’t you come to New Jersey with us?  Bring the Pacific Ocean, everybody’s invited!

To give you a taste of California’s varying terrains, take a look at these gooey morsels.

The sunset in Yosemite National Park:

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This morning, on nytimes.com, I saw a link to an article which is being updated all day today, as the journalist liveblogs Thanksgiving. I thought liveblogging was corny before (mostly because I am picky about which internet/blogging trends I fall for), but now liveblogging has gone too far. To out corny them (because that’s what we’re about here at Wanderful, corny), I’m going to take it one step further and liveblog MY THANKSGIVING! But not like that, no - see, I always wanted to keep a list of all the things I am thankful for on Thanksgiving, but I usually forget or fall asleep for most of the afternoon. This year, whenever something comes to mind that I am thankful for, I’m going to liveblog it right here on Wanderful. Perhaps this isn’t really liveblogging - I think liveblogging is supposed to have something to do with following your own or someone else’s actions for a day. I don’t care, I’m liveblogging my thoughts, that’s what I’m liveblogging. Here we go:
I am thankful for…
9:13PM
Wine.

9:00PM
THE DINNER WE JUST ATE!
 

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“Where are they?” Katie asks, holding back tears. I drive us through the urban streets, circling the same city blocks as the headlights cut into the fog. Katie stretches her neck out the window, her voice quavers in the wind. We search the area for half an hour, no luck. The people who took our money are gone.

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I can’t stress to you enough how nervous I get before meeting someone for the first time — especially when there is plenty of time leading up to the initial introduction to ruminate over the possibilities. My brain cramps up imagining all the ways the meeting could go awry. But, really, how many strangers actually plan to kill me and wear my skin as a fancy bathrobe? Hopefully no more than 12 or 13 out of six billion. Certainly, the daughter and son-in-law of Georgia and Roger (remember Georgia and Roger from Michigan? They were so nice!) would not invite us to their home for dinner with the nefarious intention of harvesting our flesh, right? Judging by the sweet smell of oven-baked cookies and the warm greeting Pete and Marcy extended to us upon our arrival, it quickly became clear that they had no murderous motives.

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Walking into a crowded bar on a Friday night can be an unpredictable experience. This particular bar was called The Chieftain, in the Mission District of San Francisco. It was an Irish pub, but the bouncer on this particular night was a plump, redheaded Brit. He cracked a joke as he asked to see our ID’s.
“Huh?”
He smiled and his lips moved again, giving voice to his musical British inflections; however, I couldn’t make out a single word. People were talking all around. Couples had to yell at each other across their tables just to be heard. Being somewhat hard of hearing and largely unfamiliar with non-James-Bond British accents, I had to pretend to understand his joke. Thinking quickly, I said “Hahaha!!” He let us in without incident.

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Let’s get us some equal rights, dammit.

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Read the first half HERE.

According to Penny, we still had three miles to go before we would reach the bottom of that hill. I was nervous for our own safety, but it was hard to concentrate so much on that when I was worrying about the fate of Wanda, stuck in the mud, cliffside - especially because we realized ten minutes after leaving the T@b, that we didn’t put her emergency brake up. After a minute of wondering how much of a chance she had of not rolling off the cliff, we realized she would be pretty safe because she was STUCK IN THE MUD.

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A long and detailed recount.

Mark, Mister and I left Fort Bragg and headed towards San Francisco, around 6pm on Sunday night. Mark drives most of the time during the day, and always when it’s dark out. Lately we’ve only been driving at night and always down some loopy road. As Mark guided the three of us in the jeep, with Wanda the T@b in tow, down and around a windy highway, my mind began to wander. I thought about what I should write about for Wanderful’s Monday morning post. The past two weeks have been pretty enjoyable, but all we’ve been doing is spending the time looking at the Pacific, picking up rocks and thinking about the Redwoods - nothing you guys want to hear about I’m sure. My thoughts shifted as we made a left on a road (as advised by Penny, our GPS) with a bright yellow caution sign that read “WARNING: Through Traffic Not Advised”. A sign anyone would have listened to….except for us.

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