You never know what you might end up doing when workamping on a farm.

When the farmers went away for a couple days recently, I had my chance to milk the goat.

Fanny didn’t seem to mind. At least not too much …

So be prepared to learn new things when taking on an out of the ordinary workamping job!

When we lived just blocks away from the boardwalk in Old Town Eureka, we would enjoy the summer concert series when we could stroll along the waterfront listening to live music in the cool evening breeze. If it wasn’t raining.

Here in Florida, these type of concerts go on year-round. We attended one the week before Christmas at the Vero Beach Library. I wore shorts.

A couple weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, we had the air conditioner blasting during dinner. We were getting pretty heated. Literally! Just a few nights later, we had to run the heater and get out the wool blanket.

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Whenever we buy land somewhere, I want a small hobby farm. Nothing too big, but I do want a vegetable garden, some chickens, goats and maybe a couple of cows. But the animals won’t be for eating; as a vegetarian since 1989, I love animals too much to eat them.

But, since landing here at White Rabbit, it’s become clear to me that if I want farm animals, I’m not going to be able to hide from the cycle of life and death that comes with them, even if my animals aren’t there for meat.

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Whew, what a relief. I just crunched our trip expenses from June to December, and found that we actually came in under budget by almost $12,000! How did we do it? By over budgeting, being ultra careful about things we chose to see and do, and Workamping. Now, this nice little savings is going to allow us to continue our journey even longer than we originally planned, by at least 6 months or so.

Now, let’s talk money. Pay attention; here are some important lessons we learned:

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Here is a nifty little widget that would have come in quite handy when our Datastorm F2 GPS unit went bad. Though using it would have required for us to be online already!

Regardless, the Dishpointer satellite alignment calculator is still pretty cool.

We’ve included the Dishpointer Lite widget here for your use. Just select your satellite from the drop down menu and enter your location – city or zip code – in the box. The map and details will automatically update with the required elevation, azimuth and LNB skew for your satellite dish. Drag the map or marker to pinpoint your location.

Pretty cool, eh? If you think so, wait until you check out the full version.

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It’s a swampy night here in Vero, and we’ve spent the last few hours swatting away bugs while enjoying the last of the holiday season. This monumental year is coming to a close, and even after thousands of miles and too many towns to count, we are both nowhere closer to deciding where we want to live, or what we want to be when we grow up.

We have our favorite regions, but really, the only decision we’ve been able to make, is to decide not to decide. In essence, that is a decision of sorts, right?

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If you’re planning an extended road trip, it’s inevitable that a major holiday or other important family occasion will collide with your itinerary. At some point, you’ll have to decide whether or not to interrupt your dream with a trip back to reality.

When planning our own journey, I knew that Christmastime would present a huge dilemma. My Mexican family is big on Christmas . . . really big. Each year, dozens of relatives gather at my Mom or sister’s place each year for the big party on Christmas Eve. We gorge ourselves on Mom’s homemade tamales, empty the liquor cabinet, and wait for Santa to finish pounding shots so he can make his midnight appearance for the kids.

Last year Jim and I missed my family’s party, because Jerry had just had his leg amputated. This year, we had to decide; should we find a way to get back to L.A. to be with my family? Or ignore the holidays and keep traveling along?

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Ah, sunny Florida. The state name alone conjures up images of white sand beaches, sun baked old farts, golf carts, and tropical umbrella drinks.

But there’s one unique aspect of Florida that the tourism guides fail to mention. Bugs! Mean bugs. Flying bugs. Stinging bugs. You name it, this state has some of the nastiest insects that we’ve encountered on our entire trip. Pest control is big business in this state, but as usual, nature bats last.

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The morning we left Jetty Park for Vero Beach after discovering the shuttle launch was not going to happen, we decided to pack up quick and beat the crowds to the dump station.

It was early but we still weren’t first in line. Everyone was heading out, except for those just waking to make breakfast.

As we dumped our tanks using our new clear hose adapter, René glanced at the nearby rigs, smelled the air and said, “Yum, Bacon and Turds!”

Why did we get one of those clear dump hose adapters, you ask?

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After 7 months of fulltiming, Jim and I have gotten into the groove of doing whatever we want, whenever we want. Sure, there are a few occasions when work-like commitments require us to stay inside and bang away on our keyboards for a few hours. But overall, our life is seriously lacking in any routines.

Sadly though, this trip isn’t about sitting on our butts indefinitely. Now that we have reached the midway point of our year-off, it’s time to test the waters in business choices that we’ve always been interested in, but never had the time to pursue. A “vocation vacation” if you will.

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