Home for us is the Central Oregon Coast – Lincoln City – A town of about 10,000 permanent residents and 2 million visitors every summer. To say it’s a tourist town is a gross understatement. But it’s been home for 15 years prior to our nomad life and there are few places more beautiful.

We left here in October 2020 and returned in June 2021, almost 9 months and over 4,000 miles of learning what it is to be a nomad, living the full-time RV/van lifestyle, and exploring some amazing places.

Calvin works for a guy that restores original Toyota FJ40 Landcruisers -These things go from rust buckets to absolutely beautiful and better than new! For months, he’s been begging Calvin to come back and do some work for him. So here’s the deal – give us a place to park and he’ll restore some FJ40s.

So our parking spot while in Lincoln City is right on the Pacific Coast Highway 101 smack dab in the middle of town. You could say we became a tourist attraction while in this tourist town! We had honks and shouts of encouragement from other skoolie and vanlifers, dozens of people stopped by to check out what we were doing, even more so once the roof got raised (see the next post for details on that), and all our local friends knew right where to find us.

One of the most immediate and amazing things happened on our first full day back. From our last post, you learned that we had just lost our tabby Jack in Sisters. Well back in October before we left Lincoln City, our Sophie had wandered off into the woods behind this very property. She was feral when we rescued her a few years prior and she’s a great hunter, and we’d get reports periodically from our friends in the area that she was alive and healthy, but no one had been able to catch her or even get close to her, even though they’d been leaving food out for her while we were gone.

The day after we arrived, Calvin was feeding the kitties their evening meal and I was reading on the couch. A black kitty jumped on my lap and I patted it without really paying attention and it jumped out the door as Calvin exclaimed, “That’s Sophie! She doesn’t have a harness on!” All of our cats where harnesses all the time. I stepped outside and there she was, aloof and wild Sophie, who walked right up to me, accepted all our love and snuggles, and settled into her space in the van as if not a day had passed. She was thinner, but healthy and strong, and as loving and snuggly as ever! As much as we miss Jackie, we are thrilled to have Sophie back. Calvin’s co-workers were amazed that she just waltzed right back into our lives as they’d tried again and again to get close to her. It makes me wonder if Jack went away to make way for Sophie’s return – the universe is funny that way.

Being back on the Oregon coast meant beach time, of course, kayak time, and most importantly time with friends. For Calvin it also meant work, so while he was helping his boss reassemble some Restored FJ40s, I got to play with her pals.

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