Sounds like a lot of fun, Sam. Good for you. Here's my thoughts: Keep the truck, but get a Truck Camper: http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/ http://www.truc

Sounds like a lot of fun, Sam. Good for you. Here's my thoughts: Keep the truck, but get a Truck Camper: http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/ http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/ Hell, if you can afford it, get a miniRV. It know it's kind of old school. But there's a lot of people on the West Coast that have them. And the RV parks should be fairly good pickings after the summer's over. They aren't really sexy, but you should be able to stay in very nice RV parks that have wifi, hookups, pools, grills, etc... for about 800-900 a month. And, you don't have to worry about finding a month to month lease. There are even a couple of RV parks outside of LA, but there's a 8-9 month waiting list to get in. If you go this route, you'll have to have another form of transportation for runs to the grocery store, etc... for that, get a vespa or a bike. As for supplies: Skip the desktop and 2 LCD's. If you need the extra screen real estate, use your laptop and plug in an extra LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse. After 3 months, hauling a big case around gets really old. ++ for Utah's/Arizona's national parks like Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Arches, Monument Valley. Skip Tahoe. Do stop by Shasta and spend some time along the coast in Northern Cal. If you do the Eastern slope of the Sierra's at all, stop by the Bodie ghost town. It's awesome: http://www.bodie.com/ http://www.bodie.com/ Spend some time in Big Sur. My favorite part of California is the Central Coast between Big Sur and Santa Barbara. There's a small college town called San Luis Obispo that has a good engineering school (i.e. nerds) and a string of quiet little beach towns all around. My wife and I try to get down there every 3-4 months to unwind. It's lovely. Not exactly a big party zone, but nice if you like the beach and peace and quiet. Buy a wet suit and a surf board and learn how to surf. You can park your camper RV along highway 1 and surf at any number of beaches along the coast. I really didn't like LA much at all. Lived there for 2 years. Meh. YMMV.