Category: RV Stuff

Day 1 Southern States

We tried to drive away from camp this morning while still plugged in to their electricity. Fortunately Dave noticed before we did any damage. We really need to make a checklist and start using it.

We bought propane before leaving the Circle RV Resort. We may be south but we are still running our furnace every night  The park’s computers were down so they couldn’t process our credit card  Dave had to pay cash. Next stop is the Bank of WalMart.

We don’t use ATMs anymore. WalMart lets you get $100 cash back when you shop there and that’s been enough to keep us going between shopping trips. Pretty convenient.

Going east on I-8 I can see snow on a hill ahead of us. But there’s so much solar heat coming in our windows we are both in shirt sleeves.  

Someone else likes that solar heat, too. There’s a large bank of solar collectors on the side of the hill beside the road.

Remember Dave saying we aren’t going over any mountains today? Why are my ears popping?

We stopped at a viewpoint. That’s quite a valley for us to not be on a mountain.

There’s shattered glass on the pavement. Apparently a couple of drivers argued over whose turn it was to pull out next. I wonder if either think they won?

A little while later I saw a bumper laying on the side of the highway with the license plate still attached. Do you think it will be missed? Do you think someone else will claim it? If so, will the claimant report it or keep it for some nefarious purpose? OK, I read too many mysteries.

The windsocks on the bridge say we have a tailwind. Much better than a crosswind.

Sunrise Highway is on the west side of the hill. Shouldn’t it be on the east side?

We drove through a pass at 4055 feet. Not quite to snow level. Not really a pass, either, since that would mean we are in the mountains and we aren’t going into the mountains today; we are going through a valley between mountains, remember?

So, what’s this?

 

You know how groups of things have names: herd of cows, gaggle of geese, etc.? How about a tumble of rocks? There are piles and piles of rounded boulders alongside the road. It looks like some very large kid’s toys. Some of them look like they are stacked rather precariously. I wonder how many are named Balanced Rock?

When we see signs for “brake check area” and “runaway truck ramp ahead” we know we are coming to a big downgrade. This one is 6% for 7 miles. The truck speed limit is 35 miles an hour so it must have a lot of curves, too.

As we round those curves we are driving back and forth between Imperial County and San Diego County. I’m sure glad the counties are not responsible for maintaining this road. Can you imagine what a headache that could be?

I guess we are now out of those mountains we didn’t drive through since the elevation sign here says, “Sea Level”.

In El Centro, California, we stopped at a KFC to eat lunch and talk about future plans. I have a prescription to pick up at the WalMart here but then what? Our daughter called while we were still deciding and she and I talked long enough that we decided to not go anywhere except the local campground.

So we are now at Rio Bend RV Golf Resort in El Centro, Caifornia. We will be here two nights while we decide whether to go to an RV park in Yuma or Phoenix or Quartzsite (we have friends/family in all those places right now) or go boondocking on BLM land or what. One of the realities about moving all the time is that there are always many decisions to be made.

TTYL,

Linda

Turning the Corner

Those from up north need to be careful what they wish for.  Several people have mentioned missing having a white Christmas.  Yesterday it snowed in Malibu, California.  Malibu!

We spent the morning doing chores.  Dave installed the cable cover things he bought at Home Depot to cover the black cable runs up the wall behinds his side of the dinette.  And I did a bunch more research since we about to head in a new direction.  And I learned how to order prescription refills online to be picked up a a WalMart down the road.

Which is likely to be a problem in the future.  I have four prescriptions I take daily.  The WalMart website only listed one of them.  Fortunately it is the one I need now.  But I need them to figure out where the others are before I need to refill them as well.

Looking out my window here at San Elijo State Beach I see the camp host and rangers shoveling sand off the roads and parking pads.  The rain moved things around a bit.  I’m so glad we aren’t workcamping someplace where we are expected to shovel wet sand!

This park has recycling bins, which I approve of, and the money they get from that supports their Junior Ranger program, which I also approve of.  The more kids we get turned on to nature, the better off our earth will be.  I remember when our daughter was a Junior Ranger and she still cares more for the earth than most people her age.

We drove by a beach parking lot with an interesting problem.  The dunes that keep the ocean off the pavement are also keeping the rain on the pavement.  There are still plenty of parking spaces for the people who go to this beach on a December weekday, though.

The bus stop at the corner had a sign on it saying, “Bike Stop.”  Dave’s guess is that is where buses with bike racks stop so you can load your bike on board to move you further along your route.

So what do you think of “Dexter’s Deli: Health Food for Dogs and Cats”?  In my time as a pet owner that was known as Purina.

Part of the road was flooded.  We drove slowly though the water.  Some people never slowed at all. Apparently four-wheel drive makes you nuts.  It doesn’t waterproof your engines, people.

We stopped at REI in San Diego to buy some collapsible water jugs that have spigots so you can set them on your counter and use them instead of water from the fresh water tank. We also bought some other stuff while we were there. The checkout clerk asked me if I had used my 20% discount yet and she looked surprised when I said, “Yes.” She thanked me for being honest about it. What type of world have we become where honesty is a surprise.

We needed to turn onto Convoy Street. I kept calling it Caravan Street. That’s what a convoy is called in the RV world.

The leaves in San Diego are changing color. Looks like Minnesota in October. Does not look like Christmas. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t want snow.

In El Cajon, California, we stopped at Denny’s being careful not to run over the brown bag with the bottle in it standing in their parking lot. The staff there was amazing. One host/server, one cook, and one bus/dishwasher serving everyone cheerfully while joking with one another. The food was perfectly prepared. I would go there again. 

The staff was friendly at the Circle RV Resort in El Cajon, too. We stopped early enough to do some more chores. Dave caulked our leaky window and plugged in my Segway to charge it while I exchanged books. Then we both did more computer stuff. Alway, always more computer stuff.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 13 Pacific Coast

A winter storm hit here at Faria County Beach in Ventura, California, last night. It rained all night. The waves this morning are brown with stirred up muck. High tide is less than an hour away. The waves may wash over the rocks then. Here’s some pictures from our dinette window last night before the storm and this morning so you can see the difference the storm made.

  

The window by my bed leaked. We didn’t know that until making up the bed this morning when we learned the sheet was wet.  We’ll need to caulk that window when it dries out.

We got our generator fixed this morning. It was a broken valve spring that was preventing compression–or something like that. It was covered under warranty so we didn’t have to pay that $111/hour shop labor charge for the two hours it took them to fix it. Whew!

I got my new California State Parks discount pass. It cost $3.50 which we will more than get back the first time we use it. Nice.

We decide we liked In N Out Burger enough to go there again today. We drove right to it.  We have now been in the Ventura/Oxnard area long enough to know our way around. It must be time to move on. So at 2:22 p.m. we headed out of town.

We drove as far south as Malibu where we returned to the Malibu Beach RV Park we stopped at when we finished our Route 66 journey. We knew we could do laundry there. And boy did the laundry need doing! It makes me nervous to run out of clean underwear. We did ask them to give us a site long enough for us to park without being up against the fence this time, though. Again we paid for a mountain view spot but I can see the ocean from my side of the dinette. They don’t seem to consider where your primary windows look when determining if the site is ocean view or mountain view; they just look at which way your windshield points. I like that.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 12 Pacific Coast

We spent the morning cleaning house. Dave washed the outside of the RV and I worked on inside things including cleaning out the junk drawer. It’s amazing how much junk a drawer can collect in just a few months.

Then we did a fill and dump so we can continue boondocking.

A ranger here at McGrath State Beach gave us a bunch of literature to read. We gave back most of it but one piece told me I was eligible to apply for a discount card worth 50% off California State Parks and Beaches. Just think how much money we could have saved already if we had that card. 

The directions she gave us to the Regional Office, which is closed until Monday, where I could apply took us past an In N Out Burger place. A friend from back home (Hi, George.) had recommended In N Out Burger to us so we decided we would try it. But this one was too small and too busy; we couldn’t get in. So we decided to go to Home Depot to get the things on our list there. (Yes, we remembered the other one.) When we got to the mall where Home Depot is, there was another In N Out Burger. So we went in. Good stuff. Thanks, George.

Then Dave walked across the parking lot to Home Depot and did that shopping. And then went to another part of the mall and got his hair cut. We like malls that let us park in one place and do lots of stuff. Especially at this time of year when mall parking is at a premium.We require a minimum of two spots and prefer four when we can take them without feeling greedy.

We saw a Union Pacific passenger train. When’s the last time you saw a passenger train that wasn’t painted for Amtrak or a tourist line? 

We tried to stay at Evergreen RV Park but the office was closed and the instructions for self-registering were missing the list of available sites and the fee envelopes. As we drove through on our way out we saw the park was full of mostly new RVs that mostly looked permanently parked. No empty spaces to be had anywhere.

So we drove to Faria Beach County Park where we had full hookups for $45. Ouch! It was nice to have electricity, though. We had gone seven days with no hookups except to fill with fresh water once. We did run the generator for an hour each evening to recharge the batteries. So, now we know that if we can solve our water supply problem, we can boondock for at least a week.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 9 Pacific Coast

RV etiquette says you don’t knock on someone’s door when all the curtains are closed. I was a bad girl this morning. I got Shadowtracks out of bed. Shadowtracks is the screen name of one of our Escapees classmates—one we hadn’t met in person yet. He was camped at Francis Beach campground at Half Moon Bay when we pulled in there yesterday. But, he wasn’t home then. Now we were getting ready to leave the campground and he wasn’t up yet. So, I knocked on his door at 10:15 a.m. He said he’s glad I did by I’m not sure he meant it. Anyway we visited for a few minutes before we hit the road. He has friends in the area and he was with them last night but after we talked about the storm that’s coming he thinks maybe he’ll leave sooner than he had planned. He needs to get to Phoenix next week and that means a trip through the mountains which he’d rather not do with snow on the ground.

As we were driving south we saw a sand dune that had blown all the way over the shoulder of the road to the white line marking our lane. Moments later we saw a sign saying, “ Drifting Sand.” Duh!

Hmm. Maybe that’s what we should have called ourselves—The Drifting Sands.

I saw a bicyclist with a surfboard strapped to his back. He was stopped by the side of the road. I’m not sure he could actually ride the bike that way. It made me think of something our nephews would have tried to do.

The sign said, “U pick kiwi fruit,” to which I replied, “No, thank you.” I don’t like kiwi.

In Santa Cruz the 7-11 store was PINK.  

The Lions Club Christmas tree lot was at the Elks Club. I wonder why?

We stopped in Monterey for lunch. Denny’s has a new once-a-year treat: pancake puppies. They look like donut holes and are coated with cinnamon and sugar. I didn’t use the syrup they served with them for dipping. They were just right without that. They made me think if the mini-donuts we used to get at the Minnesota State Fair. I ate two with my lunch and saved the rest for later.

We missed our way back to the highway and ended up on another of those steep, curvy roads. We wound up doing a U turn at the edge of a cliff. We may have to start using our GPS more often.

While still on that steep, curvy road I saw a real estate sign said, “Lot with water.” I didn’t see any creek so maybe that meant it had a well. That would make it even more expensive than land is around here anyway.

In Carmel, we stopped for gas. The first two stations we came to didn’t have diesel. Fortunately, the third one did. So now we are set for the long drive between the coast and the Santa Lucia Mountains where there aren’t a lot of towns.

Still in Carmel, I had the urge to tell a driver that the world would not come to an end if she stopped talking on her phone. I suspect she thinks it would.

As we travel I often get songs going through my head and some of them make me think of things I would not ordinarily think. For instance, take the song “Standing on the Corner.” Do you suppose there really was a girl in a flat bed Ford? Winslow, Arizona, is a small town; if there was such a girl, did that song ruin her  reputation?

We planned to spend the night in Lucia, California. It turned out to be a roadhouse with one cabin. We were by it before we realized that was the entire town.

So, now we need a a place to camp and there is nothing. There are pullouts beside the road where we could park but we don’t know if it is legal to do so. We’ve seen other RVs parked by the side of the road but they could just be taking a break, not camping. But the sun will be setting soon and we need to be parked somewhere before it does. I sure don’t want to be guessing what condition some pullout is in when we can’t see it since they vary widely in their suitability for camping.

Then, suddenly, there’s a National Forest Campground! It’s built on the side of a hill so we needed all our leveling blocks but we are safely, and legally, parked for the night. The standard rate here is $22 a night but my Access America Card gets us a rate of $11. This boondocking on the Pacific Coast can be expensive.

But the sunsets are beautiful.

   

TTYL,

Linda