RV resorts – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet

Seems as though time just slides by beautifully when winter slips in. This was a work week for me, and the one day I had to drive to town to the “real” office was the day before the huge northwestern snow storm blew in. Lucky me! The rest of the week I worked at home, snug as can be in my little office with the wood stove cranked up high and the cat snuggled in next to me in his bed. Mo plowed a few times, I shoveled and ran the snow blower, and we hauled half a cord of wood to the porch, but the storm didn’t cause us a bit of trouble.

I am working on a rocky soil problem, and my head is filled with stones, cobbles, boulders, and gravels of all sizes. Each of these has a specific size and description of course, and eventually I will get it all sorted out and plugged into all those nice little NASIS fields and someday someone will request some interpretations for the Knot Tableland and out will pop a nifty little report, generated specifically for their area of interest from the data we gather, refine, and populate.

As I sit in the office fiddling with numbers, my mind wanders back to 2004 and 2005 when I was mapping out on the Knot Tableland, and dug a ton of holes in those stones, cobbles, and gravels and described those soils. It was hot and dry, and most of the time I was alone. That is the way we work in soil survey more often than not.

So this week, my mind has been split between recalling those memories as I look at my old descriptions, and talking on the phone with the project leader in Klamath till my ear was sore. ( I gotta get another ear piece!) We resolved the issues, and on this Saturday night, two more soils are written, cleaned up, and put to bed in NASIS.

Then, right in the midst of the worst of the windy snow, I got a call from my daughter Deanna saying that she and her husband were coming down the five and did we want to meet them for a short visit before they chained up to go over the Siskiyous. Wow! Deanna and Keith have their own truck and haul jet engines all over the country, but they haven’t been down this way in at least two years. I don’t get to see my daughter very often, so Mo agreed to drive, whiteouts or not, and we headed over the pass to Medford.

We had a great visit at Shari’s, next to the big Pilot truck stop where they could park the rig. I even remembered to bring the sweater I am working on for Deanna to check the fit. It was perfect and she likes the colors. I still can hardly believe this little girl of mine drives that great big truck.

Somehow, in the midst of everything else, remembering the last days of our trip home from the desert up the California coast just slid right by with an occasional thought, “Oh yeah, that!”. So here is the promised “rest of the story”.

When we left Vandenberg, there was a bit of fog hanging around making the hills look mysterious and mystical. The route led through Pismo Beach, a beautiful place to spend some time, but since it was only 9:30 in the morning when we arrived and still quite foggy and chilly, we decided to continue on to San Luis Obispo. First I had to check out the local quilt shop, and with early morning traffic in the small town almost non-existent, we had no trouble parking the MoHo right in front of the store. I browsed through the windows, but decided that waiting another 90 minutes for them to open was silly and we continued on toward breakfast.

Our route home from Vandenberg AFB could have been simply a run up the 101, but why do simple when challenging is an option. We instead decided that we were up for the winding beauty of California’s scenic coast highway 1. Listed in many places as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. Why in the world would we miss the chance to crawl along the steep cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a motorhome towing a car.

One of my favorite restaurants along this part of the coast the the Apple Farm in San Luis. We were seated in the beautiful glassed in gazebo with brilliant sun shining in the windows framing the lovely hills surrounding us. As usual, breakfast was scrumptious, with home fries and “California Scramble” which included lots of spinach, artichokes, olives and other California stuff. I really appreciate my California upbringing and being exposed to things like artichokes, avocados, and olives as everyday food. I grew up eating lots of fresh stuff from the lush gardens and orchards where we lived that are now just pavement.

We continued north to Morro Bay and our last chance to hightail it back over to the simpler route along 101. The sun was out, the skies were clear, and when we saw the sign saying it was only another 135 miles to Monterey we decided to go for it. It was a great drive. Winding and a bit challenging at times, but nothing too difficult. The only thing about this road that is bothersome is the lack of places to pull over and actually spend time. I was in the passenger seat, and the skies were a just a little bit murky from the morning fog, so my photos aren’t that great. Of course, with the proliferation of digital photography and google search, there are at least a bazillion photos of every single stretch of this beautifully amazing stretch of road. I even have some from other trips we have taken, so I wasn’t too concerned about missing out. In fact, it was nice just being able to do the white knuckle thing now and then without worrying about photography.

Our evening destination was the Military Family Camp at Monterey Pines RV Park and Golf Course. This camp is on the grounds of the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School. We called ahead for a reservation, because even at $30 a night, that was cheap for anything else around that part of California. It was good that we did, because the camp was nearly full. Our rig is technically 26 feet long, and that is what I answer when asked when making a reservation. We were given a nice pull through site on the phone, but when we arrived we were told she had moved us to space 22. I think it was the shortest, tightest space in the park, and a big 40 footer was in our originally assigned space. After crawling around slippery ice plant to try to hook up, and struggling to get level, we decided that in the future we should say we are 30 feet long so we won’t get relegated to the worst sites in the camp!

The campground is adjacent to a beautiful golf course, but the camp itself is really crowded and tight, and is backed up directly to the airport and hangars. Loud noise for much of the night, and the occasional bomb going off now and then made things interesting. We settled in, and decided to try to find a grocery store. Safeway was only 1.5 miles away, but my gosh, the traffic was horrendous! One of those things I forget about California until I get back there. We were glad for a nights rest and hookups, but might not try to come back to this one unless absolutely necessary. There aren’t any Passport America parks anywhere in the vicinity, though, so it was good for a night.

The next day we decided to do another 250 mile run and spent some time searching around Streets and Trips, CampWhere, and AllStays for a place to spend the night. We considered trying to get as far as Trinidad and the free casino, but then found a beautiful little park right on the 101 just north of Willits. Creekside Cabins and RV Resort looked really great on the internet. I tried calling to verify the Passport America Park status, but no one answered so I left a message. After driving through the Bay Area, we were ready for a nice night in a quiet place.

Winding down into a damp, dark canyon, we felt a bit of consternation, but thought maybe the park would be OK. The turn in came up suddenly and we pulled into the driveway only to discover a huge iron gate, tightly closed. It was dark and spooky there, even in the afternoon, but I got out and rang the bell. No answer. We were in a pickle because the rig was cocked at a weird angle and there was no way we would get the car unhooked and we couldn’t back up or turn around. I finally walked into the park and realized that this place might not be the best place to be. There were really old rigs with blue tarps, big dogs with spike collars, strange looking people, and a LOT of junk.

I finally flagged down a somewhat “high” dude and asked him if he could open the gate to let us come in and turn around. He was hemming and hawing but then the camp host appeared, another strange looking woman with wild hair and a gazillion tats and piercings, and said we could come in and look around. One of the reasons we wanted the park was to see some TV that night, Mo was looking forward to one of the debates, and when this woman said, “Yeah we have maybe 6 channels”, we decided boondocking was a far better choice and we managed to get turned around and outta there! Whew!

It was getting late and dark but we got back on the highway thinking we could find a casino, or a pull out or something. I had no cell phone signal, but unbelievably there was still a Verizon signal on the MiFi and I found a park about 40 miles farther up the road. We pulled into Richardson Grove RV Park a little bit later, settling in just before dark and hard rain started falling. We thought we had it handled when we left Monterey. I used all the tools available, found a Passport America Park, used the MiFi and GPS to find it, and still ran into the unknown factor. We still laugh about just how much different that Creekside park looked in person than it looked on the nice internet web site. By the way, it was no longer a Passport America Park, either, and the fees would have been 40 bucks for one night if we had decided to stay.

We surely were glad to return home the next day to our beautiful, safe, cheap, gorgeous space A12 at Harris Beach State Park in Brookings. Ahh, home, or almost home. It was so good that we settled in for two nights and three days before packing up the Tracker, putting the MoHo to bed in the storage building, and traveling home to Rocky Point.

The Polar Plunge for New Year’s Day

I followed a great tradition this morning, celebrating the first day of the year with a plunge into wintry waters. However wintry waters in Desert Hot Springs for me consisted of 94 degree F crystal clear spring water in the lower pool at Catalina Spa and RV Resort. Not a bad way to start the year. I floated silently on my back watching the stars and then swam a slow breast stroke while seeing the sun brighten the skies to the east.

It was only 5:45 am or so, and Mo slept peacefully back at the rig with Abby and Jeremy while I ventured the short walk to the pool. By 6:30 other folks appeared in the pool and spa area for a morning soak. These pools are my favorite part of coming here in the winter. The water is exchanged at a rate of some 35,000 gallons per day, with no sulfur but plenty of healing minerals for achy bones. The swimming pool is cooled from the springs temperature of 130 degrees by adding cooled water, and the spa tub is kept just hot enough at 104 degrees or so. Gotta watch out for the exchange jets, though, that water coming in is HOT!

We love the desert, the silence and emptiness of it all. This part of the desert isn’t exactly silent and definitely not empty, but the air is still desert fresh and the skies are blue and cloudless most of the time. As much as I love being alone in the wild, I also love being tucked into a spiffy spot in a pretty park with goodies all around. It is a completely different experience, yet just as wonderful.

There are more than a dozen different parks in this area, all of them with springs and pools of some sort. Some are expensive and elegant, some are members only resorts, some are just trailer parks and others filled with manufactured homes. It is definitely a snowbird haven with open desert to the east and Palm Springs and shopping south and west.

Catalina Spa and RV Resort seems to be the one we have settled on, and neither one of us has much interest in looking around for anything else. Since this is a members only resort, we can only stay here for seven days with our CampClub USA card, now converted to Passport America, although the folks at Catalina are as yet unaware of the shift. We taped our old CampClub card back together when we realized that maybe we would still need both cards. Good thing. The rate here is fifty bucks a day plus internet without some sort of discount.

There are two areas, the older section called the “lower” park and the newer section called the “upper”. The Upper has a bigger pool, a fancier clubhouse, and 50 amp spaces for the big rigs. The lower section has a funkier adults only pool and only 30 amp sites. It also has older eucalyptus trees and big shady tamarisk rows with oleanders that have to be cut back every year to keep from taking over all the space. Perfect for us since the MoHo is a 30 amp rig.

We stayed up until midnight to watch the ball fall last night, but since that was midnight eastern time, I got plenty of sleep before my early swim this morning. Yesterday we spent a long day driving around the Salton Sea and visiting The Slabs, but that is a story for another day. Today will be a quiet one, with a trip to town for groceries and washing the Tracker, an afternoon of reading and knitting, and finished by a movie trip tonight to see “Warhorse” on the big screen.

Perfect. Just Perfect.

Day 19 July 24 Rainy Day in Talkeetna

We are getting close to our half way point of the trip, and this is the first morning that looks like what I had prepared myself to see in Alaska. It rained all night and there was only one train roaring by at 5 this morning and I slept well, and actually didn’t wake up until five. Guess it is getting a bit darker as the days begin to get shorter, as we get farther south, and just maybe I am getting used to it.

When we left our camp yesterday, it was cloudy but not raining. The road south toward the Talkeetna turnoff has two formal viewing sites for Denali that are part of the Denali State Park, and many other places where the mountain is visible on clear days. With the next few days of predicted heavy rain, I am more and more grateful for that brilliant morning leaving Fairbanks with Denali in full view.

Talkeetna is a popular place it seems. There are lots of cute little rustic Alaska style shops, two visitor centers, with one geared to folks planning to climb Denali. After my four hours doing laundry with one dryer, we drove the short distance to town to check it out. It was raining fairly hard by then, but folks were still walking around the little town, doing the shops and eating in the several restaurants. I didn’t take photos, but if you want to see the town, Dennis and Carol did a great job on their blog when they were in Talkeetna a couple of weeks ago.

The Princess and Holland America buses are here, right behind the RV Camper Park. When the train whizzes by in that same vicinity, you see railroad cars labeled Princess and Holland America since this is a stop off/pick up point for transfers from the train to the buses. If you have a ticket for this 115 mile stretch for the train, you can get on and off at will and the train will stop for you. There are lots of trees and thick vegetation, which seems even thicker in the drippy, dense rain. Last night I was feeling a bit claustrophobic, but if you look at the header photo and then today’s photos, it might be understandable.

This photo is NOT what we saw in Talkeetna, but is a view from the Parks Highway some distance north

We walked to the park on the edge of the Talkeetna River and laughed at all the tents and campfires in an area heavily posted with “No Camping” signs. We caught the aroma of people smoking pot, and saw a lot of youthful activity around, and garbage. Wet sleeping bags draped across tents, boots sitting outside in the rain, that sort of thing.

The river itself looks scary. The current is fast and the water is milky from glacier melt and filled with debris. Not a place I would want to launch my boat, that is for sure! We heard a loud noise going upstream and it wasn’t until I re-read Dennis’s posts about Talkeetna that I realized that it was a jet boat tour, one of the many local tourist activities available. I hear there are some good restaurants with good food and service, but we are saving our eating out bucks for salmon and halibut on the peninsula, so we will skip the local spots in spite of the good reviews.

Today we plan another fairly short drive of less than 100 miles to Anchorage and the Elmendorf AFB Family Camp. Since Mo is retired military, there are no reservations, so we are hoping for a site since the camp is so accessible to Anchorage and it’s time for a MoHo oil change and some city stuff. I won’t have internet at the campground, but if so inclined I am sure I could find many places in town. There is much to do in Anchorage as well, but I’m not really interested in city sight seeing for some reason. Yes, I know, I will probably never drive here again, but this is our big road trip, and the city stuff, even the town stuff just doesn’t trigger my excitement button. I do really want to see the Earthquake Park. I had an old friend that lived through it, and her stories were terrifying.

The rest of the photos from yesterday and this morning are linked here

Day 18 July 23 Catching Up in Talkeetna, Alaska

After a short hundred mile drive south on the Parks Highway from Cantwell 8 miles from our boondock site, we are tucked into the only RV park in Talkeetna this afternoon, after four nights without hookups. Time to catch up on laundry, to upload photos if possible, and catch up on the blog. Who knows when I’ll ever get the chance to check in on the rest of the world, but it may not be right away.

I have been posting blog entries by actual date traveled in addition to the day of our trip (see above title). Since we have been away from the internet, you may have missed a few posts, so you are interested in knowing where we have been, check the archives to the left.

The new header photo is from last night’s beautiful boondock site along Joe Lake on the Denali Highway, just a short eight miles from the main Parks Highway and up 5 miles of gravel. Instead of the beautiful isolation and quiet we enjoyed last night, we are now in Talkeetna Camper Park with electricity and water, lots of neighbors tight around us, 2 washing machines and one working dryer, and intermittent internet. I’m heading for the laundry room right now, hoping I can get enough of a connection to post the last few blogs from my LiveWriter.

Wish me Luck!

It is interesting that I have to take my computer up to the office to get a decent connection while Mo happily surfs away with the Netbook using our WiFi booster purchased last December in Desert Hot Springs. I still haven’t found Windows 7 driver for the gadget, so I guess I am out of luck for the time being.

Miles driven today: 126

Road condition: excellent highway except for the repetitive joints to protect from frost heave. Better than frost heave, though!

Day 4 July 9 Into the British Columbia desert!

Somehow I never knew that there was a huge part of south central British Columbia that is arid sage country. The southern part of the Okanogan Valley only receives about 12 inches of rain a year, and the shrub/grassland community is referred to as Canada’s “pocket desert”. It is a beautiful region, filled with wildlife, wine, rivers, and wildflowers, and I would love to come back and spend some extended time exploring. Today, however, we have other goals. We are saving most of the exploring for the northern parts of the province, for the Yukon, and for Alaska.

We were up early with the light, and were on the road by 8:30 or so after a lovely walk with Abby along the beautiful Lake Osoyoos. We didn’t bother hooking up right away, since the gas station was right at the entrance of the park. We filled the MoHo again, at 3.79 per gallon and 123 bucks, but it was only half full, not empty. Sure am glad we aren’t filling an empty tank! I guess it all works out in the end anyway. A quick hook up right there in the gas station was easy since no one was coming in behind us, and we were off for our entry into Canada.

The border is barely five miles north of Oroville, and we were ready for our crossing, with passports, registrations, animal health certificates, and rehearsed answers. Where are we going? “Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, Alaska”. The customs officer was a tiny woman with a serious face. No silly comments, Sue, just keep your mouth shut and don’t offer anything. Let Mo do the talking. Fine. Of course, it was as simple for us as most folks, with a few questions, and not a single comment about the country of origin of our animal food, no questions about wasp spray (yes we carry it instead of pepper spray), and no questions about food except what produce we had. At that point I piped up with “Five pounds of potatoes, some onions, a bag of carrots, and 2 bags of packaged coleslaw”. Somehow that answer seemed to satisfy all her other questions and she said, “OK, go on”.

Osoyoos is right at the border and has an excellent information center. We pulled in immediately, and the guides there were really helpful, insisting that we should drive all the way north on 97. I looked again at our map, and thought, “no, that isn’t the plan” and we turned west on Highway 3 toward Princeton. It was a great drive, leading us through the beautiful, fertile valley of the Similkameen River, lush and filled with orchards and organic farms, wineries and fruit stands. We stopped so I could add some good produce to my limited supply for crossing the border and I got some ripe, soft, very red tomatoes, and fresh crisp pickle cukes that were perfect for our supper salad.

We stopped to take photos of the wildflowers, and the roads were in excellent condition for most of the day. We circumvented Kamloops and the major part of the Okanogan Valley with this route, but also skipped a lot of traffic and congestion that we got a little taste of as we passed through Merritt. I turned off my phone since I don’t want to pay the huge fees for a data plan, so couldn’t use the gas buddy app to figure out where we would get the cheapest gas. We filled up again in Merritt, and figuring in the exchange of 1.04, and 3.75 liters per US gallon, it cost a whopping $5.34 per gallon and $156.52 to fill the half full tank one more time. We laughed and said that maybe we need to sit a day or two so our daily cost can drop a bit! I am using a Capital One credit card while in Canada since, as advertised on TV, they really don’t charge that exchange fee that some other cards do. I also called them before traveling so hopefully I won’t get denied at the pumps. So far so good.

Emerging from Highway 8, which was perfectly fine to travel, to TransCanada 1, we followed along the huge and very full Thompson River. The mountains seemed so much like the dry parts of Montana that I was really surprised, and then we would round a curve and there were deeply eroded badlands that looked ever so much like landscapes I have seen in Wyoming or Utah. Once we were on Highway 97 however, the landscape started to change, with pines showing up, and then suddenly we were back in lush green fir country, and we arrived at the small town of Clinton, BC.

The Gold Trail RV Park here seems to be a popular stop, and it was our choice because we wanted full hookups before we continue north to the Provincial Parks. It also has our CampClub USA discount, and even on a Saturday night, there was an opening for us. As I mentioned earlier, we decided to travel as much as possible without reservations, and so far it is working. Gold Trail Park has an interesting vibe, maybe you could call it “down home”? The owner in “interesting”, and very friendly, and he joked with us a lot while showing us to our site. Full hookups, and surprisingly level, for $17. Canadian. (I did use the ATM and my no fee debit card to get some Canadian cash back at the visitor center). For another 3 bucks in Canadian change I have darn fast WiFi to actually upload photos and catch up on blog posting!

There is a big bbq buffet here every night, fairly cheap at 9.95, but Mo and I didn’t really want an all you can eat thing, and decided instead to grill some Alaska cod from the freezer accompanied by the yummy salad from the Similkameen Valley. (Now I have to go to the internet to look up how to pronounce that name, since who has a clue which syllable get’s the emphasis!) OK, I can’t believe I never knew this, but if you type in “pronounce Similkameen” into the google search bar you will get this. Love it!

After supper we walked the extent of the town down one side and up the other in the evening light. Right on the Cariboo Highway, the town actually has an interesting history. Even though it was Saturday night and the museum was closed, the village has great signs throughout with historic photographs of the enterprises that once occupied the empty blocks taken from the same vantage point. The villagers have pride in their little community as well, with a town notice for clean up day to get ready for the town flower judges who will pass through later this month. Summer flowers or not, I can’t quite imagine living here through a long, dreary, icy winter.

The skies have been brilliantly blue so far throughout our trip, but this evening there are some clouds hovering to the north and the forecast may include rain as we continue. This evening has been quiet and gorgeous, the vistas are all brand new, the faces and people are all different, even the cars don’t look the same. I’m definitely on a long-distance road trip at last.

Distance driven today: about 255 miles

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here.