We are on the move again, making the annual slog from the Oregon Coast all the way south to Oceanside, California.
It is a roughly 900-mile trip that we are doing in several stops over a seven-day period.
First stop was Friendly RV Park in Weed, California. We’ve been there several times before, going to and coming from Oregon. The park itself is maybe a 5 on a scale of 10: fairly crude set up, gravel sites, only 30 amp service (in 90 degree weather!), and zero amenities. However, this park rates a 10 when it comes to location, as it is located just off I-15, within a couple hundred yards of a Pilot truck stop, several restaurants, and a nice discount grocery store. In addition, the glory of Mount Shasta is right in your face: the most prominent geological landmark in Northern California, a 14,000’ volcano. Normally, Mt. Shasta is covered with snow. However, in the midst of the decade-long heat wave, there is barely any snow up top.
Speaking of that, the trip south on I-5 toward our next overnight stop was a gut-wrencher. Lake Shasta, which is one of the prettiest man-made reservoirs in America, is a shell of its former self, with the current level down 133’ from capacity. Vast portions of the reservoir are now dirt and rock, a long way from navigable water. Charlie and I vacationed at this lake about twenty years ago in a houseboat with two other couples: what a beautiful experience. Today, there isn’t a whole lot of that water to houseboat on. What a shame!
Speaking again of water, on our way to Orland, in the Sacramento Valley, there are actually vast plots of land that have recently been planted in orchard crops. WTF, farmers, have you not heard of GLOBAL WARMING? Have you not noticed your water reservoir (Lake Shasta) drying up? It’s hard to understand, to tell you the truth. Farmers in California have been getting almost free water for the past fifty years and, like junkies used to getting their “fix”, are having a heck of a time putting down the needle.
BTW, as we headed south on I-5, we received news that a forest fire just sprang up in Weed. Talk about timing! The authorities may be seeking us out, thinking that we could have tossed a lit cigarette into the brush. Except that we… don’t smoke.
We stopped at The Parkway RV Resort in Orland, California for a night. It is a very nice park, with mature shade trees, a pool, a nice store and friendly staff, and conveniently located a mile down the road from I-5. It’s in the boondocks, to be sure, in the midst of the orchards and farms of the Sacramento Valley. Lots of hayseeds making good money in this agricultural paradise. It’s one of the biggest rice producing areas in the United States. Rice, fruit, and nuts require LOTS of water, something that is becoming harder and harder to find in California.
From Orland, we headed south on I-5 toward the Bay Area. We drove past vast orchards of olives, nut crops, various fruit crops, and thousands of acres of rice paddies. Again, where is the water coming from? These crops use vast quantities of water. My guess is that the farmers are heavily mining the groundwater aquifers like they are in Nevada. It’s a desperation play that will work for a while but that will not deter Mother Nature and the long-term drought that we’re experiencing.
In order to get to the Monterey Peninsula (our next stop), we had to drive through the San Francisco Bay Area. I always hate this stretch of roads because they are the worst freeways/highways in the western United States. One of the reasons is that several very active seismic faults underlie the geography here (the San Andreas and Hayward Faults, to name a couple) and, therefore, the roads are constantly being undermined by shifting earth. The worst highways are those made of concrete: the effect is like driving over a washboard. It’s not so bad when the road surface turns to asphalt. Anyway, we bounced our way around the Bay Area on I-680 and, luckily, nothing in the RV came unglued. Except us. (I tell Charlie that driving the rig through the Bay Area probably takes a year off my life expectancy each time I do it!)
We arrived yesterday at Marina Dunes RV Resort. We’ve stayed here before because the RV park is very nice and is located near a lot of good stuff like stores, restaurants, and the ocean. Also, it is about a dozen miles north of Fisherman’s Wharf, Cannery Row, the Monterey Aquarium, and such. Pebble Beach is just down the road. Anyway, this park rates a 10 in terms of location and amenities. The only downside is the very mature trees in the park that make utilizing my Starlink satellite internet equipment impossible.
One of the amenities that we didn’t enjoy when we arrived was our PROPER SPACE. We booked this three-day stay about ten months ago, so they knew we were coming in our 40’ rig. When we got here, the folks in the office assigned us space 68, which is 30’ deep! No bueno, to say the least. I raised Hell, to be sure, and was told that there was a “computer glitch”. Supposedly, the online registration form said that I was arriving with a 24’ unit. That was/is bullshit, which was confirmed by the email from the resort I got before arriving which said that my space might not fit my rig. Question: How would the “system” know this unless I had given it the correct 40’ dimension in the first place?
Reality: it is Labor Day Weekend, probably the most sought-after days in the park’s calendar. What I suspect happened was that someone was late scheduling his Labor Day trip, called the resort (the owner or manager) and, as a favor, they gave these yahoos my spot and moved me to another. I raised Hell with the office staff and indicated that something smelled FISHY. The Resort Manager happened to be there and took some shit from me. He immediately directed staff to “fix the problem” and we were reassigned to a proper space… despite the fact that the park was 100 percent booked for the Labor Day Weekend.
Someone else got the shaft… they can deal with that guy when he arrives.
Our travails weren’t over, however. In the process of squeezing our rig into the small space (initially), Charlie re-injured her foot and some trees scraped the paint on my rig. Sonofabitch!
One of the really cool things about this park is the access to the coastal sand dune complex adjacent to the park. One can walk down a sandy path to the ocean (about ¼ mile) or go out a side gate into an iceplant/dune habitat where there are trails that goes for miles.
Our dogs have always loved this place because they can wander freely in this paradise, smell the foreign odors, chase rabbits, and meet other off-leash dogs. On our first journey out into the habitat area, we came across a guy with three Boston Terriers!
There is a State park just down the road, on the cliffs overlooking Monterey Bay, where fliers cruise effortlessly in their paragliders.
It’s a neat scene, made even better by the cool air temperature (61 degree high yesterday). If one was to drive 5 minutes inland, the air temperature would rise about 30 degrees.
Our plans on Saturday were to get Charlie’s nails worked on, go to Walgreens, and then have a lunch at Scales, an excellent seafood restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey. But that didn’t happen. While I waited for Charlie’s salon session to end, I re-checked parking availability near Fisherman’s Wharf. To my dismay, I found out that Scales, an institution on the Wharf, closed its doors in July, 2021 in a dispute with the City of Monterey (which owns the Wharf). What a bummer!
We spent most of the day on Sunday driving down Highway 101, through the Salinas Valley and then over and into the San Joaquin Valley.
Hwy 101 was formerly El Camino Real, or the King’s Road. It is the route that the Spanish military and Franciscan clergy used to settle coastal California. It goes from San Francisco all the way down to San Diego, and there are Catholic missions located all along the route, about a day’s horseback ride apart.
From Monterey to Paso Robles, the route we took on Sunday, the Salinas Valley is full to the brim with row crops, orchards, and grape vineyards. It’s quite a pretty ride, much of it memorialized in the movie, “Sideways”.
In the early afternoon on Sunday, we completed our 177-mile jaunt over to Lost Hills RV Resort in the San Joaquin Valley for a one-night stand. The temperature was 107 degrees when we arrived, so we hunkered down, put on the A/C to “max”, and watched TV, sweating like pigs.
Speaking of near-death heat, our sons Jonathan and Jeff visited our home in Mesquite this past week to do some golfing with one of Jon’s friends from Kentucky. They golfed at Coyote Springs and Wolf Creek and had a good time. Unfortunately for them, the air temp was around 115 degrees half-way through the rounds, so they were fairly miserable… like broasting chickens… but survived to tell the tale.
There’s a lot of HOT going on this Summer. The big Burning Man fest is going on right now in Black Rock City (northern Nevada desert), where tens of thousands of idiots are camping out in 105 degree temperatures… without A/C. Hopefully, they will be so drugged up that they won’t obsess about the heat and sweat. Even as bad as this might seem, it is worse this week in Death Valley, where the high temperature is hovering around 125 degrees, which is just shy of the world record.
Maybe it’s just me, but I like FOG.
On Monday, Labor Day, we drove several hundred miles down into Southern California to Paradise By The Sea RV Resort in Oceanside, California. It was a long, hot, steamy drive that just about killed the dogs. We had to wrap them in cold towels to keep them alive.
For many years, Paradise By The Sea has been our last stop on the annual RV tour. It’s located right near the beach, has a great park next door for the dogs to run around in, and is strategically located near a lot of our friends, relatives, and Charlie’s clients. Our month there is basically a reunion tour which we really look forward to.
Our neighbors on each side of our RV are old friends who come here each year for a month. Mike owns a big landscape maintenance business in the Palm Springs area and his wife Diane has some kind of an online sales business. On the other side of us, Reed is an ex-long-haul truck driver and I’m not sure what his wife Linda does or did for a living. I’m pretty sure they are both retired and they travel a lot in their RV.
Charlie’s left foot is still giving her fits, so one of her clients, Dr. Robert Steele, dropped by on Tuesday morning to check her out. He thinks she has a mid-foot fracture, so he arranged for Charlie to get a CT scan, prescribed some drugs, and told us to get a mid-ankle boot. Dr. Steele will check out the CT and determine where we go from here.
That wife of mine is a trooper: she’s been limping around on that crummy foot for almost two months. I wish the E.R in Coos Bay had picked up the fracture; however, they only took an x-ray and, according to Dr. Steele, it is easy to miss this kind of fracture. Hopefully, we are back on track and can get poor Charlie some relief.
I am having a dickens of a time finding a spot here in Paradise By The Sea where I can get reception from my Starlink equipment. There is an abundance of clear blue sky overhead, but there are Palm trees all over the place which foul up the Starlink signal. We may not be able to use the thing here!
Dammit.
It is very hot this week at the beach and humid, too. Yesterday, it was 87 degrees with 60 percent humidity… it felt like the sticky heat in New Orleans. The heat wave is supposed to last for another 3 or 4 days.
Buccaneer Beach, which is a couple of hundred yards from our coach, is improved from last year when most of the beach sand was absent due to some heavy winter storms. It appears that the City of Oceanside has trucked in quite a bit of sand to re-establish a nice “beach” for people to enjoy. Surf was decent yesterday… maybe a 3’-4’ swell.
We are going to take the dogs to the vet tomorrow (in Temecula, our old stomping grounds) and Charlie is going to get a haircut, as well.
Later in the week, we are going to attend a family reunion at our granddaughter Jessica’s house in Vista, which is a few miles from here.
Living the good life at the beach in Oceanside… it never gets old.
