Christmas 2011 @ Santee Lakes

We setup camp at Santee Lakes on Friday afternoon before Christmas, spending Christmas camping.  The weather was beautiful all weekend, it got into the 70's during the day and at night it was a little nippy, frost on the car in the early morning.

This is a nice campground and we had a site along side of one of the lakes.  Ducks are abundent and you can fish the lake.

It was a lazy weekend, with lots of quality time spent in my gravity free recliner outside watching the ducks.  Life is good.  Christmas Eve we cooked a small Prime Rib with all the fixings.

We did a little Christmas decorating on the coach and had a little Christmas tree inside. We woke on Christmas morning and opened presents.  Santa was good this year, I got a Kindle Fire, tool box for the coach, Robin got a electric pressure cooker, and the coach got a weather station, cabinet for the kitchen....etc....... good stuff.

We were sad to have to pack up on Monday and head home.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Thanksgiving near Death Valley

Well we had another successful camping trip over the Thanksgiving weekend.  We left 4am Thanksgiving morning heading for Terrible's RV Resort and Casino in Pahrump, NV.  We stopped at Peggy Sue's Diner for breakfast and got into Pahrump about 10am.  A friend was joining us in her RV later in the day from Quartzsite.  We have stayed at Terribles before and really like the Resort.

The weather all weekend was perfect.  Mid to upper 60's with lots of sunshine and no wind.  The nights were pretty chilly so the heater and furnace were a welcome addition in the evening. 

Robin started making our Thanksgiving feast of Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, fruit salad and pumpkin pie for dessert.  She had gotten everything mixed together ahead of time so she could just get everything in the oven for dinner later.  Karen arrived about 3pm and we had dinner about 5:30pm.  YUM!!!!  Good stuff.

On Friday we took a day trip to Red Rock Canyon.  It has about a 13 mile scenic drive thru the area.  We saw a few burros along the road and stopped to watch some people climbing the cliffs while we had lunch of Turkey sandwiches.  We went to the buffet at the on site Casino on Friday night for $10.00 Prime Rib.

On Saturday we took a day trip into Death Valley, heading towards Furnace Creek, with stops at Zabriskie Point, an absolute must see, Dantes View, Furnace Creek and Artist Palette.
Karen hosted dinner that night with Steaks on the grill. Needless to say we did not starve.

We have decided to make this an annual thing for Thanksgiving.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

October 2011 Camping

Our first camping weekend of October took us to Sacred Rock Reserve in San Diego county.  We had a nice relaxing weekend.  On Saturday night a gentlemen with a couple of telescopes came to the campground and set them up.  It was great to have some of the stars pointed out to us and being able to see them through the telescope.

The next weekend we went to the Yucaipa County campgrounds and went to Oak Glen area on Saturday to see the apple orchards in the area.
We checked in on Friday about 2pm and got all set up.  About 3pm we noticed the hills above us had a brush fire going.  It didn't take long to pick up steam.  Soon there were four water dropping choppers dumping water as fast as they could suck it up.  The water source they were using was right next to the campground so we got a birds eye view of the choppers refilling with water.  The fire ended up eating up about 100  areas and no structures destroyed.

The rest of the weekend was very peaceful and kick back. My kind of weekend.

Enjoy the pictures.

Lake Moreno 9-24-11

We took off Friday at noon to spend the weekend at Lake Moreno County Campground east of San Diego Lake Moreno.  This was a nice campground with E/W hookups with a dump station on site.  This was our first visit so we weren't quite sure what to expect.

We arrived about 3pm and got everything set up.  Nice roomy campsite at the end of a row.
Towards evening the sky got dark and we started to get some rain.  We got a couple of good sized showers with some lightening off in the distance.  So we spent the evening listening to the Angels game and playing Crazy Eights.

Note: Verizon has no cellphone signal, we were parked under a tree so no TV. 
It was kind of nice to spend the weekend without any technology.

On Saturday morning we awoke to a bright sunny day.  The temp got up to the mid-80's with a slight breeze, perfect day.  After a late breakfast we took a short dirive to the Railroad Museum near Campo, Ca.Railroad Museum.  It was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours.

We got back to the campsite in time for a little nap and relax.  Robin started up the Dutch Oven for a potato ditty.  It was great, potatoes, bacon, onions and cheese. YUM!  I got the grill out and we grilled a couple of pork steaks to go along with the potatoes.

After dinner we decided to watch one of the DVD's that we have piled up.  We watched RED.  I thought it was great.  Perfect end to a great weekend.  We didn't want to leave......but allas work is neccessary....gas money for coach..!!!!
 Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Tall Ships and Chula Vista RV Park Labor Day 2011

We started our weekend on Friday with a half day of work and hitting the freeway to San Diego and the Chula Vista RV Park in Chula Vista.Chula Vista RV Resort. This isn't usually our type of camping but we thought we would check it out  The traffic was pretty good and we were checked in and set up by 3pm. Very nice Resort. The weather was perfect lots of sunshine and a nice ocean breeze.  We settled and and had hamburger sliders for dinner. 

We awoke Saturday to overcast skies but temp was nice.  We decided to head out to the Tall Ship Festival at the Maritime Museum. Festival of Sail  We got there early and had a great place to park across the street.  One of the ships was the Star of India. History of Star of India.
Awesome to walk around the oldest active sailing ship. We boarded a couple of other Tall ships anchored at the museum. 

 It was noonish so we headed back to the Resort.  Sunny for the rest of day of which there were walks with Buddee and Liz and naps.  Saturday night the Resort had a country band playing in the park area. We walked  by to check it out.  The band was pretty good.

Sunday the day started out sunny and stayed sunny for the day.  We just lounged around all day with walks around the Resort and Marina.  Around 2:30 we strolled up to the free hots dogs that the park was serving.  Good hot dogs. About 4am on Monday morning we heard the pitter patter of rain on the roof......where the heck did that come from????  By morning it was gone and we had to pack up and head home.  We did drive through a couple of areas of rain on the way. 

Another Great Weekend.
Enjoy the pictures.

Glacier NP 2011

This vacation trip has been awesome!  We were on the road for two weeks with the destination of Glacier NP in Montana with a day trip into Canada to see Waterton NP.  Waterton NP is the sister park of Glacier.  Glacier has had so much snow this winter that the Going to the Sun Road didn't open until the day after we arrived at St Mary's. 

We decided to spend our time on the East side of the park and we stayed at a KOA in St Marys along with my son Richie and his wife Judy who stayed in  a Kamping Kabin in the campground.  His aunt, Karen, and her friend, Bev,visiting from Mass, also joined us with Karen's motorhome and camped next to us.  What a great time we had. 

The views were unbelievable and the visiting was non-stop.  We took a day trip up to Logan's Pass at the summit of the Going to the Sun Road and took a boat ride on St Mary's Lake.

On day two we drove up into Waterton NP in Canda.  We saw deer grazing on the lawns of Waterton.  We had lunch at the Prince of Wales Hotel and we saw a grizzly and two cubs.The scenery was awesome.



On day three we took a short drive up to Many Glacier Lake and we got to see a moose come across the road.

Our first stop on the way back home was in Polson, Montana along the Flathead Lake.  It was hard to leave the area very pretty.  Flathead Lake
We also stopped at the Miracle of America Museum.  I am not usually much of a museum person but this place is awesome.  It would make American Pickers on the History Channel go nuts! Pictures in Museum.

Our second stop was the Craters of the Moon, Arco Idaho. Pictures of Craters of the Moon.  Strange place.

And last but not least are a few pictures of the campgrounds and campsites that we stayed. This was the first time we used KOA campgrounds alot as they were close to the freeways and had pull throughs. They are not all created equal. We also stayed at Lincoln Rd RV park in Helena, MT and Century II RV Park in Salmon, Idaho. Pictures of Campgrounds

This blog was a hard one for me to write.  I could have gone on for pages on the things we saw and stuff we did.  I didn't want everyone to go to sleep in the middle of reading so I tried to keep it short.

The pictures that were used were taken by Karen, Robin and myself.  Thanks for your contributions.

Memorial in Kings Canyon

This weekend was our second annual trip to Kings Canyon-Sequoia NP.  It was a very interesting trip, to say the least.

We started out on our usual zero dark thirty, 4am, on Thursday morning.  The first sign that this trip was not going to be the norm was the Garmin GPS informing me the Interstate 5 was closed up ahead and to detour onto to the 101.  Well, we didn't see any signs to indicate that so we chose to ignore the GPS, not a good idea.  We started to see signs saying the same thing, luckily there was another detour option and we took that.  The Ventura Hwy to the Hollywood Hwy back to the 5.  Okay, that wasn't to bad.

Tooling on up the 5 towards Newhall a gentlemen in a pickup is motioning to us that there is something wrong on the passenger side of rig......crap!  Pull over in the emergency lane....that was fun in the dark.  One of side doors is open....double crap....our little step in missing along with a small rug...close the door and get back on the road.

Get into the Flying J in Bakersfield to gas up and get some breakfast.  Open the door and the steps do not come out.....that's not good....it's going to be a long weekend without them working...it's a really big first step, not to mention getting back into the coach.  After a brief discussion, we decide to have breakfast and by that time the Camping World in Bakerfield should be open. 

We back track 20 miles to CW.  They won't even look at it, to busy.  The receptionist does google other options in the area.  Before we leave we buy a replacement step that is now somewhere along the 5 freeway.

Our second call gets us Rosedale RV service, he says bring it on in we will take a look at it.  The problem is a bad circuit board on the steps.  Great.... this is a small shop, no way they have one in stock.....WELL they have one....YES!!!  They even call our extended warranty and get it covered.  They have us up and running in a little under two hours.  Total of three hours lost....still have time to get there before dark.  Great guys at Rosedale RV.

We get into  Kings Canyon, Morine campground and get setup around 5pm.
Let the weekend begin.  There are three campgrounds along the river and we are in the last one.  All three campgrounds are mostly tent campers.  About 98% tents and 2% other, MH, trailers, popups, FW.  This place is absolutely beautiful.  Tall pine trees, large spaces between campsites.  Note: none of which are level, that's okay we brought blocks. We are settled in for the weekend.  The weather was beautiful, lots of sun, around 70 degrees.  We had a campfire on Friday night and Saturday we took a hike.  The area is full of all kinds of hiking trails.  What a wonderful weekend.

Saturday night the sky is starting to get dark so we run up to the Ranger station to check on the weather.  30% chance of rain, okay...we are leaving on Sunday morning anyway, so we pack up the outdoor stuff...good thing...it rained off and on all night. 

Sunday morning we are sitting at the table eating some oatmeal and suddenly it starts to snow...Oh.....how beautiful.......WAIT!!! we are leaving and we have to climb another 3000 feet to get out of the canyon....NOT GOOD!  We get our butts in gear and get on the road.  By the time we get to the top we are driving with about three inches of snow on the road....but we made it just fine.  No chains.....good thing we don't have any....we did see two cars that had slid off of the road.

Got to Bakersfield and spent the night and got on the road in the morning and got home all safe and sound. 

Doheny SP in May

We went to one of our local campgrounds over the weekend, Doheny SB.  The weather could have been a little warmer with a little more sun, but it was all good.  We had to wait to check into the campground as we got there 15 minutes before checkin time of 2pm.  This is something new, as before if your space was emtpy you could check in any time.  So we waited  for a few minutes to get our paperwork.

My nephew Tony and his wife, Laura came and spent Saturday afternoon and evening with us.  The was nice as I don't get to see them very often.  They live on the East coast in Vermont.  Tony is in San Diego for a month on a project for his work and Laura has flown out to join him for a week.  They stayed for a TriTip dinner.

Didn't do much of anything except sit around and visit.  We did take a short drive around the day use area and spotted a Hot Rod group having a cookout.  I snapped a couple of pictures before we moved on.

We did manage to get wet before we got everything packed up for the short trip home.  Of course by the time we got home the sun was shining.

All in all it was a great weekend.
Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Easter Weekend @ Calico Ghost Town

Since Friday was a holiday for us we decided to head out to a little ghost town located just outside of Barstow, Ca. called Calico Ghost Town. We started out about 7am and stopped at Flying J in Barstow for gas. 

We decided to stop for breakfast, at our turnoff to the Ghost Town, at a little Diner called Peggy Sue's 50's Diner.  Interesting little diner.  We have seen it many times on the way to other places but never stopped.  It is right off the I15 freeway at Yermo Road exit.  This is the same exit for the ghost town.  If you are in to movie stuff it is fun to just walk around and look at all the stuff hanging on the walls.  Of course, they have a little gift shop we just had to check out.  The food was good and we even went back for dinner the same night, to lazy to cook.

Calico Ghost Town is about three miles off of the I15.  There is a San Bernadino County Campground right next to the town. If you stay at the campground, admission to the town is free.  The campground is FHU but not much else.  It is in a canyon in the desert.  When we arrived on Friday the weather was great, about 80 degrees and lots of sunshine.  By nightfall the wind had come up and was pretty strong, wind lasted all weekend.

Calico Ghost Town was fun to wander through, luckily we did that on Friday before the strong winds appeared.  We were going to go back on Saturday for a little train ride and tour the mine but the wind was so strong we decided not to go and stayed in the campground, mostly in the coach.  It's to bad about the wind cause the weather was really nice otherwise.

We were camping so it was a good weekend.  Hope you enjoy the pics.

Return to Quartzsite in March

We made a return trip to the "Q" (Quartzsite, Az.) to say goodbye to a good friend that has been wintering there this year.  She is heading back to Minnesota soon.  I must say it certainly looks different when the RV Show and swapmeets have all packed up.

We had great weather the whole weekend, finally got to enjoy some sunshine.  SoCa has been rather cold and rainy lately so the sun really felt good. 

This was the first weekend we took our new Direct TV box along to use the dish on the roof of the RV to get satellite TV. Well.......normally I don't rant to much as we usually figure it out and move on.  We finally figured it out but talk about clueless.

Of course everyone on the net said "piece of cake, five minute job"  WRONG!!  First we cleared out all the stuff we had stored in the cabinet over the drivers seat, where the cabling was located.  Now.....we have two TV's and the option to have a third outside in one of the bays. 
The cabinet has six cables in it.  Now don't you think they would be labeled as to what TV they are for?????  NOT A CHANCE!!!!!  The only cable that any label on it was one of them that said "Sat"  now in my mind that would mean satellite right???? Nope.....I should be so lucky.  That one was for TV out......
Just about the time I was going to use the sat box for a frizbee, Robin took over.  We had to experiment until we found two that worked...... YEAH.... we got the Direct TV logo on the TV.

NOW......next we had to get the satellite dish on the roof up and pointed in the right direction.  Everyone said just check the rest of the campground and point it the same way........Wellll..........First you have to figure out how to get it to stand up before you can point it......One handle that says up and down....piece of cake right????  Well I can't see the roof so Robin is outside giving me hands signals for up and down.  Well I think her up was my down....We don't want to discuss what hand signals I ended up getting before we had it up.

Now there are two rings that turn on the outside of the crank so you have to hold the rings and the crank or they all turn at the same time.
Now we have terms on the sat TV screen to azmiuth????degrees????? and tilt??????? now which ring is which........Of course all of this is mounted on the ceiling of the RV so you are standing there with your hands over your head all this time.  Well.....anyway we finally got it done and had Sat TV all weekend. 

Sorry for the long rant but I just had to get it out of my system.
Hope you enjoy the couple of pictures I took.

SAL (San Antonio Lake) Bi-Annual Rally

We took off Friday from work and started out early for a Rally we have been attending for the last couple of years.  We had a 4am lift off time and we were well out of town and traffic before the sun came up.  Usually we go up the coast on the 101 but that requires us to drive through LA.  This year we went the inland route over the grapevine.  Not as pretty but an easier drive.

The forecast was for a wet weekend and weather man did not disappoint us.  It rained most of the time we were there.  Luckily our fearless leader, Judy, has always had the group meeting room for Feb, so we had it nice and dry and warm inside for the potlucks, bingo and blitz card game and overall visiting.

It was great seeing everyone and spending time visiting and between rain showers enjoying the scenery. 

Our drive home was uneventful, we saw snow coming over the Tejon pass.  We have one dirty rig inside and out.

Hope you enjoy the pictures

Quartzsite Az Big Tent RV Show and Swapmeet.

We took a couple of extra days off work and headed for "Q" (Quartzsite, Az) for an extended weekend to check out the RV Show and Swapmeet they have in their town every year about this time.  This town is a mecca for snowbirds and RV'ers of all kinds.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and got settled in.  Sandi and her friend came in about half an hour after we did.  After everyone was set up we went and picked up our other friend, Karen.

The weather was perfect and we headed for the Big Tent and spent the afternoon looking for things we couldn't live without.  I think we spent more time people watching then we did shopping.  The next day we hit the Tyson Wells swapmeet for more of the same.

The whole weekend the weather was perfect with lots of sunshine and no winds.  We were having such a good time I didn't even take very many pictures.  It was great to see everyone again and have a good visit.

The trip home was exciting, we had strong winds all the way home until we got past Palm Springs and then it rained the rest of the way home.

We have decided we are going to make this a yearly get together.