Posts

Posted on

Salem, Oregon: tow bar service at the Airstream rally

We headed toward Salem as I wanted our tow bar serviced by the factory tech after reading it should be done every 10,000 miles and I was close to 17,000 miles since I had done it myself right after purchasing it used off Craigslist early last year.    I had called the factory to see what rallies they would be attending this year near me.   Salem was the only one, and it was an Airstream rally.  I was thinking that might be an issue to get into.   Turns out, It wasn’t.

I drove down to Salem Monday morning, and after a bit was able to find the entrance to the facility.   There was no one at the gate, so I drove in, not having a clue where to go.   I saw a guy in a cart a couple of fenced lots to my right and drove over to him and asked where I could get a day pass.   He told me that wasn’t necessary and pointed to a white building and said I should pull my car over to there and nose it in.

After parking it I walked thru another building and over to the area with more Airstreams.    I had to ask where the vendor building was as there wasn’t a sign to be seen, and that included out on the roads getting in.    Once I was pointed in the right direction, I found the Blue Ox booth and asked the guy if I could get my tow bar serviced.  He said, “Absolutely!” and had me fill out the service sheet.

At that point I was figuring I was going to have to carry that heavy thing all the way from the car, which was probably a half mile.  He told me they normally just come to your coach and service it while still attached to the receiver.    Just then the service tech walked in and I was added to his list after a couple other service calls.   To my suprise, the tech named Josh, had me get into his cart and we drove right to my car, and he attached my tow bar to the receiver on his golf cart and within 15 minutes I was on my way.

Now, I had done almost the same service he was doing last year, but it took me about 3 hours to do what he did in 15 minutes.   I never thought of installing it in the coach’s receiver to unbolt everything.   The perfect workbench for that job, it turns out.    So I was done so fast I couldn’t believe it.   I thought I would need to drop off my bar and come back some other day as it seemed was the norm in Quartzsite.  I had gone there, but they were already fully booked for tow bar service when I arrived.   The sales guy mentioned that in Quartzsite, folks are spread out over a huge area and the techs would have no way to find anyone’s coach, so only there do they require you to bring it to them.   Normal rallies are in a very small area like a fairground.

Unfortunately I was in and out of there so quickly, I never thought to take a picture with all the shiny Airstreams.  There were about 1,000 of them shining in the sun!

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Coos Bay, Oregon

At Klamath Lake, since we were right on the river, there wasn’t a sewer hookup on that row of campsites, requiring us to drive over to a dump site closer to the office at 7:30 in the morning.    The not so good part of the morning was that the airbags didn’t fill up, which makes for an interesting ride.   Pretty bumpy driving that few hundred feet on what looked like a smooth gravel driveway.  By the time we finished dumping, the bags filled up, thank goodness!  So I knew I would need to find someone in Coos Bay to help me troubleshoot what was happening.

We took Oregon Highway 138 west off US 97 toward Roseburg, Oregon.  It wasn’t listed in the Trucking Road Map book, so the night before I used www.routeview.org to “drive” it from my laptop.   It looked fine and it was.   The most interesting part was it was all downhill,  about 90 miles of downhill; so the Jake brake got quite a workout,  four and a half hours with lots of 25-35 MPH corners to navigate after downhill straightaways.

We made it to Coos Bay in the early afternoon.  The rally folks lead us to a spot very close to the 101,  with three RVs between us and the highway.   Those logging trucks start really early in the morning and they don’t appear to require working mufflers.    We booked a spot with 30amp electric, but no water or sewer; so we arrived with empty grey/black tanks and full fresh water tanks for the Tuesday thru Sunday gathering.

The afternoon we arrived, we were booked on the harbor tour, which turned out to be a small fishing boat.    It was a nice cruise around the bay, but the tour guide was probably  19 years old and had no knowledge of Coos Bay at all, although he did seem to know about rock fish…  What I noticed about the bay was lots of tugboats,  from very small to very large.   I have no idea why they need so many as I only saw one ship arrive during the 6 days we were there.  It was a freighter that loads sawdust for shipment to Japan to make paper products.   There was the largest pile of sawdust I’ve ever seen right on the side of the 101 a couple of blocks from The Mill Casino,  where the rally was being held.

We were attending an Family Motor Coach Association rally, the first we had been to.   I think I now know why they opened up the organization to trailers.   Most of the folks, about 90+ percent at the rally, were very old, late 70’s, early 80’s.   And from what I gathered from the speeches, the rally attendance has been dropping dramatically over the last few years.    I didn’t see anyone there that appeared to be much younger than me, which was kind of odd to me.

The FCOC rally we went to in Tucson was probably 40% very old folks, a lot of folks my age.    It will be interesting to see what the Escapee’s rally will look like this fall, or even the 49er’s rally in Death Valley this winter if we go.

The casino was a very nice facility, except we had to walk thru it to get to the meeting rooms and it was a pretty smokey place.   Living in SoCal has really increased my intolerance for smoke-filled rooms.     There were a few good seminars, but to me, most were given by vendors hawking products for you to purchase while you were there.   I was hoping for them to be more instructional about our coaches.   I wasn’t really looking for infomercials, although a few were helpful.

Now that I think back, there were a few of those at the FCOC rally too.

The second day we were onsite, I had a mechanic from a local RV/truck shop stop by to look at the air leveling system, and of course it worked perfectly then.   After him poking around underneath, he thought the right front air leveling valve seemed way to easy to make it leak air with even the slightest touch.   I had him replace it, and of course after the fix, the coach also worked perfectly again.

The next morning I had one of the vendors do a suspension inspection.  Par for the course, it took some time to air up.  It finally did and he was able to proceed and found nothing wrong.   He did have some suggestions:   new shocks, an extra rear sway bar, and to put in those small in-line air restriction devices to slow the movement of air into and out of the air bags.  All things I will probably do prior to heading for Alaska next year.

We signed up for the wine walk and to my surprise there were no wineries involved.   Our first stop was a brewery (so I could have a beer!), then a museum, then across the street to a used clothing/musical instrument store.   Eventually we toured a democratic candidate’s HQ (their name and seat they were running for escapes me), and after that we went over to a mattress store, and then into a small hole-in-the-wall  live theater pretty much across the street from the Egyptian Theater where a young buck was going to sing like Frank that evening.  When we went in there, I had no idea what the place was.   Prior to there we had also perused an appliance store pouring wine.  Each place had a couple of wine offerings and I figured they hoped you would buy something while you were there.   None of the washer/dryers looked like they would fit into my coach.

While at the brewery, we hooked up with two couples: Tami and Scott along with Bob and Susan.    Turns out Tami and Scott were from Carlsbad,  very close to home for us.    They retired, sold their house and took to the road in a 37′ foot motorhome.   Something I aspire to do!

After the walk we all headed for dinner in the casino for burgers.    We were hungry after that many servings of wine and very little in the way of appetizers!

On Saturday we went to a few more seminars and then met for dinner Saturday night at the big tent.  The highlight of that last evening was the Foxes won the table centerpiece which consisted of a small slab cut from a tree complete with the bark and an old circular saw blade mounted vertically on it.  An odd prize to give us as we would have to carry it around in a moving vehicle.  The blades were sharp!!

And I just had to include this picture.   It’s got to be the most odd thing we’ve seen in our travels.   That’s a cat in what looks to be a modified birdcage bolted to the side of an RV parked in the RV campground on The Mill Casino’s property. It even has a cat door so he can get back inside the RV.   That was a first.

Scott showed me some mods to their moving house to channel roof water away from the windshield and front side windows.   I will be making that mod to our rig soon.   That was an awesome idea .   Also his slide wiper gasket flippers were a cool idea too.  I liked them so much I went out Saturday morning and picked up a piece of door molding, tried it on one of my slide gaskets that wasn’t flipping over correctly to seal out the elements, and at our next stop it worked like a charm.   Now I have to find more of that molding!   And I added the gutter material to my Amazon wish list.

We exchanged cards so we can keep in touch, and on Sunday morning we headed north toward Salem, Oregon, for an attempt to have our BlueOx towbar serviced at a large Airstream Rally.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Modifying the Absorption Fridge before NW trip.

Last summer our fridge worked OK most of the time, but I saw a device that could make it work better for us and also take out a bit of anxiety that some folks experience with having that type of refrigerator.

First thing,   absorption refrigerators have no moving parts,  no compressors or internal fans blowing the cold air around like the one in your house.    They can run on 120v or 12v with propane.   When the temp stays under 90 degrees outside, they work very well.   Once the temp goes beyond that, it takes a bit of help to keep them cooling your food.   Last summer while camping in AZ and UT during June (hot)  I went out and bought an 8″ clip-on 120v fan to put behind the fridge to pull cooler air thru the outside vent openings to run it past the condenser coils and out the roof vent.   That helped quite a bit.  But something I didn’t know at the time was the Norcold automatically goes into a defrost cycle every 24 hours.  It basically turns on heaters for two hours to keep the internal coils from freezing up like a block of ice.   That was not helpful on 100 degree days when there wasn’t any chance of frost building up.   In actuality, it is a bad design that should be able to sense the need for that defrost cycle and not run it on a set schedule.

Late last summer I ran into a few good ole boys from Virginia while we were camping in Maine.   One of them, the engineer of the trio, showed me a device called an ARP he had mounted on the back of his fridge.   It did a few cool things.   Its main purpose was to shut off the fridge if the boiler got hotter than its normal running temp.   Norcold had put on a recall device that shut off the fridge at 800 degrees.  This one does that at around 300 degrees, limiting the metal fatigue and preventing it from clogging up the system due to the solution getting way too hot, requiring whats called a burping or a much worse situation where it will no longer work at all, and lastly a catastrophic problem that could burn down the house.  The ARP will also would turn the fridge back on once the normal temp was reached again.   That’s something the recall device doesn’t do.  To turn that device back on from the recall device you need a magnet to reset its internal switch.

The second thing it has is a built-in controller to power up to two blower fans you mount back where I had put that clip-on fan last summer.    A sensor clipped to the condenser coil monitors the coil temp and tells it when to turn the fan(s) on or off.

But the best part I think it does is disable the defrost mode on the fridge.   That is a settable option on the device.  The fan temp can be set to a temp you desire it to turn on, and there are many other settings that I won’t fool with.

I installed ours the week prior to leaving for the NW trip.   I didn’t like their suggestion for mounting the unit, so I made a bracket from some Simpson building brackets for the controller and one fan .  You should be able to tell what I did by the pictures here.   I think I will buy a can of black spray paint when we get back home.

I also modified the inside of that space to make the air from my blower fan flow a bit more smoothly toward the coils with a bit of sheet aluminum.   There was a 2×4 just above the bottom vent opening, so making a 45 degree baffle to direct the flow directly to the coils made sense.    I have heard there is a similar situation above the refrigerator, and when I get home, I will look into making something to divert the hot air smoothly over to the vent.

It seems to be working as planned.   I was able to see the blower fan turn on at 130 degrees for the coils; and in the 95 degree weather, the ice cream stayed hard as the freezer temp never got above 12 degrees and the fridge stayed at 39 or below!

The real test will probably be next month when we get east of the cascades heading toward Glacier National Park.

Another simple mod I did was to replace the incandescent fridge festoon type bulb with a 6000 kelvin LED from M4 products.    I’m sure the heat difference will be negligible since it’s not on much, but it’s so much brighter than that original bulb, its literally like night and day.

 

Posted on

Crater Lake on a blustery day.

We drove the 50 or so miles from the Williamson River to the National Park on Monday morning.    Driving thru Fort Klamath it was clear to see what’s happening in small town America.   Every business was defunct.  Some places were boarded up, others just look like they closed the door, locked it and walked away never to come back.    A sad state of affairs.

We entered the park,  one of the $25 per car National Parks.  Thankfully we remembered to bring our National Park pass!   That thing has saved us around $400 since we bought it at Montezuma Castle last spring!

It was around 50 miles from our campsite to the visitor center in the park and it rained a little along the way up the mountainside.   There were a few overlooks along the highway thru the park, one of them with a great view of the volcano Mt. McLoughlin in the distance.   I was thinking it might have been named for a relative of a gentleman I worked with at Sony;  but when I checked the spelling of his last name, I realized his used an “a” instead of an “o”.   So probably not named for a long-lost relative of Bob’s.

A ways further was an overlook of a river falls and rapids but you couldn’t really tell there was a river down there.  It looked like all trees and maybe some water.

Further up the road we found the lodge and lake.   We headed over to the rim and a stiff wind was blowing and the sun went behind the clouds as we got there.   It was the middle of June and it felt like it was 30 degrees out there with me in my jeans and long sleeve tee shirt…  I was not really dressed for the occasion.   I was not seeing the bright blue water I had read about, so I was a bit disappointed at first.   I found a small bank of snow and Dusty got his first experience walking on snow!!   It didn’t appear that he liked it, but he didn’t say anything.

Kathy popped her head into the Lodge to check it out, and then we headed further north on the roadway around the crater.   At the next overview, the sun came out and the lake turned the glorious bright blue I had always read about.  The little island in the lake is called Wizard Island.  The water was flurescent blue and purple near the shore of the island.   But that wind didn’t go away, so it was still pretty cold.  I think the signs mentioned we were around 8,000 feet up,  so that’s why, and there was beginning to be quite a bit more snow.   There were even kids sledding on a large patch of snow off to the side of the road.  It went for a good 400-500 feet before it ended, so they were getting a pretty good ride for the middle of June.

We ate lunch in the car at one of the overlooks of the lake, and after a while decided to head back instead of continue all the way around the lake.   We wanted an early start in the morning, so we needed to get the coach ready for the next day’s drive to Coos Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Klamath Lake

 

 

We are camped just north of Klamath Lake right on the Williamson River.  The view out the coach is gorgeous,  as you could see if you checked out our webcam while we were there!  We arrived here late afternoon on Friday, registered and pulled into our spot right on the riverfront.   The spaces are kind of tight in this row of the campground.   I had to do some tree trimming as a pine tree on our right was touching the top of the front slide out and the following night (Sat) the weather apps said there would be a thunderstorm, which usually includes lots of wind.

There was a small highway about 800 feet to our west, but the prevailing winds must have carried the sound away from us as I could see vehicles go by but really had to listen to hear them.    After we got settled, all I wanted was to sit outside looking at the river with a Bourbon and 7 in hand, but we forgot to pack the 7up.   We were dead tired from the 7-hour drive from San Francisco and hit the sack pretty early.   Kathy’s phone rang a few minutes after my head hit the pillow and she jumped up and ran for the living room.  I don’t think I ever saw her move that fast.

I slept the sleep of the dead that night, although Kathy said she woke me up at some point after hearing a sound.  I think she must have been dreaming it, as I don’t remember getting woken up at all.

Saturday morning we headed over to Klamath Falls with the intention of finding the falls.    After a while of driving in circles, we determined there are no falls in Klamath Falls…   They need to rename the town to “Klamath Sans Falls”  I read it’s the town joke,  everyone asks where are the falls..

It’s a small town with lots of 20 MPH streets.   I can’t remember ever seeing folks driving that slow before.   Not even in Sun City where the blue hairs are driving pretty slow, but not that slow.

We saw a farmer’s market and stopped, but it was like every other small town market we have been to lately.   One stall selling produce and all the others selling art, knickknacks, honey or soap.   And of course the produce stall was sold out when we got there.

After that we took a drive around the other side of the lake.  It’s pretty large and took a long time to get around it.   The most amazing thing is there are almost no homes visible around the lake.  If it were in SoCal, that is all you would see around it.   Plus on a Saturday afternoon, there were only three sailboats on the lake.   There would have been hundreds of boats anywhere else.

Saturday evening brought thunder and lightning and of course the rain came too.   I was glad I had cut back some of the tree branches that were hanging over the coach as they would have been making a loud racket by then.    On Sunday and Monday it rained on and off for some of the day.   We ended up doing laundry and grocery shopping.   We also had to move the coach over two spaces for the next two days of being there.  It’s funny how some of these smaller campgrounds using computer systems for booking don’t seem to be able to move things around once they are in the system.    I really shouldn’t have needed to move, but the folks running the joint had no idea how to move the folks coming in Sunday afternoon to the spot they were having me move to.   Apparently they think that once they enter a customer into a spot  in the program, they can’t be moved.

Posted on

Going to Alcatraz.

We hiked over and took the 10:10 ferry into the city.   The weather has been spectacular this week and appears that it will be the same till we head out early Friday morning for the long drive to Klamath Lake.   We got off the ferry and contemplated hoping on the Muni or walking to Pier 33.  I checked it out via google maps and it was only a 20 minute walk, so we did that.   It looks like the ferry landing is Pier 0,  and a lot of piers in between 1 and 33 are missing.

We got there about an hour prior to departure, so we  purchased some snacks and had lunch on the tables they have arranged by the boarding ramp.    The boat was a bit late arriving for our boarding, but we made it to Alcatraz just a few minutes late.   They must have been using cattle prods to get the masses loaded so fast.

I had never been to Alcatraz before, even being in San Francisco many times before.   I never remembered to book a tour in advance, and when I tried they were always full.

The island looked pretty worse for wear from the 5,000 folks visiting it every day and apparently not much maintenance happening.   Lots of areas are blocked off as unsafe.   After following the people ahead of us, making a wrong turn and going up a hill and down the other side only to find a dead end, I decided to look at the map for myself.

We then proceeded to hike back down to the path that leads to the cell block.   Thankfully it wasn’t very warm as the hills are steep to get up to the top of the rock where the cell block is located.   We each received an audio machine with headphones and proceeds to walk the cells while listening to an old guard narrate what we were seeing.   The most creepy part was the solitary confinement cells.  (the hole) They were pitch black inside.

The narration went over the Battle of Alcatraz, where back in the 40’s, inmates got ahold of guns and took a bunch of guards hostage.   The warden called in the marines.   They pointed out the pock marks in the floor from exploding grenades the marines dropped in from holes in the roof.    They pointed out the cells where the escapees were housed, and also showed you the crawlspace they went up to get to the roof.   It was pretty impressive they could have done that.

Did I mention the cells were extremely small, 5′ wide and 9′ long, they looked about 7′ tall or a bit shorter.    Although the cells in the incorrigible cell block (D) were a bit larger than the others.    I really think they needed to put in a bird cage into the bird man’s cell.    Seems they need a bit of marketing help.

We went outside into the yard and they had an awesome view of the city from there.

The island has a lot of flowering plants and they were all blooming while we were there.   That was pretty nice.

 

 

Posted on

Trip to Mavericks

We wanted to drive down to Half Moon Bay to visit the Pillar Point RV Park we heard about while stopped in Bakersfield.  I google-mapped it and we took the 101 south to Hwy 1 and headed down the coast.   We found the park and drove in to check it out.   Very nice little spot on the ocean in HMB.   Turns out it was a first-come first-served kind of place.  The camp host mentioned they posted info on their website and that the best day to arrive was on Sunday mornings.

After grabbing a brochure, we headed back north a bit so I could find Mavericks Beach.  I had heard about the famous surfing spot years ago and wanted to check it out.   I was guessing we wouldn’t be able to see the surfers as the spot where they surf is over a mile off the beach.   It was not an easy place to find.   No signs, just a bunch of short little streets in what looked like an old industrial area.

We finally found the right road and drove out to the Air Force station.  Just before the signs saying we could go no further, there was a small dirt parking lot to the left.   We backed up and parked in there.

There was a wide dirt path at the back of the lot that went out between a tall bluff and an inlet.   We hiked out there and around the bluff out to the beach side.   On the way out, we spotted this really cool bench and had to snap a few pics.   It was a beautiful day,  probably 80 degrees and a nice breeze.   Snapped some pics and headed back where we got to watch a seal or otter play just a bit off shore of the inlet, within 50 feet of some boys that had no idea he was there.  They were preoccupied with a crab or something in the rocks by the shoreline.

 

 

 

We got back to the car and proceeded to head back north on Highway 1 to look for another RV campground I had seen online.   We found that one.   It was not as nice as the other park, and was high up on a cliff.   One thing that caught our attention was all the sites along the cliff were chain link fenced off.   It appears they are falling into the ocean.   The other sites at that campground were awful… scratch that place.

Once out of there I headed for Skyline Drive as it kept us by the ocean on the way north after Hwy 1 headed inland.  It skirts the beach in areas and goes by the SF zoo.   I didn’t know there was another Ocean Beach up here,  didn’t appear as cool as the one in San Diego though.   Kathy got to see the Cliff House, and we stopped at Lands End and I took a few photos of the old Sutro Baths.   And then we headed out to find the Lands End Labyrinth just past the Legion of Honor memorial park.   Gorgeous vistas abound.

 

Down the hill we went to spy on China Beach.  After driving around in circles for a bit, we finally found the correct turn.   The houses over there were spectacular,  must be the really rich end of San Francisco.  Turns out it was a long way down to the beach from where we parked. We got about a third of the way down when we spotted the “No pet” signs.    Bummer.   [It was a really steep hill, so I was happy we couldn’t go down!]

We climbed back out and started looking for a way to the Golden Gate Bridge and back to the RV.    It’s just so different on the west end of SF,  you wouldn’t know you are in a city.   The whole Presidio Park area is breathtaking with all its views.

 

 

Next time we come back, we will spend a lot more time out there.

Posted on

Taking the Ferry into San Francisco on Monday night.

I think the RV park brochure said it was a two-minute walk to the ferry landing.  It was more like 15 minutes, and the first afternoon there it was about 95 degrees, so that walk seemed like an hour.  And it is right on the off ramp of the 101 freeway, which is very busy.  There is a small cement wall with a railing, but you really felt like you were on the freeway!!

We purchased our Clipper cards at the machine out front and got in line for the approaching ferry.   Once it landed and the doors opened, it took a long time for everyone to disembark.   After a while, I was thinking it was one of those clown cars that they just keep coming out of for a long time.   It was hard to imagine so many people could fit onto that boat;  but it was just after 5:30pm, so it was filled with commuters.   They must have been packed in like sardines.    We boarded with about 25 others to make the trip to San Francisco.   It was a beautiful day and the city was gleaming in the bright sun as we made our way across the bay.   Even the Golden Gate was easy to see, no fog around it like most of the other trips we made this week.

We walked over to Chris’s apartment on the 19th floor of a building just a few blocks from the ferry landing.   As we rode the elevator, Dusty started shaking due to the beeps the elevator made for each floor above the 7th.  That may have been his first ride in an elevator.

Chris has a great view of the waterfront in a very nice building.    After having a couple beers with Chris and Shelly while watching some of the Padres game, and touring the rooftop with an amazing view, we headed out for dinner at Palomino.    Dinner was very good out on their patio with a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge as the sun set and its lights came on.  They did a great job with that.

 

We headed back to the ferry landing to catch the last boat out at 9:30.    It was very dark on the water and the window by our seat was covered in so much water, I thought it was raining hard, but it wasn’t and turned out to be the spray from the bay.

The walk back to the RV park after 10pm was interesting as I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight.   So we didn’t walk real fast and kept a keen eye out for bicyclists…   The next day my little flashlight was in my backpack!

We got back there without running into anything!

 

 

Posted on

Bakersfield and the drive to San Francisco

We got up early and readied the coach to leave.   Once it was ready to go, we headed over to the restaurant for a delightful breakfast on the patio, then headed out before 11am for the trip to just north of San Francisco.   It was an uneventful drive with a pit stop at a  rest area stop right near Los Banos.

Got back onto I-5 north till we exited to I-580 west toward SF.   About half way toward town, that freeway gets really bumpy,  seems like it will shake out the dishes from the cupboards.    After about 20 miles of that rough ride, it thankfully became much smoother.   We had our first Fastrac use on the  580 toll bridge right by San Quentin Prison.  $20 for the RV pulling a car.    We were staying very close to SQP and got off the freeway to wind around the surface streets to find an on ramp to the 101 south for one exit, then even more winding around more surface streets to find the campground.

We found the Marin RV Park, checked in and proceeded to our spot.   This place resembled an RV storage lot:  Tightly packed RV’s of all sizes.  We just barely fit, backing all the way up to the fence in spot J-7.  The campsite was wide but only about 41′ long.   I considered putting orange cones at the front but decided not to.   Our nose was maybe an inch off the pavement and the towbar maybe 5 inches from the fence.

 

But it turned out to be a great place to visit SF from as the Larkspur ferry was less than a mile walk, which we did many times.   And the Clipper card saves a bundle on the ferry cost.  It’s also useful for the muni’s and cable cars; so that worked out well once our feet were complaining a bit.

 

 

 

Posted on

On the road to the Northwest.

We got a late start on Sunday, actually hooking up the car right at noon.  We had been packing the coach back up for days as we had pulled everything out from inside and underneath for a thorough cleaning after San Eljio State Beach.

The traffic in LA was slow moving in a lot of places and continued to get worse as we drove along.  It was Sunday afternoon, where the heck were all these folks going?   It’s never good to hear google nav announcing that traffic is building on your route, multiple times during your drive thru LA.

We eventually got thru and started out toward Magic Mountain and eventually the Grapevine.   I had planned a stop in Castaic at a truck stop about 2.5 hours into the trip, but with all the traffic, it was more like 3.5 hours before we arrived.   I pulled into a fuel lane and Kathy took Dusty for a walk.   When I eventually got up to the pumps and looked at them, they said it was B20 fuel.   I had never seen it so high and decided to pass on the fill.  I didn’t actually need the fuel as we were only 100 miles from home, it was just the only place to get off the freeway for a bit.

We proceeded north on I-5 and I was amazed by all the traffic once we arrived at the Grapevine.   I had never seen so many cars and trucks on that stretch of road before.   We headed down the long grade and realized it isn’t nearly as steep or long as a lot of the grades we traversed last summer.    It’s only 6% and just 5 miles long.    We saw many 10 % grades and some were 20 miles long going over the Rockies.

We arrived at the Bakersfield resort a little after 5pm and pulled into a nice wide and long pull-thru site.    Tomorrow will be a quick and easy getaway..

They have a restaurant at this RV park that is quite good!  We were able to take Dusty and eat on the patio where I ordered a beer during happy hour and got one that was almost too heavy to lift.  The weather was beautiful for June in Bakersfield, low 80s!!  We had dinner there and breakfast the next morning.  Both times met nice people who had interesting tips on places to go.