Category Archives: Trips

Not January but February

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We got notice that some friends were going to be in Anza Borrego SP over New Years so we thought we would try to join them.  I had the days planned out but I could not get any reservations actually IN the park but I did in an RV park just outside.  However plans get changed.  We had a family illness that needed attending so we canceled this trip.  But I was looking for another time to get away to replace this.

We are lucky enough to get off two holidays in February on consecutive mondays.  This way I only had to take off 8 days of work to have a total of 16 days off.  So the general plan was to go travel around Arizona since we sure did not want to do it in the summer!  We decided to only plan 2-3 days ahead as we went.

The initial plan was to get to Sun City West and spend a couple of nights with my mother.  This is a drive that we can do (over 500 miles) in one day without the trailer but we weren’t about to try that with the trailer.  Our first stop was at Sam’s Family Spa and RV in Desert Hot Springs.  I love to stop off there since it is pretty much a good distance to stop and they have 4 hot water pools.  Very relaxing.

While we were at my mother’s we were trying to figure out where we were going to go.  The weather made the decision for us.  This was the time that all the storms were going through north part of the state, Flagstaff had almost 2 feet of snow.  We now knew we were going south.

On our fourth day of the trip we left my mother’s and started south.  We stopped by Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.  We have a NPS pass so we might as well hit them all.  This is an interesting park as it has the remains of a large house that the native americans used for functions that are still not understood.  I was impressed with the cover that was built over it to help preserve it.

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The park was enjoyable, in one aspect.  While pulling into the parking lot, I noticed a trail of water coming out from under the trailer.  We had a repair on our gray water valve before we left and I was wondering if it was that.  It was not, we did not have an liquids in that tank yet.  It turned out to be fresh water that was coming out.  Good, something to worry about!

We were going to go to Picacho Peak State Park and spend a night and perhaps a short hike.  The leak changed the plans.  We were going to go to Tucson to visit the Luhr’s so we pushed that up a day.  The Tucson Rock and Gem show was going on and it might be tough to find a spot so Rich told us about the Tucson Mountain Park.  We headed there.

The trip continues in the next chapter…

Back to Back in October

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Yes, I am finally getting around to a post about something that happened in October.  We periodically get together with other groups of Airstreamers from Airforums website.  There are too loosely defined groups in California, the northern and the southern.  Since we are in Central California we can choose either one since they are normally not too far away for us.

The ‘northern’ group had a trip to the Jackson Rancheria RV park planned for the second weekend in October.  That is only about 200 miles from us and we have not explored that area too much so we got reservations and made plans to go.  The ‘southern’ group had a trip to Kernville at the Rivernook Campground for the very next weekend.  This one was only 124 miles away so made reservations there also.

Jackson:  We have been in the Gold Country a bit but have not really spent any time there.  This was a good opportunity for some exploration.  We got there fairly late on Thursday and planned to leave Monday.  The spot we were initially assigned did not have enough nights available and we would have had to move for Sunday night.  We were able to switch with another Airstreamer that was leaving on Sunday.  We were able to get around to see Black Chasm Caverns with its amazing collection of helictites.  We always enjoy stopping at any caves/caverns we can.  We also got to look at the Indian Grinding Rock SHP.  It is difficult to imagine living the way the original inhabitants of these areas did.  We topped off that day with a stroll through the town of Jackson.  They were having a old pipe organ festival at that time.

We visited in the evening with the other Airstreamers.  We had the obligatory potluck on Sunday night (friday night a lot of us snuck off to the Casino’s buffet) and the weather was FREEZING!  Luckily ‘doorgunner’ brought his hellish propane fire pit.  Due to the high fire danger, no wood or charcoal fires were allowed.  However propane was fine and the Rancheria fire department came by a few times to check on us but the pit was legal (you can see us on the left of this picture).

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That Sunday night at the casino they had a concert.  The performer was Don Felder, one of the founders of the Eagles.  The tickets were inexpensive, $20 each, so we thought we would attend.  The concert was very entertaining, he played mostly Eagles songs, on SRV song, and one original song.  He must have played 6 different types of guitars.  There were only about 200 people in the audience, it was a flat floor with an elevated stage.  Very similar to when we saw Steely Dan at Table Mountain Casino near home.  The only drawback was all the cigarette smoke in the casino.  I am very glad we went.

Kernville:  I had 3 days at work, then we turned around and headed to Kernville.  It didn’t break my heart.  We have friends in both groups and there was one other couple that made it to both as we did.  It is interesting that each group has so many differences but I won’t go into them here.

The Rivernook campground was a stark difference from the Jackson Rancheria RV park.  The Rancheria park was neat as a pin, paved, grass everywhere, new.  The Rivernook had its’ own charm.  It actually felt like a campground, once you got past all the permanent RV’s, you could see tenters, tent trailers, trailers, very few 40′ bus’.  No two sites were alike, some had hookups, some didn’t.  Plus there were many creeks that ran through it along with the Kern river.  Our group took an entire row and some others were dispersed around.

The weather was very different this weekend, as this photo will attest:

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We spent part of Saturday walking around Kernville and going through the consignment and antique stores.  It wouldn’t take more than 4 hours since there weren’t too many of them.

All in all it was nice to go somewhere we haven’t before but it was a bit much to do two weekends with work sandwiched in there.