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Alaska Bound: Cruising Through California
Since the beginning of our great big RV adventure, I thought Alaska would be our last state visited, if ever. But here we are, 37 states and 4+ years later, and we’re on our way! We’ve just spent the last 5 weeks traveling through California. The time has flown by without too much to report, so just one blog post. I’ve resolved to be okay with not doing a whole lot on our way to Alaska. Just getting ourselves there (and back in the Fall) will be the adventure. Back in early March, we returned to Sunbeam Lake RV Park in El Centro for a night. I forgot to mention…
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From the Border to the Bahía Concepción, Mexico
This story begins over a year ago when Michael told me he wanted to RV down the Baja California Peninsula. At first, I didn’t take him that seriously, but after several months of his daily Spanish lessons on Duolingo, I decided I needed to come up with a plan. We stayed at Sunbeam Lake RV Park in El Centro, CA the week of our planned border crossing at Mexicali East. While in El Centro, we purchased Mexican auto and travel trailer insurance. We walked across the Mexicali West border crossing to get a stamped FMM (basically a tourist visa). We rented a storage unit to empty enough space in the…
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The Majestic Coast Redwoods
From Willits, we had a 100-mile drive to our next destination, a one-night stop at Ancient Redwoods RV Park located on the Avenue of the Giants. As we drove north, it seemed like everything and everyone had disappeared. There was no traffic, which we would have noticed because Hwy 101 becomes a curvy mountainous two-lane road. And, although there were names of towns on the map, we didn’t see any. Maybe they were hiding behind the trees? The Avenue of the Giants is a road that runs parallel to Hwy 101 through Humboldt Redwoods State Park, where you can enjoy some old-growth forest (never logged) from your window, or stops…
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A Day On The Mendocino Coast, CA
Even though the wind changed our plans to stay on the Mendocino Coast, thankfully the upcoming 3-day weekend allowed us to make a day trip. We left sunny Santa Rosa and drove north on 101, the views changing from miles of vineyards to miles of foggy dense forest. We stayed at the Mendocino Redwoods RV Park in Willits, 30 very curvy miles west of the coastal town of Fort Bragg. Our first stop was Point Cabrillo to see the lighthouse and keeper’s house. We also watched baby seals learning to swim here! A few miles further south we stopped and walked around the gorgeous coastline of Mendocino Headlands State Park.…
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Sonoma County, CA
As I write this we are grieving our sweet lap kitty, Lynx. We had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye last week and it’s been hard. Even though she had multiple chronic problems, we expected to have her for a couple more years. One of the best things about full-time RVing has been traveling with her and we miss her so much. Back to our stay in Santa Rosa, CA at the beginning of April… We love California wine country. We’ve visited Napa Valley every time we’ve been to San Francisco. Sonoma was new for us and made for a short travel day. It was just as beautiful,…
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Moochdocking In Montara, CA
If you blink while driving up Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and San Francisco you might miss the quaint San Mateo County coastal town of Montara. Montara is currently one of our favorite places to visit because it has it all – a beach, mountains, and a 30min drive from everything a city like San Francisco has to offer. But mostly, it has our friends Peter and Jake!! We had visited them back in 2019 so this wasn’t our first time in Montara. Ever since we got our travel trailer, we’ve been wondering if we would be able to get it into their extra driveway. We finally have the answer!…
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Monterey Bay To Big Sur, CA
After not doing much other than beach walking in Pismo, followed by a workweek at Wine Country RV Resort (it really was a resort) in Paso Robles which we never left (hence, no blog), we hustled to do as much as possible around Monterey. Somewhere along the way, I read the following advice for planning full-time RV travel. First, chose pillar destinations for the winter and summer. These are places that you really want to visit that are also predicated on the weather. Once you have those destinations in mind, you can create the route based on places that look interesting along the way. Besides visiting our friends in the…
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Pismo Beach & San Luis Obispo, CA
We moved 110 miles north of Ventura to Pismo Beach, the next stop on our Pacific Coast Highway road trip. Pismo Beach is a very popular RVing destination and there are a lot of camping choices. There are multiple huge RV parks, Pismo Beach State Park, and just south of Pismo Beach is Oceano Dunes where you can drive and park your RV out on the sand and ride your ATV on the dunes. When we arrived on a Sunday, the weekend crowds were still there and the town felt very crowded. It was much calmer during the week and by the end of two weeks, Pismo Beach really grew…
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Ventura, Santa Barbara, & The Channel Islands, CA
After all our detours through the desert, we finally made it to the California coast! We find the desert very interesting and beautiful and love all the free camping, but these water views were a welcome change. I guess that’s the cool thing about RVing. We landed in the town of Ventura on the Rincon Parkway, where we rented a 46X15ft parking space parallel to the ocean. A bit inconvenient since we are 53ft bumper to bumper. The Rincon is a Ventura County RV Park with 127 parking spaces and is one of the most unique camping experiences we’ve had thus far. On one side are a rock seawall (although…
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Death Valley National Park & Mohave National Preserve, CA
On the last Friday of January, we headed to Death Valley National Park. We had inched closer the night before and stayed an hour away at Preferred RV Park in Pahrump, NV to do chores. Knowing there was no internet, we only planned to stay for the weekend and explore the popular Furnace Creek area. The highest temperature ever recorded on earth was 134F at Furnace Creek, so January was a good time to visit. Neither of us had heard much about Death Valley and we didn’t have many expectations, but we really enjoyed this park! Death Valley didn’t end up being as scary as it sounds, but maybe that’s…
