We had another one of those 3-day weekends but this one was a bit different. Roxie no longer has to work on Saturdays so she does not get every 5th Monday off. This is good and bad. So now we have to take 3-day weekends with everyone else, on a holiday.
This holiday happened to be President's Day so I looked for a place to stay. Somewhere kind of close but not over any major hills. One time when we were in Bakersfield for the weekend (without the trailer) we went by Lake Ming. It was a county run (Kern Co) park and had RV spots (dry). That was a possibility, it was on the river but they did not take reservations and I didn't know how busy they were. With a bit more investigation, I found another park the Kern Co ran that has RV spots, full-hookups, on the water and took reservations. It was the Buena Vista Aquatic Recreation Area. It was between Bakersfield and Taft.
As we were packing and loading we found this:
The cat (Jewels) is ready to go! If she is still alive when we start traveling we might have to take her with us.
Roxie took off a half day on Friday so we could get an 'earlyish' start and get there before dark. There is no exactly straight road there. The best bet is to go south (or actually south-east) on 99, head west at Delano and catch 43 to go south (south-east) again. It was about 90 miles there. I discovered one interesting fact at the expense of a few bees that were flying around from the numerous bee boxes by the blooming trees. If I go 60mph (as I normally do with the trailer), the bees will smash on the windshield leaving their guts behind. However, if I go 55mph it appears the bees just bounce off of the windshield. What happens after that is unknown.
The spot we got was right on the water as advertised:
On Saturday we headed to Taft to see what was there. We also had to get some things for the trailer that we did not transfer from the old one. Taft is a cute little town. At least it has a Kmart. When we got back in the early afternoon the air was warm, the windows were open, it was quiet.
What to do? Take a nap naturally. We don't normally nap but this felt very good. We must have needed the rest since we slept about 3 hours. We cooked a quick dinner and had a campfire. Ah, the life.
Here is the sunset:
This lake is man made for boating and fishing. There were a few boats. One even came by each campsite and asked if anyone wanted to go wakeboarding. They needed one more as the ranger told them they needed 3 in the boat. It was fun to watch the boats and the wildlife all around. Here is what we saw from our door one morning:
On our last evening there we thought we would go to another town close by. Buttonwillow! Well downtown Buttonwillow does not have much but when you go to the Buttonwillow exit on I5 there is a lot of places. We thought we would try the Willow Ranch Restaurant. It was pretty good given the slim pickings and we did not want to drive to Bakersfield.
Monday came too soon and it was time to head home. We were just south of Tulare, doing about 60mph. I saw brake lights come on about 1/4 mile ahead and a cloud of dust coming up. We we pulled up we saw a minivan down in a corn field and all smashed up. It left the roadway and rolled. There were 6 people in it. Since Roxie is a nurse she is required to stop at an accident is there are no other emergency personnel there. So we pulled over. Almost immediately an off duty Tulare Co firefighter pulled up and helped out. No one was seriously injured so all we pretty much did was comfort the people until the real help showed up. You can see the van in the left side of this photo:
We made it home uneventfully. Had to do the trailer dance to get the old one out of the way and the new one back in its' spot. Here is how it looks at home:
It is kind of a tight fit and FUN to back in. I will take a video of me parking it some day.
Our next planned trip is taking the trailer to Toscano's RV in Los Banos to get our problems with the trailer fixed (only 16 or so!).
