Category Archives: Trips

A pair of maiden voyages

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We took care of two maiden voyages during this camping weekend.

The first was with our new truck:

One Maiden Voyage

 

 

Compare that to the pic from our ‘End of an era‘ post:

Last tow

 

 

The other maiden voyage was for our son, Aaron.  This was the first time he was towing his new, our old, Airstream:

Aaron and Paige

 

 

We decided not to go too far for either of us.  That way if there were any major issues we could very easily bug out and head home.  Roxie and I had did some scouting a while back in the area and discovered Club Royal Oak outside Kingsburg.  This was ideal as it was virtually right in between Fresno and Visalia.

We got there about 4:30 which meant we could let Aaron and Hanna (his girlfriend) in when they arrive.  The RV park is totally gated and needs a key card to get in.  A lot of sites, including ours, are right on the Kings River.  Unfortunately the river was very low at this time.  We will have to come back here sometime when the river is running high.

We had a few problems unhitching where I had to jack the trailer and truck to a point where its rear wheels were off the ground.  After analyzing it a bit I adjusted the legs that hold the equalizer bars to the tongue.  Hooking up when we went was much easier.  I will have to go back and check this rig at the scales like I did with the other rig.

Aaron and Hanna showed up around 6:30 and I helped him get ‘his’ rig in the spot.  The spots here are HUGE!  They are wide enough to park your trailer sideways if you want.  We had Aaron just pull his trailer straight in.  That way our doors faced each other:

Spots

 

 

He quickly learned how to hook the utilities up and we were eating dinner in no time with a campfire later that evening.

The next day was just a take it easy day.  I never left the campground the whole day, trust me that is a rarity for me!  It was nice to just relax and take care of a few small projects on the truck and trailer.

The campground had a car show on Saturday, which we didn’t know about but went to see anyway.  They also had Elvis performing but we opted-out of that.  We could still hear it at the sites.  We also bought some fresh kettle corn.  Here are the top three winners at the car show, alas I forget who got first:

Car Show

 

 

We had a simple dinner of dogs, sausages and burgers, with Roxie’s masterful potato salad.  We then watched Ironman 3 in our trailer and retired shortly thereafter.

Sunday started slow and calm without Aaron.  He was still sleeping and did so for quite a while.  We hatched a plan after he woke up.  We would hookup his trailer, follow them to Fresno, drop the trailer, go have some Teppanyaki for lunch.  Here he is backing out the trailer and just missing the garbage can:

Backing around the corner

 

Roxie took a family shot of Aaron, Hanna, Paige and Maggie:

Family Shot

 

Here is a couple more shots Roxie took of them on the road back to Fresno:

On the road 1

On the road 2

 

After that we would come back and hookup our trailer and head home.  This only worked because the park had no one coming in on Sunday evening.  The management let us stay as long as we needed.  We came back to get our trailer and there were only 2 RV’s there.

The road home was uneventful and short!  The usual stop at the dump station.  I did another time lapse of the drive home here:

Labor Day Trip

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Ok, a late post here.  It is now a bit past Labor Day 2013 but I am here to talk about it nonetheless.

After coming back from our previous 17+ day trip this was a quick turnaround (2 weekends).  We thought about just cancelling our reservation and staying home but there was one thing that kept our commitment.  Our granddaughter!

I made the reservations at Oceano campground at Pismo State Beach on the coast months ago and we told our granddaughter that we would take her along.  It was a good choice and we are glad we went through with it.

One of the things that I was working on was a front hitch for our bike rack (I talked about it in our Alumafandango threads).  I purchased one but part of the task was to remove the nuts off the front leaf springs and put on a helper bracket.  I could NOT get those nuts off!  I had to take it to a suspension shop but eventually got it on:

Front Hitch

Bike Rack 1

 

We went through Cholame, near where James Dean was killed.  We told our granddaughter about it and she was mesmerized about it and kept talking about it.  We told her we would stop on the way back so she could see the memorial.

We got to the campground just around dark.  Here was a shot from next day:

Oceano Campground

 

Our granddaughter, Paige, thoroughly enjoyed herself.  We went to the beach both days and she spent at least 3 hours in the water each day.  We don’t know HOW she did that as the water was so cold but there were many others that did so also and she made a few friends.  We also had a campfire one night with her cooking ‘Smores.  She really liked to ride her bike around the campground which kept her busy.  We rode with her a couple of times.

On the last day we took a walk around the pond that is by the campground.  It turned out to be longer than we though and here are a few pics:

Roger and Paige

Roxie and Paige

 

One evening Paige told us that she had never seen the sunset.  So what did we do?

Sunset

 

It was just a short walk from the campground to see the sunset.

It all comes to an end as usual.  We did stop at the James Dean memorial on the way back to show Paige.

One more thing about the bike rack on the front.  It performed well, but it did scare us from time to time because it sure did bounce at times!  Here is what we saw:

Bike Rack 2

 

We are very glad we went because it meant a lot to Paige.  Roxie turned around in the truck and told her, on the way home: “We did this trip just for you”.  Her positive reaction to that statement was all we needed.

Roger