It’s been quite a long time since I’ve blogged. We were thrown out of our National Forest
Spot by the Sheriff, and the sudden move just threw me off my blogging game. So, now I have to try to go back and
document some of what we’ve been up to.
December 10-14- Clearing Campsite
We made a decision to stay at Orange Grove RV park in
Bakersfield for a week starting on Monday the 17th. This would allow us to order a mifi and
sleek and various other stuff to be delivered to the park office. If we did some very careful planning and
ordering, we probably could have arranged it so we only needed a day or two…but
who needs the stress. We made some
orders while in town, and then headed back to camp.
I think we had some campfires…and we enjoyed some epic jet
flights. It really seemed like a lot of
the pilots were deliberately altering course to fly right over us…and as low as
possible. (In a later conversation with
my Dad I learned this might actually be true).
It seems like so long ago, I don’t remember what else we did those days.
On Friday, we got a visit from an extremely pissed off
Sheriff. He apparently took it as a
personal affront that we didn’t vacate the premises after his last visit. Technically, he has no authority over that
land. But, since he could easily call
the Forest Ranger, we agreed to go.
For some reason, Missy told him we were unemployed. Based on comments he made after she said
that, I think he got it in his head that we were homeless and trying to live
there. Such a shame. There is no other demand for this site, and
we’d already proven responsible in leaving to dump our tanks, so why couldn’t
he just let us stay 3 more days until our reservation at the RV park? Oh well.
So we literally packed up and got out of there in 90 minutes.
December 14-21, Orange Grove RV Park
We had a scary moment with the truck as we were heading
downhill on the Forest Service Road.
Somehow the car shut off and we lost brakes. Luckily we had hardly any momentum, so the
ebrake worked. I tried describing the
situation to Jeremiah, but we don’t know what exactly happened. That’s all I have to say about that.
The drive to Bakersfield went smoothly. The RV park is, as the name suggests, in an
orange grove. This is the time of year
for picking oranges, so our timing is impeccable. It’s a nice park, well maintained and as
quiet as you can get and still be by Bakersfield. Huge level spots, which are very popular
for the overnighters in their giant luxury coaches with toads. The oranges are surprisingly good. I thought they might be dry, but they are
very juicy and delicious. They make a
great morning AND afternoon snack.
We killed it with our shopping. The second Bakersfield Costco location had
our sunglasses! Hooray! We’ve been wanting to buy more of the Kirkland
polarized glasses after we mistreated our last pairs. But Costco refused to keep them in
stock. So it was a Christmas miracle
to find them on this trip! Our new Verizon
mifi arrived. We also got a signal
booster and a trucker antenna.
Hopefully we’ll be able to get data in most places we go to from now
on. (We’ll still have our sprint phone,
but can expect to get little to no signal on that in the mountains and
forests. So some at some places we
might be in touch via email/facebook/blog via the mifi but NOT be in range for
calls or text).
We had some great difficulty deciding where to move to
next. All the places we’d been
considering had bad extended forecasts. I
think I looked at every option on the central coast. I was
of the opinion that if it was going to be rainy and cold, then I’d like to have
hookups. And it was a little scary to
look at campgrounds in areas where we wouldn’t know how the rain affects the
road, or even if it might get snowy. Since
we didn’t find anything, we decided to extend our stay at Orange Grove through
the weekend.
On Friday we drove to check out a nearby county
campground. Kern River Campground. It’s reviewed as kind of a party place
during the weekends and summer. But
now, it’s empty. They have an all half
moon pull-thru configuration. I wasn’t
sure if we’d make it. Missy pointed
out that the curbs were very low, and are nothing when compared to the rocks we’ve
gone over in the past. So if we don’t
exactly fit, we won’t be trapped by unfriendly curbs. There are no hookups, but it’s relatively
cheap. So I think that’s where we’ll go
next. We can stay there for a week or
so and keep checking on the weather for the coast.
While in range, we got to do some skyping with the
nephews. Man, they are sooooo
cute. It seems like forever since we’ve
seen them.
I guess that’s all for now.
I’ll try to keep up with blogging going forward. Happy Holidays!
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