Addendum

February 9th 2014

Tomorrow we return to Orangeland for a week. The replacement for our destroyed mirror has finally arrived and is to be installed on Tuesday. The rest of the week will be spent repacking the RV and discarding empty boxes and other items we now realize we won't be needing, redoing all of the interior closets and drawers and getting Baby washed for her next big adventure. Next Monday is Maureen's 30th birthday and the day after we begin our return back east via Sedona, San Antonio, Disney World, the Florida Keys and then back up the coast. We expect to be back in New Jersey for all of our semi-annual doctor visits sometime in mid April.

With A Flashlight And A Club

Welcome to Santee Lakes, about fifteen miles northeast of San Diego. As with the previous lake we stayed at, the "lakes" here are a series of man-made impoundments, seven of them in a row, in a nearly straight line stretching from south to north. The first five lakes are a day use park for the general public with the last two reserved for the RVers. When we checked in we received the usual brochure and list of rules but in addition to those there was a full sheet of instructions about how prevalent coyotes are in the area, how every year several of the campers' dogs and cats go missing and how you should never walk your dog at night without a flashlight and a club.

It's quite bucolic and for once we had some real shade at our site in TheWillow Loop:

Despite the Great California Drought, the first night we were here it poured the entire night, turning everything into a sea of mud. But not just mud...rather a wet goo of grit that stuck to everything and filled all those little crevices on the bottom of your sneakers. We had to leave the broom outside the door so we could get most of it off before coming back inside. Mary Ellen was particularly unhappy, reminding me of our agreement not to do any more "dirt camping." I assured her that I hadn't been aware of the lack of paved sites but will have to think of a better excuse for our next excursion into non-civilized camp sites. Mary Ellen seems to think it was going to be like those British safaris to Africa in the nineteenth century, with a line that never ends of local villagers carrying everything imaginable for their comfort. That wasn't camping, it was carrying Grosvenor Square into the middle of sub-Sahara Africa. But she has done an excellent job of adjusting and insists that since I'm doing all of the mechanical and RV stuff on the outside, that she should be responsible for all "housework" type work on the inside. I keep telling her it's an unfair balance with her getting stuck with too much but once she has made her mind up, that's pretty much it.

We bought a small Coleman Grill that uses the propane bottles the size of a large Gatorade. It works like a charm, it's easy to move and clean and the meals she has been preparing on it are, as usual, to die for. Brian came down to spend the weekend with us and two huge sirloin steaks, grilled to medium-rare perfection, came off the Coleman last night. We've also been sustaining ourselves with loads of fried chicken and cheeseburgers, again courtesy of our new toy. I don't think Mary Ellen could screw up a meal if she tried.

Signs like this are posted throughout the park describing the various birds and ducks to be found wintering over here. The fishing in the lakes is excellent. Brian and I made our first excursion last night and I ended up catching my first-ever largemouth bass. For most of my 63 years I've been a strictly saltwater guy; the bass I caught was miniscule compared to some of those caught around the area. You may be surprised to learn that Southern California is known in the fishing world as one of the hottest spots on earth to land huge bass - pretty good for an area that is essentially all desert. I met a guy who had a good day with three decent sized Rainbow Trout and who showed me a picture of himself holding up a ten pound trout he had caught the day before. His feat and my own success have inspired me to keep two outfits ready to go at all times, just in case we run across any other hot spots like this. I can't wait until the summer when we intend to be in the Rockies with all of those famous trout streams and hopefully without the mobs that regularly descend on any decent rivers in New Jersey.

"Hey Rock - Take Her To The Zoo!"

The San Diego Zoo, of course. The zoo bills itself as not only the largest and most comprehensive in the country but also the zoo which has made the best effort at placing their animals in the most natural setting possible to make them feel as comfortable as they might in the wild. It's too bad they didn't put a little more thought into how comfortable the human visitors might feel in these "natural surroundings." Unless you're in California-beach-body shape, you'll get a real workout making your way up and down the somewhat confusing paths which twist and turn through this jungle. We made the intelligent decision to take the introductory forty minute bus ride, along with all the other seasoned citizens. Should you ever visit here, it's really terrific. You'll feel even better about it at the end of the day when, although you've only seen half the critters, you feel like you've just finished The Bataan Death March. At one point I literally had to pull myself up this steep, seemingly endless slope so I could see the polar bears who rewarded my effort with a vibrant and exciting display of them sleeping off lunch. Of course Mary Ellen didn't miss the opportunity to remark "No wonder they're your favorite animal - they love the cold, they're large, white and asleep." Isn't she just so cute?

Check out the plumage on this dude. He's strutting his stuff because he just got done beating up a rival for one of the girls in the back. Every once in a while they'll all start cackling, seemingly in unison, as they take a few laps around the pool. I have no idea what that is about except that it is impressive to see a gang of brightly colored orange swans on stilts tearing around their enclosure

Of all the animals Mary Ellen wanted to see, this was her favorite. Koalas are a bit bigger than I thought they were; had this guy been standing up he probably would have been close to two feet tall. But they are as cute and cuddly as you'd expect them to be after seeing them in the old Quantas commercials. They're not actually bears but rather marsupials, the creatures that carry their young in a pouch like their countrywomen the kangaroos.

Meet Montana and Scout, two almost fully-grown Grizzly bear brothers from Yellowstone National Park. The reason they're in San Diego now instead of Wyoming is because their mother was bringing them up by teaching them to raid garbage cans in Yellowstone. Since that's the prime reason human/bear encounters go badly (usually for the humans) social services stepped in and banished mom to Idaho and the two boys to foster care in sunny San Diego. They have two huge enclosures and can be separated when brothers begin doing what brothers love to do the most - beating the hell out of each other. But perhaps these two won't have that problem; right after I took this picture one began humping the other. Hey, it's California...

Unbelievably, these are the only pictures I think are worth posting. Everyone reading this has probably been to the safari ride at Great Adventure, seen the giraffes, lions and rhinos while the baboons are doing their best to rip the vinyl off your car's roof. We did wait in line to see the pandas but I still can't figure out what the fuss is all about. OK so they're rare and hard to breed in captivity but once you've seen them...I'd much rather be mauled to death by Montana and Scout (as long as they don't start humping me first) than be gummed silly by Hu Sun Ling or whatever the hell its name is. Being a teacher whose favorite subject was science, Mary Ellen was also quite annoyed that the zoo person who was giving a running lecture on the pandas as we shuffled past never mentioned that they're really not bears but members of the raccoon family. Ha! I'll take an All-American Grizzly or Kodiak bear over some glorified raccoon from The People's Republic.

Tomorrow we break heap-big-camp on the Pechango Indian Reservation and head further south for four days at the Santee Lakes Park near El Cajon. We were there the same day we visited the zoo and I have to admit, Californians may be a little whacky but they sure know how to put together and run their parks. Turkey Swamp it ain't...

In The Valley of the Pechango

February 4th, 2014

Have you ever heard of the Pechango Indian tribe? I hadn't either but they are apparently in great shape, considering they own and operate one of the largest and ritziest casinos in California. And in a growing trend with new casinos, they have included an RV park on their grounds with full "hook-ups" (that's 50 amps of electricity, water, sewer and cable television.) This particular RV park was voted the best in the nation according to the readers of Motorhome Magazine, supplanting the revered Fort Wilderness at Disney World. While it IS very nice, I'll take The Magic Kingdom over losing my money to armless one-armed bandits any day.

Maureen, Brian and Maureen's beau Larry came down for a visit over the weekend to eat, gamble and relax. Brian became our first overnight guest giving us a chance to set-up our overhead bunk (the one that we drove out here with that was stuck in the half descended position allowing us to bash our heads continually into it.) I took him up to Lake Skinner to the scene of the coyote attack, through the vineyards of Temecula's wine country and we ended up having lunch at our favorite restaurant ("Would you like some ketchup with your fries?") Speaking of Lake Skinner, here's a few pictures I forgot to include:

Maureen and Mary Ellen enjoying the mountain air

Herself bringing up the rear

The RV park at Pechango has all the amenities that every respectable high-end RV park has: paved roads, cement sites and grass between you and your neighbor, as well as enough width to park your "toad" ( a little RV insider lingo - the vehicle you have towed..."toad"...get it?) See for yourself:

A view down our street - we're at the very end

Baby, our toad and Brian's motorcycle out front

The view from our little sitting area behind the RV

Is it just me or is Mary Ellen looking more relaxed and radiant?

As you can see in the background, the mountains are like all the others in southern California - treeless, lots of exposed boulders and covered with scrub bushes with not a real tree in sight. One of our more hilarious California memories was when we first arrived at San Bernadino National Forest...and as far as the eye could see, not a tree in sight. The most surprising aspects of inland southern California are the height of the mountains, the lack of trees and the predominant color - brown. In the northeast (at least for most of the year) the color we most associate with the landscape is green. Out here it's parched brown, with a little gray thrown in for contrast.

If we can get ourselves up in time tomorrow, it's on to San Diego.

The Call of the Wild

January 31

Tonight's post is being written seventy-two hours after the fact because for the last seventy-two hours we have been completely cut-off from the digital world - no cell phone service and no internet.

Maureen made it out to our campsite at Lake Skinner on Wednesday (without her dog Mabel, which would later prove to be a blessing) and Mary Ellen was thrilled to have someone to pal around with for twenty-four hours. Although we had gotten used to it, Maureen was shocked how "far out in the boonies" we were. We had told her about the coyotes and sure enough just after it got completely dark they began warming up for the night. Now each night before turning in I take Daisy for a walk; at Skinner Lake this proved to be about twenty minutes each night and took us pretty deeply into the empty darkness, even though we could still see our RV a distance away. But we were only out for about a minute when they really started up and this time it wasn't in the distant hills or up on the mountain but rather three or four hundred yards away and in the campground itself. And they were having a great old time for themselves, yelping, barking, howling and knocking each other around. The walk was shortened considerably and back we went into the light. I'm not really frightened of them, having had them sneak up behind me in the middle of the night to steal my bait while I was surf casting for striped bass on Sandy Hook. But I was afraid for Daisy. Most people think that when coyotes come across a domesticated dog they revert to that "Call Of The Wild" thing and get them to join their pack. In fact, what they actually do is kill and eat them. Anyone who has lived in the hills around the greater Los Angeles area knows someone whose dog or cat ended up being dinner for these scraggly curs. So I was grateful Daisy had made it back home in one piece.

Now what follows is strictly second-hand as I slept through the whole thing. Around 4AM all of their commotion started up again but this time it was right around our motorhome. They were apparently directly under our windows, fighting, howling, nipping each other and just going berserk. At one point Mary Ellen and Maureen could hear one scratching at the front steps, apparently trying to get in. Daisy was at the top of the steps leading down to the door with ears and tail straight up, hackles raised and her gaze riveted on the door, waiting for the first miscreant to try and enter. Had Maureen brought Mabel we would have been peeling her off the ceiling as she makes Daisy look calmly serene.

Finally, some guy who apparently had previous experience with them opened his window and began clapping his hands and yelling "Shoo!" which was enough to send them fleeing in terror back to the hills. But just to show there were no hard feelings, before departing one of them pissed all over our new outdoor rug which we had just unwrapped and put out before dark

This morning Mary Ellen announced she was finished with "camping in the dirt" so we have agreed instead to continue on "touring the country in our motorhome." Very civilized...

The Way Things Ought To Be

(Housekeeping Note: Through my own inexperience with blogging in general and Google's Blogspot in particular, I inadvertently deleted the first five posts I had written, detailing our preparation, The Five Days From Hell, Daisy's story, our sojourn at Orangeland and our day at Disneyland. I'm working to get them back and hopefully I'll be successful ASAP.)

January 29th

I'll bet when contemplating joining the RVing world, everyone pictures themselves parked in a spot overlooking a lake, surrounded by mountains, barbecuing dinner while watching a spectacular sunset and perhaps even listening to some far-away coyotes warming up for the night. In this camping Eden, the weather is always absolutely perfect, never raining and in a temperature that's never higher than 70 and never lower than 50. And of course, no bugs at all. After having paid our dues for the first forty days, not only does that spot exist but we are there right now.

Welcome to Riverside County, California's Lake Skinner Recreation Area. It is just ten miles east of Temecula, the center of southern California's wine country. We're about ten miles west and over the mountain range from Palm Springs and it is almost beyond-belief beautiful.

OK, so it's 99.9% perfect. Besides one of the rangers told me no one's even seen one in a long time...










But enough of the negativity, check out how gorgeous (as well as empty) this place is:



Like most southern California "lakes", Lake Skinner is actually a man-made impoundment which, being surrounded by a spectacular landscape (which these few pictures do not do justice to), was designated a combination nature preserve and public recreation area. The lake has been stocked with fish and supposedly it's some seriously good fishing for largemouth bass, bluegills and even land-locked striped bass. There are motorboats and kayaks for rent at laughably low prices (compared to New Jersey), a large, well stocked camp store, and their own gas and diesel pumps. They even can fill your RV's propane tank!

Each site has its own fire ring/barbecue and firewood is available at the store. Since Mary Ellen wouldn't think of cooking on anything that isn't spotlessly germ-free we only use the portable propane grill we bought at Camping World. It's amazing how tasty barbecued anything tastes when you're in a camp; I suppose it's the milieu that adds the extra flavor.

Tomorrow Maureen is coming down with her dog Mabel to visit for the day, have dinner with us and hopefully be our first overnight guest (she lives about ninety minutes away.) On Friday we'll be packing up again and heading back into Temecula proper to stay at the "campground" that's part of the Pechanga Casino complex. This campsite was voted the nicest campground in the country recently and there's even a shuttle over to the slot machine palace so we can blow even more of our dwindling life savings. And just in case you thought I was exaggerating about the sunsets we see every night while having dinner, see for yourself:

RVing 101: Bubble Bubble, Toil(et) and Trouble

When new RVers announce to their family and friends what their plans are, the first question usually asked is "But, how will you get your mail?" The second one that occurs to them often ends up not being asked out loud, to wit: "Where do you go to the bathroom?" Many well wishers seem shocked to learn that there are full bathrooms inside of most modern RVs. But a little further along their train of thought comes the realization that if the motor home moves, where does "everything" go?

It goes into two holding tanks: one is called the "grey" water tank - everything from the kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as the shower and the washing machine go into that. The other is called the "black" water tank because (as you've probably already guessed) everything that goes down the toilet is destined for the black tank. Both of our tanks hold forty gallons; the grey tank always fills faster than the black; in fact a shower or load of wash will take up a full third. There is a small electronic panel on the wall inside the RV with a list of various containers and a small button under each one. Pressing that button lets you know how full each tank is and when either the grey or the black (especially the black) reaches the two-thirds mark, it's time to "dump" (the tanks, that is.)

There is an entire underground culture of black tank tales, horror stories of the sewer connection not being tightly secured, pulling the wrong valve handle, not making sure your hoses are where they should be, etc. but all of these legends conclude with the same ending - a humiliated RV owner covered in a week's worth of excrement or worse, your neighbor and/or his RV being covered with the effects of your carelessness.

Hidden behind one of the storage bay doors is the Crap Command Center. On the upper left is the water filter to remove any impurities from the water supply the campground provides. In the bottom middle is a large red hose connected to a "Y" joint serving both the grey and black water tanks; not visible are two pullout handles, one for each tank. The Red drainage pipe is supported by a train trestle like contraption that keeps it heading downhill into the sewer pipe next to your RV and thence into the ground connection to the city's disposal system.

 Also not visible is a clear, 90 degree elbow connecting the red hose to the Y Valve - that way you can see when the black tank's discharge goes from brown to yellow to clear. It's a fairly complicated two person job (at least for us new-comers) involving using two different hoses to prevent contamination, emptying the tanks in order and being sure to flush out Mr. Black with fresh water to make sure no refugees are lingering behind. If you're prudent (like I wasn't the first time) you open the grey water slightly to make sure there are no leaks - better to be cleaning up the laundry water than the remains of last night's pizza and beer bash. Then, after closing the grey, you slowly open the black. If you just pull the handle out all at once, over two hundred pounds of gravity-fed effluence literally comes roaring into the hose's enclosed space, making it "jump the tracks" and you holding up your wriggling red boa constrictor as you feel the entire week's worth of flushing coursing through your hands. But that's not the worst part. You see, the liquid in the black tank comes out first, followed after a momentary pause by an unmistakable load of you-know-what coursing through the hose at sixty miles an hour for what seems an eternity. I never realized how much my own "black tank" held until I literally got to "hold" it myself.

Now a curious incident happened two weeks ago. We had put our RV into the dealer's for a week but before we did, we made sure to drain both tanks completely. One week later after picking it up, we go to use the bathroom and the toilet bowl is filled and clogged. Huh? We try everything but it won't budge so one of the local Mobile RV Service guys comes out and in less than a minute has unclogged it. But, but...how did it get filled and clogged like that? He just looks at us until we catch on - the guys at the service shop had been using it for a week until they clogged it up and never bothered fixing it. Classy, huh? But it turns out there's another problem. He explains that right under the toilet bowl, the pipe takes a 90 degree turn which means that lots of clogs are in our future. He says that when we're ready he can remedy it for us but until then, we need "The Wand", a wriggling tube flexible enough to get all the way down through the clog but sturdy enough to push through and eliminate the, ahem, problem. The next day we buy one and it works great for the weekly stop-ups we begin experiencing. Behold: The Magic Wand