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Oct 12

Day 1: Los Banos, CA (part two)

Like many California State Parks, the San Luis Reservoir is decent enough, but way overpriced in my view – $38 bucks for no hook-ups is a bit on the steep side I think.  By the way, the Golden state will hit you up for an additional $1 to shower for five minutes.  That said, the campsites are huge, offer plenty of elbow room between neighboring sites, and are level.  Nice.

This time of year the park was mostly empty; so all in all, we had some nice downtime to relax.

Per usual, we did get out for some park exploring … or at least tried to.  Many of the most “marketed” trails were closed for the season; not sure what that’s all about.  Not to be deterred, we walked the park roads in an attempt to make the most of things.  In the end this was ok since the park was basically empty.

Also we did manage to see some wildlife during our stay.

Like these elk:

Elk grazing the fields

And lots of these bugs:

Desert Stink Beetle

And by far the biggest spider I’ve ever seen outside of a museum or zoo:

California Tarantula

Another big downer about this park is that many of the more heavily marketing trails are closed for the year, but not marked as such.  We found this out the hard way – after driving 15 minutes to the trail parking lot, walking another ten minutes to the trailhead, then finding access to the trail itself sufficiently cut off by a gate.

Rolling hills under clouds

The lone highway through the park

Despite some otherwise pretty scenery, I give this park a big thumbs down.

Not sure I can recommend this park

Once we settled in for the evening, I started a nice fire ($6 for a small bundle of wood) and Kelly made a fantastic pizza.  We had fresh-baked cookies for dessert (ok, they were Tollhouse).

Enjoying warm cookies and milk.

Afterwards, we settled in to begin watching season-1 of Showtime’s TV drama Homeland.  Wow, what a good show.

Oct 12

Day 1: San Martin to Los Banos (part one)

As mentioned yesterday, we decided to leave HMB in advance of our planned arrival to Yosemite largely because of maintenance work needed in the Airstream.  We took possession of “Mabel” in early July and have been living full-time with her since.  During this time, we’ve noticed a few issues for follow-up:

  • The monitor panel is not reading properly – specifically the fresh water indicator
  • Our bed is a platform, offering storage underneath.  The bed platform itself is supported with two struts.  One of these locked itself in the extended position and would not close.  We removed it upon locking-up but needed a new one.
  • The over the stove hood fuse seems to be very finicky.  There is a dedicated fuse that has failed four times in the few months of usage.

All of these items are covered under the two-year warranty, but dealing with these issues does present a bit of hassle.  Oh well.

The fresh water monitor and bed struts were fixed, but of course, the repair technician was not able to blow the fuse – even with lots of purposeful effort to do so.  Oh well.

Before I could truly let myself begin enjoying vacation, I did a bit work … a few small things I really wanted to get sent out before I go off the grid.  Kelly and I had lunch at Chili’s, I completed my work, and quickly enough we were on our way towards our camping spot for the night – San Luis Reservoir.

Oct 11

Yosemite Preamble: Half Moon Bay to San Martin

Kelly and I are headed to Yosemite National Park.  Neither of us has ever been and we are both quite excited to explore this vast park.  Most of the major National Parks require reservations made far in advance and when I booked this reservation a few months ago, I secured an arrival date Oct-14.

Recently, Kelly and I decided we wanted to get out of HMB Thursday night in order to avoid the craziness that is about to consume our town – Pumpkin Festival.  Anticipating heavy traffic Friday morning, we decided to avoid traffic and leave early.  Accordingly, we got our act together such that we were equipped to shove off earlier this evening … about 7pm

Just wanting to get ahead of the Friday morning rush hour, we drove about 75 minutes southeast to San Martin, CA  and dry camped in the Camping World parking lot.

As far as I could tell, there were three or four other RVer’s doing the same.

We’ve got some minor tweaks to address in the Airstream – nothing major, just some issues that have surfaced since taking possession in early July.  Tomorrow we are headed Toscano RV – one of the larger Airstream dealers in northern California.  Hopefully we’ll be in and out of there quickly and without any drama.

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