We moved today, it was a rainy morning, very foggy ride but we arrived in beautiful Sonoma County to good weather and enjoyed staying outside.
It was very cloudy when I woke up, and it was all wet outside, but it was actually not raining at that moment, so I wanted to get my prep done quick so I could get outside and get a few things done. What I really wanted was for everyone to be up so we could pull the slide out in and not have to worry about the water that could be up there if it is raining. Everyone actually woke up not long after I did, so we all changed, had breakfast and got going on getting ready to go. We had done quite a bit yesterday, so there was not a ton to do. While I was doing the black tank flush, Carol got the girls ready and pulled the slide out in. The black tank flush is something we do every Wednesday and Sunday at least, which is when we usually move, or more often if I feel there’s stuff “stuck” in the black tank (the toilet tank). The flush is basically connecting a hose to the tank flush connector and running it. The water from there will go into the black tank and “spray around” cleaning it all from debris. hahahaha. Today’s pack up was much faster and we were all ready to go and out the door by 10am. We had a 3 plus hours drive to Cloverdale, in Sonoma County, and since we are staying at a Thousand Trails place, it’s better to arrive as early as possible as those places often don’t assign your spot, you just pick one.
Our drive was pretty good. It was very foggy though, and rainy.
Highway 101 is pretty nice, but it does have plenty of tight turns and areas where you’re going up and down the mountains, so speed is not high. We were not in a rush, and just took our time to be safe.
I did pull over at pull outs a few times to let traffic pass. The truck can handle going as fast as I want, but I don’t feel too safe making turns fast with the trailer behind, so we took our time. We made a few bathroom stops on the way as well. Most of the drive was around forrest, sometimes Redwoods, it was nice.
As we were getting closer, about 20 minutes or so away from our campground, the scenery changed quite a bit.
Weather opened up, so we had some sunshine, smaller but more aggressive hills, with Vineyards and houses all over. It’s super pretty. Reminded me a bit of Tuscany.
We saw quite a few Vineyards and Tasing rooms, so we are definitely making it to one or a few :). We stay in the area until Thursday, so we are all looking forward to seeing more, and there’s plenty to do in the area, so hoping for good weather as well.
Once we arrived at Russian River Campground, we checked in and got our paperwork. The guy basically handed me the paperwork and showed me the number to text once we chose a site. I had not reviewed the campground layout at all, so I asked for recommendations, something near the playground would be great. He circled a few. I gave the map to Carol and we headed in. It’s a bit hilly in here, and very sharp turns everywhere. The sites themselves all look level with concrete pads, so even though many had crazy inclined entrances, the site itself was level. I had told Carol we should check out the site that was circled the closet to the plagrounds, and it was also between 2 bathroom areas, which is also where the laundry rooms are. We drove in, and actually passed the turn to go see that site, so I had to back up the trailer a good bit as it was faster to do that. Backing up the trailer on a narrow street, with a hill right by it, and the Weight Distribution Bars on is not the best, but I went slow and got through :). All the sites here are back in, so we found ours and decided we’d take that one near the playground. We backed in, and started set up. And that’s when I was reminded of the other “thing” about this particular place…. No sewer. I made the reservation online and the lady did tell me, but I forgot. They have a service that will come and drain your tanks for $25, so that’s what we’ll have to do. Now I’m really glad we are right by the bathrooms, so hopefully we can manage not filling up the tanks too fast.
As we were setting up, the girls were out playing by the playground, which is across the street from our site. They came running all excited that they saw a woodpecker.
And sure enough, there are some woodpeckers here, and they were pecking on the little wood building close to the street and hiding nuts in the holes they were making.
The building has so many holes it looks like it got hit by a shot gun. This spot is very cool for that too, when you pay attention, there are a ton of birds around. We are going to try to get some good pictures tomorrow.
Judy and Bob called as we were wrapping up our setup, and we talked for a while. The girls were showing them the “potion” they were making, and all the different nuts they found, the different birds, etc. Once Carol was done she joined, and actually took over as the girls left to play, and I joined as soon as I was done. Always good catching up with them. Bob was enjoying the latest 3 Sheeps Barrel Aged beer, so I’m sure he had a good night hahahah.
As it got dark, we worked on getting dinner ready while the girls went to shower at the campground showers, which are across the street or down the hill :). The buildings were both empty so they could pick whatever they wanted and enjoy a hot shower with space and no time concerns. Carol went after dinner and I went after Carol. They had showered at a campground shower before, but I had not, so this was the first time I didn’t shower in the trailer, and it was nice! The whole place was empty, the water was super hot, and I enjoyed just relaxing under the hot water.
They have wifi here but you have to pay to use it, and it allows 4 devices, so I decided to try a feature that my hotspot router has, which is called Data Offloading. The way it works is the router will stop the dual band mode (5G and regular), and use the 5G antenna to receive a wifi signal, and then the other regular one to broadcast. So, I paid for the wifi, logged in to the hotspot router, turned on data offloading, turn off cellular data (just to be sure), and logged in to the wifi. And voila! It took a bit for things to get going, but once it did, I got all my devices connected to the hotspot. This is great because it is unlimited use, so even though I have the cellular hotspots, those are limited to certain amounts of use and cost quite a bit more.
After dinner we watched some TV before the girls went to bed. Carol took the dishes and did the dishes by the laundry, that way it’ll take a bit longer to fill up our grey tank. We can actually see the laundry area down the hill from our kitchen window, it’s like 40 ft away. After the girls went to bed, we watched some TV, I did some work on my laptop and we went to bed.
Pretty nice moving day, nice ride here, great place, and girls got to play and run around.