We moved to another city, hit six lanes of traffic flow for the first time, and checked out a walnut plantation.
Today was moving day. We moved from Cloverdale in Sonoma County to Nicolaus, which is next to Sacramento. This is a one day stop as we move closer to Sacramento so we can see the area and use as home base for Lake Tahoe.
Our morning routine was good, yet a bit different than usual. Good because the girls got their school work done quite fast, and were pretty much all done by noon.
They did most of their work in the trailer, and continued with some classes from the truck as we drove to our next stop. Carol helped the girls and prepped the trailer from the inside while I got everything outside done. We are only staying one night at this next stop, so I don’t even want to take anything out of the truck when we get there. Girls were able to finish her classes from the road, and the hotspot worked very well for that. They were done within an hour of us leaving. We had left our spot around 10:45, but then waited in the dump station line as there was a trailer there first. Between waiting and emptying our tanks, it was 11:30 by time we left the campground.
The drive out of the campground to take the highway was a bit tight, it was the same path I ran on before, so the road was breaking up, was narrow at points and one lane in one spot, very tight turns as well. But, it was only 2 miles to get to a bigger road and then access the highway. Once we were on the highway we had the Sonoma scenery for some time, and little by little things started changing… instead of many smaller hills it became flat as we got closer to San Francisco. Then, we turned towards Sacramento and for some time it was all flat, we crossed a marsh, we went through an area with 6 lanes of moving traffic. It was not too crazy, but it was our first time with the trailer with so much traffic movement around. As we were near Sacramento and passed, we could see a mountain range far away with snow on its peaks, Carol’s guess is that that’s the Lake Tahoe area, and I think that’s probably right. We didn’t make any stops this time, and were on the road for a little under 3 hours.
As we drove in to our campground, we could see lots of big trees in some plantation fields, but we could not tell what they were, so we left it to check out later. We drove into our campground and checked in. It’s another Thousand Trails (the one with the annual membership), and we got the news that the sites with sewer were likely all taken, and we’d have to go to the other side. This first come first serve thing may not be great if we keep hitting these places without full hookups. To make it more interesting, they were trimming some trees and the one way street around the campground was closed, so we had to leave the campground to enter from a field. What a mess… we had to turn the trailer around, all hitched up with the weight distribution bars (makes it harder and could bend the bars and damage the hitch), then drive around the block and find the entrance by the field. We missed it the first time, and had to find a street to turn around, this time I went into the street and Carol got out to watch so I could back into the Main Street and turn around. That worked well and I think was not as bad on the hitch system. Then we got in and found a spot right away, right by the lake. I took the bars out to back into the spot and we were set. I like the spot and the campground looks very nice. There is a lake in the middle of the campground, Lake Minden, and the views are actually very nice. We unhitched the truck and carol left to get some stuff for dinner while I finished setting up. The girls were already out playing.
The girls actually found a dead mouse next to our campsite. I was going to just put it in the garbage, but that’s not how they operate… they named the mouse Timmy, and dug a grave for Timmy… and did a whole thing for him.
Later they even put some nuts on the grave and said it was to “feed his soul” hahahaha. These two are too funny. (And very considerate)
Carol got back just as I finished getting the trailer setup. Bella then wanted to go for a walk, and I offered to go with her.
She said she wanted to go to the fields, so we headed towards that plantation we saw when we arrived.
We were walking there and decided we’d go around the lake, then come back from the other side, that way by time we were back we would have completed a lap around the lake. I had seen on the map that a lap is 1 mile. So, off we went. Right out of the spot we were in, we walked 20 steps and were by the lake.
Awesome views of the water, the sun setting, lots of geese, etc.
We saw lots of birds on the walk. We stopped in one of the piers and Bella wanted to touch the water, so I helped her and she said the water was cold. She was afraid of touching the water as she thought there were snapping turtles in there and one would bite her hand hahahah. We had a great walk together and were talking and enjoying the whole way.
Once we got the field (farm or plantation, whatever the proper name is), it was just beautiful to be there on foot. Lots of trees planted in rows, lots of leaves on the floor (it’s fall) but we could not tell what trees were until Bella found some… NUTS!
Walnuts to be specific. Then we found a lot more, they were all on the ground. So cool. We actually found how they look on the tree, it’s a big blob looking thing. Inside that you find the walnut with its shell.
Bella was having a great time walking around, looking for nuts, then throwing them against the trees to crack them. We stayed there for some time. Bella wanted to bring some back so I helped her find some more and she ended up with 10 walnuts to bring back.
We walked back continuing our way around the lake, and saw more awesome views and even more geese. When we got back, Bella showed the nuts to Carol and Bia and told them all about the fields.
Carol had gotten some taquitos for dinner, so we had that and some other snacks (cheese, bread). Bia and Bella decided to work on some art and did that for a while until we turned the TV on. You know you’re near a big city when the over the air antenna picks up 58 channels 🙂
The girls don’t have school tomorrow so they watched TV a little longer and did some art projects they made up. I had not had a great night of sleep last night, so I went to bed.
It was a nice moving day with some pleasant surprises.