Well the day to leave finally arrived! We tried to start out the day as if it was our normal routine; Pats got up first and took Dede (our dog) for a walk in the park. I muddled around with my usual morning routine, substituting a few tasks in place of reading the morning paper which we stopped taking delivery of. Pats went off to get a real walk with Bobbie after bringing Dede back. I continued to gather up last minute stuff to put in the trailer or to pack, cleaned up the kitchen, watered some plants. Pats and Bobbie returned and Bobbie bid us goodbye and took our car to be stored at her house. We had one load of laundry to do, so as to put clean sheets on the beds. Bobbie called after a while to let us know that Patsy's wallet was in the Prius and that we might want to pick it up on our way out of town.
At the crack of 10:45, with laundry done and beds made and nothing more we could think of to delay our departure, we locked the house, locked up the trailer, and slowly dragged the trailer off our driveway onto the street. Our driveway, while short, is a bit steep and the back of the trailer scraps across the tarmac with a terrible grinding noise. It has little wheels on the back bumper, but it sounds as if the whole trailer is coming apart. Because we are also on a blind corner on a busy street, Pats has to stand out in the street to let me know when I can pull out on to the road. Once on Glen Arbor, I usually drive a little bit to a straight stretch of road before I stop. This means that Pats has to run after the truck and jump in quickly before the next cars coming careening around the curve, potentially to run into the back of us. Off we go to Scott's Valley to get our wallet and one final "Goodbye"
Going over Hiway 17 is always a slow affair towing a trailer; cars just hate to get behind a trailer. As luck would have it, we got in line behind a logging truck with a full load of redwood logs. He was travelling at 30 to 35 mph, a speed that we could keep up with and not feel guilty about holding up the line of traffic behind us. We could always blame our slow speed on the logging truck in front. On the flat we can usually drive at 50-55 mph. The trip through the Bay Area was uneventful, lots of traffic, but life in the slow lane is a lot less stressful. Onward north up Hiway 101 we go.
Just outside of Ukiah we started making calls to couple of RV parks. We used to have a big RV park directory with thousands of listings to leaf through and call ahead to see if there is space available in the park. Now a days it is all online, but if you don't have a cellular data connection, you are out of luck until you can find a hot spot. Most trailer parks now offer WIFI, but the speed is minimal given the number of users. Google Maps is great, but tonight we found that it was painfully slow to respond to searches and to paint the maps.
After a couple of calls, we were able to book into a KOA Willits, at $50 per night. A big park with lots of activities for families with kids. Swimming, disc golf, catch and release trout pond, camp fire shows, a dog park, petting zoo, and a stable were all available. The first RVers I met (in the hot tub) were John and Kate, "full timers". The State of Missouri demolished their house to widen the highway, so they sold everything, bought a big ass RV and hit the road...Didn't look back. They like to travel about a 100 miles or so and stay at a place for two or three days and then move on. They plan on spending the winter in Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment