Heading South Down the Coast

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We have been moving fairly quickly down the coast, at least by our standards. Before we left Chimacum we purchased a Thousand Trails Zone Pass for the Northwest and then added a second zone for the Southwest for $54. We wanted to hang out with our friends who are staying at Russian River RV park and this is a Thousand Trails park with ridiculously high prices if you’re not a member. So, we became members in order to stay for awhile. Doing so would also allow us to stay at a few other Thousand Trails parks on our route down the coast.

We were trying to keep our travel days to 4 hours or less of driving. I mapped out a route that would take us from Chimacum, WA to Seaside, OR to stay at our first Thousand Trails park.  Seaside RV Resort was a nice park, the south park only had 30 amp but it had larger sites.  The north side of the park has 50 amp but the sites are really skinny, they really pack em in over there.  We’ll take more room every time, as long as it’s not too hot out.  (A warning about Thousand Trails parks, get a good EMS Surge Guard if you plan to use these parks, the electrical seems outdated and voltage drops happen regularly.  We recommend the Progressive EMS-PT50X, this is what we use in our RV.)

From Seaside, we headed to Florence, OR and stayed at South Jetty RV Resort.  We had a little trouble finding a site large enough for us, at least one we could actually get level in.  It was packed there, we thought it was late enough in the season that it wouldn’t be a problem, we were wrong.  Some of the sites were really muddy and the trees don’t allow much sunshine in to dry it out.  We did enjoy our stay here, once we found a suitable site.

After Florence, we headed to Klamath River, CA. We wanted to tour the Redwoods National Park, go on a hike, and tour the area a bit.  We thought this was a nice park and it wasn’t very busy at this time of the year.  The entrance had a really hard turn to get into the park, we didn’t make the turn and had to unhook the car, then back up in order to make it.  Regardless, we enjoyed our stay were.  Not to mention, the owner was super friendly and very helpful.

Next we decided to stay overnight at Richardson Grove RV park. This allowed us to take a drive through the Avenue of the Giants.  The RV park seemed a bit run down and we never saw anyone in the office.  Therefore, we were forced us to leave our info on a piece of paper and put it through the mail slot (I’m not a fan of doing that).  Also, don’t pull straight into the first pull thru site if you use a 50 to 30 amp adapter, the post was to low to the ground for us to be able to plug in.  This place could be good for an overnight, that’s about it.  It’s the most affordable option in the area.

Finally, we arrived at another Thousand Trails Park – Russian River RV Resort.  The sites were really narrow here and sites are mostly on hills.  Our friends, Kevin and Carrie courageovercomfort.com even had a meal waiting for us the day we arrived, how awesome is that?! FYI, Kevin makes some damn good chimichangas.

We returned the favor a few nights later with our signature dish, Royal Mee Grob and some freshly made spring rolls. We all took a day trip into Geyserville for some lunch and sightseeing. It was awesome to be able to hang out with friends on a regular basis, we haven’t had that for a long time. We need to do this more often.

PG&E had a precautionary power outage on Wednesday due to the wind storm that was rolling in, so we lost power in the park Wednesday afternoon.  This was shortly before the Kincaid fire had everything ablaze around there. The fire started Wednesday night, we were on alert all day Thursday and ready to leave if needed. The smoke started to roll in, it was raining ash on us, and the evacuation zone was getting larger by the minute. Friday morning we decided it was time to go, so we said our good byes and cut our stay short by almost a week. We hightailed it for the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. This route had some of the steepest and windiest roads we’ve seen on our adventure so far. But we made it!

We stopped at an RV park in Bishop, CA to plug in for a few nights, it would allow us to ride out the high winds and temps down into the teens. Once the storm passed we headed to Alabama Hills.

For some reason I think the elevation was getting to us this year, we didn’t have a problem last year on our way North. Although, our day trips this year seemed to be taking us up and down 5000+ft everyday. Which was probably a mistake of our own making, but we were getting headaches and just not feeling top notch. So, after 6 days, we headed for Needles, CA.

It was a one night stopover on our way to Congress, AZ to check out the Escapees North Ranch park.  We’ve missed the Arizona sunsets, so beautiful!

We’ll be here until close to Thanksgiving, then were heading closer to some family in Phoenix for the Holidays…