April 28: Thousand Trails and a surprise visit back home

 

So finally took Barbie down to Petroworks in Falbrook, CA for some much needed work.  Falbrook turns out to be a really beautiful small town just east of Camp Pendelton - a major army base on the coast between LA and San Diego.  Rolling hills, nurseries everywhere and winding roads (which made driving with the Whale just that much more fun).  In any case, dropped her off, the quote was lots of $$$ and 2-3 weeks of wait/work. Then headed for my first Thousand Trails RV park. 

So Thousand Trails (TT) is a club you can join which gives you access to various TT RV parks throughout the States.  Gene and I stayed in a TT park in San Francisco and because 4 days there cost us about $600, they gave us 50% off our year membership - so we only paid $350 for the year.  What that gives us is access to any of the TT parks in the Southwest states, so CA, Nevada and Arizona.  I can stay at any of the parks for 2 weeks (for free), and then I need to stay 'out of the system' for a week, and then I can stay for 2 weeks again, etc. Initially I thought that it was kind of like timeshare - which I knew enough about thanks to Peggy, but so far it has worked out well.  I can only book up to 120days in advance (which does not bother me as I do not know what I am doing 7 days in advance, so...) and they seem to have quite a few cancellations, so booking a few days ahead of arriving works fine.  Naturally as you pay a higher membership fee, you get better access up to premium which is $18,000 + a yearly fee and then you can stay at any one of their RV parks for your lifetime, but you still need to move every 3 weeks. The first RV park was Wilderness Lakes RV park in Menifee, CA.  About 30 miles away from where Barbie was.  I stayed for 5 nights, and really interesting...

Site for 5 nights

Take-out Gyro from the local Mediterranean restaurant

Spot the goose

Black crowned night heron - per my personal Merlin (LindaP)

The Escapees solo group

Played a lot of pickle-ball, swam in one of the 2 pools,  played cards, and just had a great time.  Crazy bird life - with geese nesting on top of RV roofs... made quite the mess..

There seems to be 2 groups of people.  Young families with pre-school kids who cannot afford a house in southern California and basically stay for 3 weeks at a park and then move on to another one - basically circling between the 3 or 4 parks in southern California.  The real modern day nomads.  All the kids and parents know each other and they all move together.  The other group are the older retirees or weekend campers who travel wider, but camp enough to make TT worthwhile.  

My campsite was next to Millie, just over 65 and traveled with her dog and a group of friends.  Everyone in the 'gang' belonged to the Escapees (another club) and a sub-club called the SOLO travelers.  Millie invited me to their happy hour on one of the days and I met everyone.  Really interesting.1 guy (ex-judge whose wife had died a few years earlier, about 80 yrs old and very interesting), 3 women of which one has been traveling around for 26 years on her own in her 40ft RV towing a large Jeep behind it.  The group of 6 in total had traveled up to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and down the east coast last year and the year before had gone up to Alaska - so they put in lots of miles each summer.  This year the plan is to go do more of Alaska again.  Also nomads, but definitely not economic nomads... Will try and meet up with them again somewhere on the west coast and before they disappear into Alaska.

Once Greg and Loretta returned from their eventful Eclipse trip to Texas, I headed back to Burbank.  Gene and I had decided that I would fly back home for a week and surprise Gina for her 24th birthday.  

I arrived back in Boston at 1am on Thursday morning and when Gina came down to the kitchen, it was a total surprise.  The funniest part was that apparently for the previous two weeks she had been saying that she wished Dad was there to pack her car as she was moving down to Charleston the day after her birthday.  Kudos to Gene that (probably for the first time ever), managed to keep a secret...  It was a very  busy 2 days - Thursday morning I arrive, Thursday afternoon Tim Bouwer arrives from Portugal,  Friday Chris comes home, its Gina's birthday and Jack (Gina's boyfriend) arrives from Charlotte + we threw a little party for Gina on Friday night. Saturday morning at 5am Gina and Jack set off for Charlotte where they were going to sleep at Jack's parents, hook up the U-Haul trailer (as one should), pick up some furniture for the apartment and then drive the last leg down to Charleston.  Shout out to the old Corolla - did a great job to get them to their new home.

By Sunday we were winding down and had TeamG (Chris and Mary) over for a Ribeye and NY Strip braai and by Monday we were all relaxed...

Stanley doing Stanley

with the birthday girl