A descriptive look at traveling and full-timing with our second RV, a fifth wheel toyhauler.
Laura and Sasha started this adventure in April of 2005
for a two week vacation in a truck camper.
The Road Trip of 2009! Laura & Sasha's Excellent Adventure
The Next Adventure Begins!
California - Fuel Tank & The Desert
Getting an Extra Fuel Tank and Heading East
We headed down to Chico California to get an extra fuel tank put onto the truck. This will greatly help our long distance capabilities and let us pick and choose which diesel station will get our fabulous business.
Our Rig (and Truck) has:
- 104 gallon fresh water tank,
- 32.5 gallon black tank,
- 72.5 gallon gray water tank, (both the shower and the bath sink go into one and the kitchen sink goes into another tank adding up to 72.5 gallons),
- 30 gallon gasoline tank,
- 38 gallons diesel tank,
- and we still have our four 5 gallon small tanks for water
- On 11/19 got 6 solar panels with 4 AGM batteries to give us 600 amp hours of free electricity (this is the maximum amps before we go to 50% of our batteries.)
- And had a 4000 watt generator that can have as many amp hours as there is gasoline.
- On 11/25 we will got: an extra fuel tank (74 gallon diesel tank) so now we have a 112 gallon diesel fuel tank. This tank is not gravity fed (which is illegal by the way), but it has a pump, that periodically pumps diesel from the auxiliary tank into the main tank. As the main tank goes down, so that the main tank is always showing at full or 3/4 full. We also have a display on the dash that tells the status of the tanks, it also tells you when it is pumping and when it is not. So you can see the actual gallons of diesel that are left.
November 24th, Tuesday: Heading South to California, took some pictures of Mount McLoughlin which is over 9,000 feet above sea level. I love how these peaks just appear after going around a corner. We also saw Mount Shasta, constantly took pictures of it (at 14 K it is a big mountain!) and will have those pictures up tonight (I hope!). Well, not on the night of the 24th, took me a while longer sorry.
We left Henderson's around 11:30 am - Sasha had to get some parts for the next oil change that we will do somewhere in the desert, and I wasted a good 1/2 hour on the phone trying to get in touch with someone that is pretty unreachable. Anyway, I cleaned up the place, got everything in its place, and then put in the slides. I then backed up the truck, and got the hitch in the VERY FIRST TIME! Yahoo! that is a first for us, I am so excited! It no longer takes an hour to hitch up! Of course, Sasha got it close, I just had to finish the deal, but STILL! EXCITED!
So I packed us some goodies for on the road, no sandwiches but good snacks. However, Sasha had even better snacks - we had gotten this trail mix called Mt Hood Trail Mix from Winco - one of the bulk items, and oh boy, was it good - candied peanuts, dark chocolate covered raisins, white chocolate covered somethings, and well, I guess I shall have to eat more of it to let you know what was in it. But it was GOOD. It gave us the sugar high that we needed. But now Sasha has crashed - well, not really, he is taking a nap before we head into Chico.
We are only about 50 miles away from Transfer Flow, they are the company that will put in an extra fuel tank into the truck. We are looking at the 74 gallon extra tank that will be put in the bed of the truck, right behind the window. How they do it I don't know but Sasha called them up first thing this morning (around 8:30 am) and asked them if they could do the job tomorrow. They said yes, so this is good. We are headed towards one of the most congested areas of the USA on the most traveled holiday during the year. We are hoping they will let us stay there tomorrow night too, so that we can drive to wherever we are going on Thursday.
Sasha woke up, it is now dark out - 5:30 - and we have 50 miles to go. Once we are there, and we have set up, I will write in.
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Now this is the interesting part. Since we do not allow shoes inside of our rig, I took off my shoes to walk over to the refrig. The guy immediately noticed and so did not come into the rig. He had a flashlight, and shined it into the refrigerator. He saw the grapefruit in there, and asked to see the two that we had in there. I took them out and showed them to him. He said that they looked fine and that we were allowed to keep them!
Supposedly, there is this virus on citrus and so California is bent on making sure it does not come into California. Texas and Florida citrus have this problem. Well, we will make sure not to bring those citrus into California, for sure!
Took about 15 minutes to do it all, sorry to the person behind us. But they saw Virginia plates, and so stopped us. I can only imagine what it will be like with Texas plates!
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Right after we finished up with the Department of Agriculture, we spotted Mount Shasta. The next couple of pictures are of that 14K mountain. |
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Let's just say, we really liked this mountain, especially as it was far enough away that you could see the beauty, but not the coldness. We stopped at a rest stop and took pictures. | |
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This picture is fuzzy, moving truck and all, but check out the reservoir, pretty low. But still, quite beautiful! |
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We arrived at TransferFlow in Chico, California around 7:30 on November 24th! There was someone still there, she was cleaning, and suggested a place to park that was outside of their place. That was fine for us. Nice place right near the municipal airport.
November 25th, Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. They wanted to get the truck at 7 am, which meant we had to get up a little earlier than what we normally do, but still they had it in their shop by 7:15-7:30 am not bad for people that sleep in normally. Don't have any pictures for today, but we basically were out in the sun. Both of us reading and enjoying the day. It was warm, probably got up to 70 degrees!
I was reading Flood Tide, Clive Cussler book, and Sasha was reading Atlantis Found also by Cussler and enjoying the sun, finally getting to wear a tee shirt.
They had the truck done by 2 pm. We paid and they had no problem with us staying another night. People started leaving around 3 pm, and Sasha changed the oil of the truck. We had gone 5,000 miles since Buxton, NC! Well, it was off by a couple of hundred miles, so he did it a little early, but it was a good way to go. We will recycle the oil at a Walmart.
November 26th, Thursday - Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! We got up a
little late, and decided where to go.
We did want to have a sort of Thanksgiving dinner, I was
first thinking of a Old Country Buffet or something along
those lines when Sasha said, there are lots of casinos
around where we are going, you want to stop at one of those?
We found one on the way, Colusa Casino in the town Colusa,
California. We had to drive a little ways to it, but on
Thanksgiving day, we only drove a total of 75 miles. Oh
well!
We had a nice spot, they were very welcoming, showing us where the RVs were parked. No hookups, but we had lots of sun so our batteries were fully charged and still charging until the sun went down.
After dinner, we went to the player's club to sign up. OK, if you are going to go this route RVers take note: GO to the player's club and sign up FIRST! because when we signed up, we got a 2 for 1 at the buffet! Man, we goofed! Plus we got $10 on the card to play with. You need to put a dollar in to get it to play, but one dollar is not going to break the bank for us.
It took a while to find a game that I wanted to play, but then we found it:
We went back to the camper happy.
November 27th, Friday - Hopefully go more miles than yesterday. Well, we did go more miles, but we still had a late start. Crack of Noon club strikes again, this time we did not leave until 1 pm. But hey, not too bad. We went about 200 miles this time, landing in Coalingo, CA. We had gone through rain and bad roads for part of the time. So we stopped at a Denny's for dinner and decided to stay the night. We asked the manager if we could, and she did not have a problem with it.
Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get past Los Angles without a problem.
November 28th, Saturday - another Crack of Noon club day. Hopefully we will get past Los Angles and near Joshua Tree National Park - but it will probably be Sunday before we get into the park.
Well, we only got to another Casino, San Manuel in Highland, California. The parking of the rig was really tough, had to go up this really steep hill.
Ok, what happened we would not wish on any RVer - first of all, do not go to San Miguel Bingo and Casino on a holiday weekend or on a Saturday night as it is SO unbelievably crowded and with an RV, not a good idea. But we did not know.
Do NOT go to a Casino that does not have SIGNS for Truck and RV parking because you KNOW they will put you in the farthest place imaginable. But we did not know.
DO NOT go to a casino that is up a hill when it is dark out. But we did not know.
If you have to flag someone down, just to get an idea of where to park, DO NOT go to that casino, turn around and go to a Walmart. But we did not know.
AND finally, when there is an extremely steep hill (at least 7% grade) DO PUT your truck into the lowest gear and go up the hill slowly and confidently, DO NOT do what we did: up in Drive, stopping for a slow and witless security guard to tell us where to go, and the transmission slipped under such huge weight. Let's just say we were scared beyond belief, thinking we had harmed the truck, but Sasha was able to make the turn and we were able to finally park.
We recovered for a bit at the camper and then went down to the casino - had to take a shuttle as there were no sidewalks and it was too far away - dark and down a steep hill. We went into this casino, and it totally paled in comparison to the previous one, even though it was bigger, because 1. people smoked like fiends, 2. their ventilation system wasn't good enough (or it was overwhelmed), 3. the place was packed, 4. Even the non-smoking area was smoky, and 5. they did not have penny slots.
Because we went on a Saturday, the buffet was hugely overpriced - $21.95 because it was seafood and on a holiday weekend. Supposedly, they bussed people in from Los Angles and other places, they offer free bus rides - Like the Hotel California, you can check in but you can never leave.
We played just a little, ate dinner at a cafe and decided it was not worth it, so we went back to the camper.
Because we took a shuttle to get there, we had to take a shuttle to get back a 30 minute wait. Once back, we enjoyed the evening, and planned our route for tomorrow.
(These pictures were taken the following morning, but you can see the parking lot and our views - they were pretty nice that evening!)
November 29, Sunday: near Joshua Tree National Park: We realized that we were only 100 miles away from Joshua Tree National Park so after a quick breakfast, we headed out, much earlier than our Crack of Noon Club timeframe. We had heard from a park attendant last night that Sundays in the Casino were packed, so we wanted to get out ASAP. So we did.
We headed out to the southern end of Joshua Tree NP, where there is lots of BLM land in which you can park for free. We found a place relatively far away from the highway but close enough so that we get internet.
So we are in Joshua Tree Area so we will have a new page for it (actually two pages I think!)
Check out Oregon 2009 Road Trip, Taking a Stroll through Oregon,
fleeing the snow on the way to Springfield, Oregon for solar
panels for the truck and since November was not yet over, California and Transfer Flow.
Check out the month, November for what we were doing and expenses of November - that will be a doozy!