Well, my goodness how time flies. Can’t believe it has been so long since my last post! Have we been to the most exciting places on the planet? So busy I couldn’t even take time to write? Not even close!
Our drive from Santa Rosa ended up being our first night time drive and our first time towing the Jeep. First, let me say the Jeep towed great. This Phaeton has the power to flat tow in the hills without any concerns. We are very glad we opted for the Phaeton over the smaller engine Red.
Since we hadn’t set up or learned anything about our Good Sam navigation that Ron and Marby were kind enough to throw in with the coach, I relied on Siri and my iPhone.
In my defense, I did ask Mike, as he drove through Santa Rosa at 4:30 pm, if he’d like to pull over and look at the route options. He said no. I also offered to navigate him to I80 which was a longer route, but hey it’s the freeway. He stated that I80 would be a parking lot at that time of day and just go with the shortest route. So off we went!
Our first turns took us through a residential area with the giant speed bumps-that was fun! But oh wait, it’s just getting fun!
We ended up on highway 128. Which apparently is some type of cut off or short cut for commuters because it is very busy around 5:00 pm on a weekday. And very narrow, and very curvy, and has no shoulder to speak of really. There were pull out areas and we did pull out and let cars go around as we were able. Just took it slow and eventually traffic ran out-so did civilization it seemed. We had to drive around mountain areas and the deer did not always follow the deer crossing signs. Luckily there was no one around and we could go slow and take the turns wide-again very narrow road. We did get passed by a fire truck at one point-met him a few miles down the road turning around-easy to get lost in this area apparently.
Mike did a wonderful job of driving and since he grew up in California and driving on these kinds of roads I wasn’t really concerned. We went slow and he used his engine brake-loves that thing!
Because we were close to dear friends, we decided to stop for the night in Guinda and say hi to Mark and Carol. It was our first real boondocking experience in the RV. For family and friends who don’t RV, boondocking is another term for dry camping or free camping without hook ups. Nice open lot close to their house that we just parked for the night. We had the generator and just crawled into bed, leaving the slides in and didn’t put the jacks down. Was nice to see our friends and good to know that we could be self- sufficient. Just pushed a button to start the generator, fixed a cup of coffee and we were off in the AM.
While I still used Siri to navigate, the route to Chico from Guinda was a lot better. Highway 20 and Highway 45 were quite nice, and it was a pretty drive. There are a lot of camping areas along the river and this time of year, there was no one there. It looked like one could easily stay here last minute without a concern.
We needed to stop for propane and I haven’t yet found a great RV app for finding propane, so I relied on Siri. She directed us to Willows, CA, not far off our route. The first place had no one available to pump it and it looked like it would have been tough to get in and out of anyway. Luckily the lady running the joint was helpful and told us to go to Carl’s feed store. What a great place to get propane! We paid 2.66/gallon which I found out was a great deal compared to future purchases. Also, very very easy to get in and out of -big lot where we could run the dogs a little bit too on our journey. We were proud as peacocks that we had accomplished our first propane fill so easily until we got ready to get back in the coach and leave. We had locked ourselves out! Still not sure how this happened but fortunately we had left the window by the loveseat unlocked so Mike had to crawl through and we were on our way with little delay. Gotta hide a key somewhere so we are prepared for this. I know it will happen again!
After a couple days of traveling and many firsts-first towing, first night driving, first boondocking, first propane fill, first lock out-we have arrived in Chico for our first Thanksgiving with family and no idea where we’re going to stay (remember, we gave up our site for the fire evacuees..) Chico to be continued! Thanks for taking the time to read! Glad to be getting caught up!!!
