Visting Family and Friends in Central California

Hi there, welcome back. Our last chapter concluded on Friday, July 1^st, when we traveled from Santa Maria, California, on the cool Pacific coast, to Fresno, California, in the HOT San Joaquin Valley. On Saturday we went out after lunch and drove to the home of Jackie's 2^nd cousin, Stephanie Kopf, and her husband Ron. They also have three kids, Tyler, Bryce, and Madison. Stephanie's mom, Sue, with whom Jackie grew up, was up from the Torrance, California area to visit for the holiday. Shortly after arriving at Stephanie's house we went over to another home, a friend of Stephanie's, who's house they are taking care of while the family is on vacation. This house is a very big place in a gated community, but more important on this 100 plus weekend, it has a pool! I didn't bring my suit, but Madison and Ron were enjoying the pool. Everyone just sat around and visited. We brought some snacks, Stephanie had some, and later in the afternoon they ordered in some pizza and wings. We had a great time catching up and didn't leave until about 8:00. We headed back to the coach and stayed in for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, July 3^rd, we enjoyed the Sunday paper and talk shows before heading back over to see Stephanie and her family. We again spent the afternoon in the “borrowed” home, enjoying the pool and spending time with family. We had picked up some KFC for the group on the way over, so we had a great dinner. We left around 7:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Monday, July 4^th, Happy 4th of July! We left the coach about 2:30 and drove over to Stephanie's house for the afternoon. This time we were actually at her house, not the one they are watching, the reason being that they are going to BBQ today. We sat around and talked with everyone, including Stephanie's oldest son Tyler, whom we hadn't yet seen this trip, and his girlfriend. For dinner Ron BBQed some nice tri-tips and we had that with beans, potato salad, and corn on the cob. A real all American meal for the Fourth of July. We stayed and talked until about 8:00 when we headed back to our place. After we got back to the coach we could hear a lot of personal fireworks going off in the surrounding neighborhoods, but when I looked outside I couldn't see any of the various public fireworks shows. I guess they were all more out in the suburbs. We watched TV until it was time for bed.

Tuesday we had a day on our own. Stephanie told us that she and the kids were doing stuff all day and wouldn't be home until late. It was still pretty hot, but we went out and did some geocaching anyway. We got five new finds and one DNF before we decided we were sweaty enough. We did some shopping at Sam's Club and then Walmart before heading back to the coach. About 6:00 we were craving some Mexican food, so we headed out to a local place called Toledo's that had good Yelp ratings. The food was very good and plentiful and the service was excellent. After dinner we went back to the coach and watched TV the rest of the night.

Wednesday, July 6^th was another travel day. We had the coach all packed up and ready to head north to Carmichael, California, a suburb of Sacramento. We had about 180 miles to drive. The electric is always the last thing to get unplugged and put away before we leave. I did that, got back in the coach, ready to drive and found that there was no electric in the coach at all, no 120 VAC and no 12 VDC, nothing. Normally when I pull the plug from shore power the inverter kicks in and provides 120 VAC to the outlets and the 12 VDC power never goes away. The engine started and ran fine, so there was nothing wrong with the engine batteries. I started doing some troubleshooting and one of the first things I did was take my multimeter and checked the house batteries. They were fine, right at a little over 12 volts. I then checked on the other side of the battery cutoff switch for the house batteries, no voltage at all. I found my culprit. I disconnected the house batteries and then took the switch off the wall. This is a small rotary switch that is there to allow you to cut all the 12 volt power. I have never had to use it in the ten plus years we have had the coach. Nonetheless, when I took it apart it was burned out. Some internal screws had worked loose over the years allowing the internal connector to not make good contact and the heat buildup burned out one of the contacts. Since the switch is only there if you want to cut the power, I just connected all the wires from the switch together on one bolt, put some electrical tape on it and yippee, we had power again. It's only a workaround fix, I will order a switch online and get it replaced soon, but I really don't need it for the short time we will be traveling.

Once that problem was solved we dumped the tanks, since the Fresno lodge didn't have sewer at the sites, and were on the road to Carmichael only about an hour later then our planned departure time. We had no further incidents and arrived at the Carmichael Elks Lodge about 3:30. There were plenty of open spots and we got parked and hooked up in short order. We will be here for a total of six days. After we got settled in we went to In and Out to pick up a quick dinner, our first meal for the day. We then watched TV until bedtime.

Thursday we went out after lunch to do some geocaching in the area. We were able to get six new finds, and on DNF, in a matter of hours. At one of the caches we actually ran into another cacher who walked up while we were searching. This happens rarely enough to merit a mention when it does. After caching we went back to the coach and spent the rest of the evening there.

Friday, July 8^th, we went out after lunch and did a few geocaches before heading to Costco for some supplies. We were able to get four new finds, and one DNF, before we stopped at the local Costco. We then headed back to the coach and put everything away. We relaxed in the coach for a while and at about 6:00 we walked over to the Carmichael Elks for drinks and dinner. While we were still having a cocktail our friend Curt Minard walked in. We met Curt and Sharon Minard about six years ago through Peggy and Vernon Bullock. Curt and Sharon are members of a Northern California RV travel club along with Peggy and Vernon. Curt and Sharon have a Monaco Knight with the same nice floor plan as ours, theirs is just one year newer. Sharon had gone to the State Fair with her daughter, so Curt came over to have dinner with us. They live in Carmichael and are members of this lodge. We had a very nice steak sandwich for dinner and enjoyed our time talking to Curt. We haven't seen them in a couple years, although we stay in contact through social media. We will be with Curt and Sharon again in just a few days when we all gather at the Bullock house for their fourth annual 50^th anniversary party. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the night.

Saturday, July 9^th, we left the coach about 11:00 and headed for the California State Fair. The Elks Lodge is only about six or seven miles from the Cal Expo grounds and the State Fair started yesterday. We first made a quick stop at the Minard's house to pick up some tickets that Sharon had. She had called Jackie this morning and told her that she had two entry tickets and two monorail ride tickets left over from a booklet that Sharon's daughter had bought. Since entry into the fair was $10 even for seniors, this was a good savings. We then stopped at Denny's for a quick lunch. Experience had taught us that all you get at fairs of any kind is poor quality, yet highly overpriced, food.

We arrived at the fairgrounds about 12:30, paid our $10 to park and joined 50,000 or so other happy Californians at the State Fair. We have been to a lot of county fairs in our travels, and even the Arizona State Fair once, but this was the first here in California. We had a great time, checked out most of the exhibits and the commercial buildings. We ended up spending nearly five hours walking around the fairgrounds. We bought a few little things, but really didn't spend much money thanks to the free entry tickets. We left the fairgrounds about 5:00, went back home, bought a pizza and stayed in the rest of the evening resting our aching feet.

Sunday, July 10^th, we left the coach about 2:30 and went out to do some errands before going to visit some friends in the area. We went back to a geocache that we had DNFed a couple days ago to try again. We had gotten a hint from the cache owner and, sure enough, there was the cache, still in place after having not been found for over a year. Yea, fixed a DNF! We then stopped at Costco and picked up another six pack of vodka. We realized that in less than two weeks we will be going into Oregon for a couple of months. Oregon liquor laws are very restrictive, which makes liquor up there very expensive. We wanted to have as big a supply as we reasonably could.

After our errands we went over to Kathy Yarbrough's house in nearby Citrus Heights for a visit. Kathy and Jackie have been friends for decades, having met many years ago at work. Kathy and her husband Bill have a nice manufactured home in a 55+ community. Kathy was babysitting for her six year old granddaughter Bella, whom we have watched grow up over the years. We had a very nice visit and Kathy made dinner for the five of us. We visited until about 8:30 when we left to go back to the coach, where we spent the remainder of the evening watching TV.

Monday, July 11^th, we went out after lunch and did our laundry. After laundry we did a Walmart run, stocking up for our trip to the little mountain town of Mineral for the Bullock's annual party. Mineral has only 123 people and a small general store, so we wanted to be sure we had everything we needed for the six day stay. Once we had all our chores done we went home and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday we were packed up and ready to travel by about 10:30. Today we are going about 140 miles north to the town of Red Bluff, California. The trip was uneventful and we arrived at the Red Bluff Elks Lodge about 2:30. We are only staying for one night, so we unhooked the car and did the minimal setup necessary to stay overnight. We did leave the campground briefly to go get the car washed. It was so dirty we weren't even sure what the color was anymore. We also did one geocache, just so we could drop all our travel bugs off in a new location. After our errands we went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, July 13^th, we left the Elks about 10:30 and started the 42 mile trip east to the town of Mineral. Although it is only 42 miles, the elevation goes from only 300 feet in Red Bluff to nearly 5,000 in Mineral. Because of the climb we didn't tow the car. The first time we came up here, four years ago, we towed the car and the coach overheated badly. I had to stop several times to let it cool down. Since then we drive the coach and car separately. The coach still got hot on today's trip, but only for short periods before cooling down again. We arrived in Mineral about noon and got settled into the only RV park in the area.

It is a very rustic park, but does have full hookup sites, although with only 30 amp electric. The site we have is nice, but like all the sites, there is no way to get satellite reception with the coach roof mounted antenna. After we got everything else done I set up our spare outside dish so we would have some TV. It took me almost two hours to get everything working and find a signal, but we now have TV. It isn't HD because our little spare antenna doesn't do HD, but we get TV and can record our shows, so we can get by. While I was working on the TV Dave and Karen VanEgdon moved into the site two down from us. They are also here for the festivities this weekend.

About 5:00 we went over to Peggy and Vernon's “cabin” for dinner. I say cabin in quotes because it is actually about 4,000 square feet of two story house now. When they bought it years ago it actually was an old forest service cabin of less than 1,000 square feet, but they have really improved it into a very nice property. The reason we are here is that four years ago Peggy and Vernon had a 50^th Wedding Anniversary party here and it was so much fun their kids decided they needed to do it every year. This is the fourth annual 50^th party. In addition, on Saturday, Peggy and Vernon's son Larry is getting married at the house, so it is a wedding party too. We last saw Peggy and Vernon in April when we parted company in Apache Junction, Arizona after spending three months traveling with them. The group at the house was small today. In addition to us and the Bullock's there were Karen and Dave, and their 7 year old granddaughter Cherish, and Larry and his bride to be Dawn. Peggy cooked a ham and we brought some salad. There were also scalloped potatoes and cake. We had a great meal and sat and talked until almost 9:00 before we headed back to our coach for the evening.

Thursday, July 14^th, we went over to Peggy's house in the early afternoon. I brought in all the musical equipment I would need for the party and the wedding and started to get set up. We spent most of the afternoon at the house, talking and enjoying the great mountain weather. Another of our RVing friends, Curt and Sharon Minard came in today and parked right across from us in the RV park. Tonight we had a cook your own meat night and we had some nice steaks. Tonight there were probably 20 people who were at the house for dinner. We had another great evening and went back to the RV park about 8:30 or so where we relaxed the rest of the night.

Friday we were up early and over at Peggy's house by 9:00 for breakfast sandwiches. We had bacon and egg sandwiches, fruit and some sweet rolls and it was good. After breakfast we went back to the coach for a while, returning to Peggy's place about 4:00. Tonight was a heavy snack night with most people bringing some snack dish to share. Jackie made her taquito casserole which is always a big hit. After dinner I started doing some karaoke. We only had three other singers beside myself, Sharon, Pat, and Tara, but we had a great time and sang until about 8:30 or so when everyone started packing up to head to their own places. There were probably 30 people tonight. Some are in the RV park, some are in the only motel in town, some are locals, and some even pitched tents in the backyard. It is a busy place.

Saturday July 16th, I was up early to finish up preparations for the wedding music. Dawn, the bride, had some very specific requests for music before and during the ceremony. Normally that is not an issue with Amazon streaming music, but the internet at the house is terrible, so I am having to download hard copies of the songs and storing them on my tablet. If I had to rely on the internet at the house we wouldn't have much music. I finally did get everything setup and working right and we went over to the house about 1:00 or so to visit. Today they are expecting about 70 people, many of whom we have met over the years at the house, others that we have not. We had a fun time visiting with people. Most of the Bullock family was there. Their other son Matt and his wife Roxanne were there, as well as their daughter Trinity and son Troy. Troy is the Marine stationed in Yuma. He is on leave so he and his wife Makayla were also able to come. Peggy and Vernon's daughter Katie, the professional chef, was also there helping with the cooking for the party.  Larry's daughter Tara was also in attendance for the weekend.

At 4:00 the wedding took place in the backyard and it was very nice. The weather was gorgeous, the setting very nice, and the music came off without a hitch. I played sound man for the rest of the evening, with some easy listening music during the photo shoot and dinner, which was also served outside. It was a very Western wedding and the food was BBQ chicken and tri-tip, along with a lot of side dishes brought by guests. After dinner we did some dancing and everyone seemed to have a great time. I finally had to shut down the music about 9:15 when I couldn't see the computer keyboard or mixer controls any more. The backyard gets very dark when the sun goes down. We helped do a little cleanup and then headed back to our place.

Sunday, July 17^th, we were again up early, this time cooking biscuits at 8:00 for the breakfast. Peggy distributed the biscuit cooking among a number of the guests and we had 40 to make. We then went down to the house at 9:00 for a biscuits and gravy breakfast. Sharon Minard had made about three gallons of great sausage gravy and we had a great time. There were probably 30 people at breakfast, but today will be the day most of them leave. After breakfast I took Jackie home and then went back to the house to disassemble the audio equipment and bring it back to the coach to get packed up. No more music duties.

After I got everything put back in it's place in the coach we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. About 4:00 we went down to the house to have a leftovers dinner. Tonight it was only nine people and we had another good dinner, snacking on all the little bits of things left over from previous dinners. We had plenty to eat and had a great time. We left about 8:00 and went back to the coach where we watched TV the rest of the evening.

Monday, July 18^th, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove down to the house. It is now just us and the Bullock's, so they got in our car and we drove to the town of Chester, about 35 miles east. Chester is one of the towns that sits on the shores of Lake Almanor, a pretty large mountain reservoir. We went to one of the local restaurants that sits on the lake shore and had a nice lunch out on the back patio. After lunch we drove around through town for a few minutes and then headed back to the hours. We did manage to pick up a couple of geocaches while we were out.

We dropped Peggy and Vernon off at the house and we went back to the coach and relaxed for an hour or so. About 3:30 we went back to the house and I helped Vernon load his pickup with a dozen bags of trash to take to the dump. We dropped off the trash and then came back and the four of us just sat around and talked. Later in the evening Jackie and Peggy made a chili relleno casserole and the four of us had dinner. We talked for a while longer and finally headed back to the coach about 7:30 where we watched TV the rest of the night.

Tuesday was another moving day. Today we are only going to Redding, about 75 miles northwest. We had everything packed up and ready to go by about 10:30. Peggy and Vernon came by to say goodbye, but also told us that they told us that they too were going to Redding sometime today to take Vernon to the doctor. He was complaining of chest pain yesterday and it was still bothering him this morning. He has had heart attacks in the past and just had a shunt put in a month or two ago. We were only on the road for a half hour or so when Peggy called and said that the doctor wanted him in the ER in Redding to be checked out ASAP. They were heading down the hill and wanted to ask us to stop so they could drop their dog Belle off with us while they went to the hospital. Peggy wasn't sure if Vernon would have to stay overnight, so she didn't want to leave Belle at home in case they didn't get back up there today. Belle and our cats get along fine, so we said sure and stopped at the bottom of the hill, before getting on the freeway, and waited for them.

They arrived in about ten minutes, dropped off Belle and we continued our trip to Redding. We arrived at the Redding Elks Lodge about 1:30 and quickly settled in for our one night stay here. Within a half hour the animals settled in too and just wandered around the coach ignoring each other. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach, except when we had the pleasure of walking the dog. Reminds me why we have cats. We heard from Peggy about 9:30 that they had given Vernon a whole bunch of tests and finally determined that it was not a heart issue, but was rather some sort of muscle strain in his chest. Weird, but good news. They came by about 10:00 and picked up Belle and we went to bed.

Wednesday, July 20^th, we were packed up and on the road about 9:30, heading north and leaving the People's Republic of Kalifornia, heading for southern Oregon. After a fuel stop, and a lunch stop we arrived at the Valley of the Rogue State Park about 2:30. This park is located about halfway between Medford and Grants Pass, Oregon. It is right off of I-5 and on the shore of the Rogue River. We had reservations so we were able to check in and get set up quickly. We did the basic set up and then relaxed for the rest of the day. We will be here for seven days. Although there are a lot of trees I was able to get a spot that we had used before on other trips and I was able to get a good satellite signal. We have full hookup, 50 amp and good wifi. All is good.

Our arrival in Oregon makes a good closing for this episode. We will be traveling in Oregon for about a month, then up to Washington for a while. Until next time, remember the words of Mae West. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” See ya soon.