Last Shakedown

The last three days have been interesting.  It was our last shakedown camping trip before the big push north.  Becky and John took us to a campsite in Tahoe National Forest in Northern California.  Off the highway exit, we drove for a hour down a paved fire road, then another 40 minutes on a dirt road to get to our beautiful campground.  The dirt road was ridiculously rough, with rocks and deep mud puddles and small landslides.  We drove in 1^st gear, at a crawl, weaving to the best pathway under the circumstances.  The drive certainly pushed the capacity of our vehicle.  The campground (Firtop) has 10 sites, a shared water spigot and a single flush toilet.  It was beautiful, with a short walk to the lake, and very quiet.  Our kind of campground. But still too populated for Becky and John!  We were so far off the grid that our weather radio, which has faithfully provided information to us on every trip we’ve been on, never received a signal, not on any one of the seven bands. But NPR came in clearly!

We played down by lake, 

 photographed interesting vegetation, 

And made wonderful meals.  (Morel Mushrooms above)

 

We saw a flock of white pelicans, tons of chipmunks and an unusual mountain otter. 

 

It’s really fun that the animal sightings have started already !!

Since we arrived in California nearly 3 weeks ago, it has rained or snowed every day - some days quite a bit.  It’s badly needed as some lakes are completely dried up, but it’s hard on a vacation.  We’re glad we have a comfortable, dry and warm inside space to retreat to.

We stayed 3 nights and started to understand limited camper resources and the rhythm of our day.   We lived on 50 gallons of water, a small amount of propane, and power stored in 2 six volt batteries.  We never used the generator.  The house furnace quickly warmed up the inside of the coach in the morning (which got down to about 50 each night).  We were not as cold as we were at Becky’s house, where the inside temperature dropped to 44 degrees at night.

Several things learned:

• ·        Never throw away the directions of ANYTHING, no matter how apparently insignificant, even if you think  you know how to operate the item
• ·         Learn to put things away.  There aren’t very many usable flat surfaces in the camper.  Maybe we’ll take this new habit home.

Becky and John took us on an OMG 4-wheel drive, in their truck, up to a mountaintop lake deep in a mature forest within the National Park.  

 It’s an area they know well and often go to for true boondock camping.  There were a couple of times Kris got out to walk – the driving was too scary.  We picnicked at the TollHouse lake (7050 ft. elevation).

Tonight we said good-bye to the kids as we are leaving bright and early tomorrow … flying solo.