For one breakfast while staying at San Benito Preserve, we went to FlapJacks Breakfast & Grill, a breakfast restaurant in Tres Pinos, California (20 minutes away).
My breakfast was a bacon, ham, tomato & avocado scramble, with a side of country potatoes and flapjacks / pancakes. Very tasty:
Outside:
We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The aquarium had timed entry tickets, with a very long line to get in, and having to show ID and vaccination card (the first time we’ve encountered that):
We enjoyed exploring the various exhibits, starting with a feeding of the sea otters:
Lots of fish exhibits:
Fascinating jellyfish:
An impressive 90-foot window on the open sea exhibit:
Sea birds:
Octopus:
More fish:
Interactive exhibit:
Sea birds:
We went to Monterey Bay, California to visit the aquarium (see tomorrow’s post). Beforehand, we wandered down to the Cannery Row area, and grabbed some overly filling lunch at Sly’s Refueling Station on the wharf.
We started sharing clam chowder fries:
I then had a BLAT sandwich and more fries, plus a margarita:
After lunch, we went out the wharf; here’s a nearby monument:
Part of the wharf:
Monterey Bay:
Cannery Row:
One of our goals in traveling the country is to visit all of the national parks, and the Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve campground is conveniently half an hour away from one — Pinnacles National Park:
We went to the east entrance, which we were warned was busy, being a free entrance day. But since it was the afternoon, the crowds had died down, so we didn’t have any difficulties.
Here’s the Old Pinnacles info sign:
We’re not into hiking (yet?), but got a view of some rock formations from the parking lot:
There wasn’t a huge amount to see from there, so we decided to drive an hour to the west entrance. On the way, we enjoyed the wide open countryside:
A small delay due to some produce spilled from a poorly loaded truck:
Another field:
The road to the park is mostly only one lane:
Burnt area:
The Pinnacles National Park west entrance:
This side has a much better view of the rocks:
Pinnacles National Park sign:
Fire lookout:
Rocks:
Info sign:
Rocks:
Road and rocks:
Rocks and the moon:
Info sign:
Hey look, more rocks:
Birds, probably condors:
We went along a path for a better view:
A selfie with Jenn and me:
We enjoy trying local cuisine, even if that just means regional burger places, being big fans of burgers — I usually get beef (dead cow or Impossible), and Jenn usually gets chicken.
One such fast food place was Smashburger in Hollister, California. Not really regional, since they’re in many locations around the country, but none in Oregon yet, so it was new to us:
Wall art:
The fries and burger were both very tasty; nicely seasoned shoestring fries, and a quality burger. A contender for a new favorite, threatening our previous favorite, Five Guys:
[For those reading these blog posts when they come out, note that I’ll be posting two per day, and occasionally three, for at least the next couple of weeks, to catch up; I’m getting a bit of a backlog. Typically the first post of the day will be a major topic, and the second will be a video or food post or such. Enjoy the extra content!]
When getting set up in a new campsite, one of the important tasks is to ensure that the coach is positioned well, which means close to the utility hookups (power, water, sewer), the basement doors can be opened without hitting the aforementioned utilities or other obstructions, and very importantly, the slide-outs can be opened without hitting anything.
It’s easy enough to line up the utilities (and the cable and hoses have some flexibility in that), and to try opening basement doors to make sure they don’t hit anything (though sometimes I do better than other times). The slide-outs are a bit tricker in a tight space, as it’s hard to tell how far they come out when they’re closed. Some people have suggested techniques like using one’s arm, or markings on a broom or such.
But an idea I had was to use the doors, since I’ll want to open them to check them anyway. So I added some red pin-striping tape onto the top of some of the doors, to mark where the slide-outs come to. I can simply open the doors, and make sure no tree branches or other obstructions would get too close to those lines:
Our next campground, Thousand Trails San Benito RV & Camping Resort in California.
Thousand Trails is a camping membership organization, where you can buy some level of membership, and stay for free for some number of nights at some of their campgrounds. There are several membership levels, and classes of campgrounds; it can get a bit confusing.
We started out with just the base level membership, allowing us to stay free at parks in the southwest area of the US, plus an add-on that includes a bunch of other parks around the country for a small fee. At that level, we could stay for 14 nights, then had to go out of the Thousand Trails system for a week. And we could only book a couple of months out.
This campground is fairly large and sprawling. Here’s the map:
Thousand Trails entrance:
We parked the coach inside the entrance, unhooked the truck, and went exploring to find a site. One interesting feature of Thousand Trails parks is you can pick your own site, first-come-first-served. Which can be frustrating if you can’t find a site you want, but can be nice if you luck out:
We found this nice empty campsite backing onto hills, but it turned out it was reserved; while short-term sites are first-come-first-served, people can pay a few thousand dollars to book a specific site for several months — something we didn’t know about beforehand, and rather annoying, since the best sites are taken with long term reservations:
Our second choice site was still very nice; a wide site, backing on to an RV storage area; not quite as nice as the hills, but at least there’s nobody living back there. It’s a back-in site, our second one:
We put out our rug and chairs again:
Hookups:
I went for a walk around the campground:
In addition to RV sites, there are lots of tent sites and rental cabins:
A scary narrow bridge, that we had to take the coach over:
Dog park:
Trees:
There are lots of deer in the park:
Gnome house:
Another narrow bridge, that we used when leaving:
The pool area is closed for the season:
There are hundreds of ground squirrels all over this park:
I also saw a cat:
Jenn tried playing a game on the outside TV (the first time we’ve used it), though the controller didn’t work well through the walls:
The following morning, we were greeted with two issues.
The first was the power was out to the campground, which is more of a minor inconvenience, since our batteries and solar will support pretty much everything, other than air conditioners, and we can run the generator to recharge.
The second was that the nice spot we were in apparently had a long-term reservation (like the first one we liked), though no marking as such, and the ranger that checked us in wasn’t aware of it. The person who had booked it showed up to let us know, then later the campground manager and a ranger arrived to ask us (very politely) to move. They helped me find an alternative site, and offered compensation (though we didn’t bother with that).
Annoyingly, the first spot we liked was vacant the whole time we were here, and the person from the second site also left a day or two later, perhaps due to the power outage.
But the alternative site was actually a bit nicer, with shady trees and a nicer view. So yes it was a hassle to have to move, but only took a few minutes.
Jenn driving our coach to the new site:
Our truck and coach in the new campsite; still plenty spacious:
Hookups:
We used our Blackstone griddle:
A peek of the hill from the front door:
The power outage turned out to be quite significant; it was local to the campground, and they couldn’t get it repaired for several days. So for four days, we ran our generator for an hour each morning and evening, to recharge our batteries, and give us power for cooking and such:
Our three solar panels contributed a little throughout the day, though not much:
Charging:
Running the generator was a hassle, not something we expected when staying at a large campground. Especially one that is part of a large network.
Another frustration with Thousand Trails is that many of the parks are restricted to age 55+, especially in the Arizona area, where we’re spending this winter. I’m almost there, at 52, but not quite. While that may not be strictly enforced (I certainly could pass for 55+), we wouldn’t want to risk it.
But despite those caveats, we liked it enough that we have since purchased a premium membership, so we can book up to six months in advance, and go from park to park within the Thousand Trails system if we want. Plus our membership gives access to more parks at a significant discount, too.
We’ve calculated that if we stay at least half a year at TT parks, the membership will pay for itself within two years, then subsequent years will be gravy. Assuming we’re still doing the RV lifestyle in two years — we don’t have an end date, we’re going to keep doing it until we want to do something different. (And when we do stop, we can sell the membership, recouping part of the cost.)
A lot more text than usual in this post! Was it interesting? Let me know!
A silent timelapse of a short drive of the coach from Coyote Valley RV Resort near San Jose, California to Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve also in California.
We departed Coyote Valley RV Resort near San Jose, California, and headed to Thousand Trails San Benito, California.
This was a short travel day, less than two hours.
Here’s a map of our route for this leg:
After zipping down the 101 freeway, it was time for some highway driving:
Paladin came up to see us:
He had opinions about driving:
On the step cover:
I picked up Paladin, and held him on my lap for a minute, before he wanted to retreat:
More highway driving:
Then we turned onto a more narrow road:
Reaching the Thousand Trails campground entrance:
Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse video of this journey, and pictures of the campground the following day.
Are you enjoying these posts? Let me know!
While near San Jose, we had of course to make a pilgrimage to the mothership, i.e. the Apple Park spaceship.
Or at least as close as we could get to it; the Visitor Center across the road from the campus:
I’ve been there before, during the Apple’s developer conference (back when it was held in person), but this was Jenn’s first visit.
One can glimpse the spaceship from the roof deck:
The roof deck:
Below is a cafe, an AR display (currently closed due to COVID), and an Apple retail store:
Cute AirPods display:
I want to get a new MacBook Pro 16″ like this, though I want a specced-up model that isn’t available in stores yet, so I’ll hold off for now:
We’d talked about getting a base model MacBook Air like this for Jenn:
So we did:
