A timelapse of driving the coach 238 miles from Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve to Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, California. Now with music! Let me know if you prefer the silent timelapses, or with music.
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Travel from San Benito to Bakersfield, CA
We departed Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve, and headed to Bakersfield, California.
The map route; a six hour drive in our coach:
Heading into the hills along the CA-152 freeway:
We followed a couple of car carriers transporting Teslas through the pass:
Another couple of views of the very empty San Luis Reservoir:
A stop at Love’s for some diesel and DEF (and cleaning the windshield!):
Paladin spent most of the trip on the kitchen counter:
He seemed more relaxed about it than previous trips:
A rest stop between two other RVs:
A nice thing about a motorhome is we can easily make lunch (and use the bathroom) while at a rest stop:
I put Paladin’s dash bed on the kitchen counter, so he’d have a more comfortable place to sit; he seemed to appreciate that:
The I-5 freeway was primarily populated by big rigs:
Bakersfield city limit:
The Orange Grove RV Park campground entrance:
Stay tuned for a timelapse video of the journey today (with music this time!), and a tour of the campground tomorrow.
Clear sewer hose extension
A handy little addition to the wet bay of the coach: a clear sewer hose extension, attached below the sewer valves.
This enables me to better see the water draining from the black and grey tanks; the other end of the hose has a clear portion too, which is also useful, but this lets me see the water before it drains the length of the hose:
Here it is in context, draining the grey tank (from the sinks, shower, etc):
Slide-out markers
[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:
Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve
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!
Video: timelapse of coach driving from San Jose, CA to San Benito, CA
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.
Short travel day to San Benito, CA
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!
Smart surge protector
The electrical bay in our coach includes a Surge Guard power protection transfer switch, which manages switching the electricity between “shore” power (i.e. plugged in to a campground) and the generator. It also serves to protect the coach systems from power spikes and other issues:
However, it’s good practice to have a separate surge protector, since the act of protecting the coach can damage the device. An external one that plugs in to the power pedistal at a campsite is a much cheaper thing to replace if necessary.
One of the most popular ones is the Hughes Autoformers Power Watchdog, so that’s what I got. Here’s its box:
Not only does it protect against power surges and other electrical issues, it also has a replaceable surge module, so just part of it can be replaced if needed, instead of having to replace the whole thing. It also has an app that displays the current power usage.
Here’s the Power Watchdog plugged in at a campground. The dog face glows white if all is well, or turns red if an issue occurs (and the display below shows the error code):
Here’s a screenshot of the app:
At another campground at night; the dog face is fairly bright:
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Corning, CA to San Jose, CA
A timelapse of the coach going from Heritage RV Park in Corning, California to Coyote Valley RV Resort near San Jose, California.
A pretty smooth drive from an eventfulness point of view… but anything but smooth from a road quality point of view. The cement freeway north of San Jose was horribly rutty.
Travel from Corning to San Jose
We departed Heritage RV Park in Corning, California, and headed down to San Jose, to Coyote Valley RV Resort, a bit south of the city.
Here’s a map of our route for this leg; a 5 hour drive in our coach:
Nice rolling green hills:
Not so nice heavy traffic through Vacaville:
More hills:
680 Benicia-Martinez bridge:
Super scenic industry:
Nice of California to name a freeway after us — the Sinclair Freeway:
Paladin peeking; still not super happy about travel days, but getting a little more used to them, I think:
The 680 freeway south of Pleasanton was anything but pleasant; the road surface was in horrible condition, making the coach feel like it was going to shake apart:
Paladin came further forward than he had before (I kept a close eye on him, to make sure he didn’t go by the pedals at Jenn’s feet):
Downtown San Jose off in the distance:
Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse video of this journey.
Are you enjoying these posts? Let me know!