A timelapse of driving the coach 168 miles from the Santa Barbara, California to Jurupa Valley, California.
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Travel from Santa Barbara to Jurupa Valley, CA
We departed Ocean Mesa RV Resort near Santa Barbara, California, and headed to a one-night pitstop at Rancho Jurupa Park.
Here’s the route map (left to right); 168 miles, a four hour drive in our coach:
Heading onto 101 south:
Paladin says “oh no, not again”:
He settled down in what is becoming a favorite safe space, next to my chair. He likes to be near us, but in a small space that can make him feel more secure:
There was quite a lot of road works; narrow lanes with barriers near the line can be nervous-making when one has a 101-inch wide coach that takes most of the lane:
Freeway driving:
Goodbye coast; not sure when we’ll see you next:
I was amused by the Telephone Road name:
There weren’t any rest stops on the route, so I prepared sandwiches and chips for lunch, so Jenn could eat while driving:
Up a steep hill:
The road name Mulholland Drive sounded familiar:
In California it is legal for motorcycles do lane splitting, i.e. riding along the line between lanes. Seems rather dangerous to me, though apparently some people think it is safer. Regardless, lane splitting next to our wide coach is a bad idea, but many did it (but not this example):
We also don’t like it when a travel trailer gets very close to us; that’s worse than a big rig, as TT drivers often aren’t as familiar with the width of their trailer, and they tend to sway quite a bit:
Heavy traffic:
Glendale city (part of greater LA):
Freeway sign:
Freeway bridge:
While driving, we had a Check Engine light come on, and the Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) gauge jumped from halfway to full. A lot of people have been having issues with the DEF sensors, so we had a fun new thing to be concerned about:
We decided to stop for diesel and DEF, to see if that’d help (our first time at a Flying J truck stop; we’d only done Love’s before this):
But after that, we had a Malfunction Indicator Light (MIL) instead (the red one is the brake):
Concerning. Stay tuned for more on this story in a few days.
Back on the road, we noticed an elephant sculpture on a hillside:
Driving through Jurupa Valley towards our stop for the night:
Tomorrow, the usual timelapse video. Do you watch them? Are you enjoying them? Let me know!
Ocean Mesa RV Resort
We stayed at Ocean Mesa RV Resort near Santa Barbara, California, mainly as a base for a Channel Islands day cruise. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Dates:
- Check in: 2022-02-20
- Check out: 2022-02-27
- 7 nights
Weather:
- Sunny, some drizzle
- High temps ranging between 57 and 68°F, lows around 30-40°F
- Breezy for the first few days (gusts up to 35 mph)
Noise:
- Background road noise
- Occasional train horns
- Lots of neighbor noise on the day we arrived, then the place emptied out
Site:
- Back in, diagonal, concrete, had to disconnect toad
- Medium-sized, about 66 feet long by 30 feet wide, but concrete pad was 35 long by 12 wide, so the back hung over the end (which was fine); included an asphalt pad for the toad beside the RV
- Full hookups: 50 amp power, good water pressure, no sewer connection issues
- Picnic table on gravel, wood fire pit
Internet:
- Campground Wi-Fi: 5 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 30 ms ping ($15 for a week; slower available free)
- T-Mobile: 2 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 65 ms ping
- AT&T: 3 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
- Verizon: 1 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, 52 ms ping
Amenities:
- Garbage pickup from bins out front of each site
- Pool; hot tub
- Rec room
- Various outdoor games
Here’s the review Jenn wrote on Campground Reviews:
Hillside oasis on the California coast
A very nice park that is very popular on the weekends. We arrived on Sunday of a 3-day weekend and the place was packed with groups having parties, so it was rather noisy. It cleared out Monday and the place was quiet and lovely until Thursday when it filled up again. When it wasn’t full of weekenders, we enjoyed the serenity of the beautifully landscaped and maintained grounds. Getting into and out of our site with our 40′ motorhome was a little challenging due to the shrubs and trees and proximity to the neighbors across the road, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Spots are a little close together, but it felt relatively private due to the hedges between them. Our motorhome just fit on the pad with our back end hanging over and the tow vehicle parked alongside. We camped at Ocean Mesa Campground at El Capitan in a Motorhome.
Here’s the park map:
Satellite view:
An expanded satellite view, that includes the RV park, the neighoring one with a cafe, and the El Capitan State Beach:
Here’s a screenshot of the Carrot weather app covering the duration of our stay:
The week started with a bit of wind, then it calmed down:
The Ocean Mesa sign at the entrance:
Our site:
Is that a reflection on our coach windscreen? Nope, it’s a custom-printed Magne Shade. I’ll have a post about that soon.
Convenient utility hookups, though the concrete pad could have been longer; plenty of room behind, so we could have been further back:
This site was one of the few we’ve stayed at that included a fire pit (with some wood provided; not sure if left by a previous occupant, or the campground):
Our griddle and rug, plus the provided table:
Me working outside; it wasn’t super warm, but the sun was nice:
Though I did use the umbrella attached to the chair to keep the sun out of my eyes:
While sitting there, I took some pictures of our coach, including looking up at the bedroom slide-out:
And looking along the base of the coach:
A hummingbird enjoying the the flowers next to our site:
On our first night, they set up a movie screen in the green space behind our site:
On another night, we used the fire pit; here’s a GIF:
Toasting masrshmallows:
S’more (much as I like sweet treats, s’mores aren’t a favorite, as I inevitably get sticky marshmallow in my mustache… as I did then):
Let’s walk around the resort, starting with the office:
The pool area, with a swimming pool and hot tub. It was too cold for us to want to partake, though:
A playground in the green space:
Dog area:
They have several tent sites, which were vacant during the week, but filled up on the weekend:
Other RVs:
A murder of crows:
A glimpse of the ocean and Channel Islands:
Back to our site:
A nice resort; we’d stay here again.
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Orange, CA to Santa Barbara, CA
A timelapse of driving the coach 144 miles from the Orange, California to Santa Barbara, California. Or more specifically El Capitan beach, near Goleta.
Travel from Orange to Santa Barbara, CA
We departed Orangeland RV Park in Orange, California, and headed to a week at Ocean Mesa RV Resort in Santa Barbara, California. Or more specifically El Capitan beach, near Goleta.
Here’s the route map (right to left); 144 miles, a non-stop four hour drive in our coach:
Departing Orange:
As usual, Paladin wasn’t thrilled that his house was moving again, though only complained once:
Heading towards LA on I-5:
Fork to route 101:
Downtown LA:
A couple glimpses of the Hollywood sign:
Sign for Universal Studios etc:
Paladin loafing on the mat between us:
Suddenly we’re out of the city and into some hills:
Whenever Paladin was in the cockpit area I kept a close eye on him, to make sure he didn’t go by Jenn’s feet, and risk interfering with the pedals. When he showed interest in heading in that direction, I picked him up and put him on my lap. He wasn’t thrilled about that:
There were no rest stops on this route, so I grabbed some salami and a slice of cheese as a quick lunch (we had more food after we arrived):
7% grade downhill:
Continuing along 101:
Reached the coast:
Paladin on my lap again; still not too keen:
Countryside:
Our exit:
Arriving at Ocean Mesa RV Resort:
We followed another Tiffin in, a Phaeton:
Our coach when checking in, after unhooking our truck:
As usual, I’ll have a timelapse video of this drive tomorrow, and a post about our time here later.
Orangeland RV Park
We stayed at Orangeland RV Park in Orange, California, specifically because it was about 10 minutes from Disneyland. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Dates:
- Check in: 2022-02-06
- Check out: 2022-02-20
- 14 nights
Weather:
- Sunny, one day of evening rain and a thunderstorm
- High temps ranging between 70 and 95°F, lows around 40-50°F
- Occasional wind (gusts up to 30 mph)
Noise:
- Background road noise
- Very occasional train horns, during the day
Site:
- Pull-through, diagonal, concrete, had to disconnect toad (tow vehicle)
- Medium-sized, about 50 feet long by 27 feet wide, including pad for toad beside RV
- Full hookups: 50 amp power, good water pressure, no sewer connection issues
- Table and chairs with umbrella on patio, grass, orange tree (can pick oranges); no fire pit
Internet:
- Campground Wi-Fi: 6 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up, 40 ms ping, mostly reliable
- T-Mobile: 40 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up, 100 ms ping
- AT&T: 4 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up, 100 ms ping
- Verizon: 17 Mbps down, 17 Mbps up, 43 ms ping
Amenities:
- Mail service
- Daily garbage pickup
- Pool; hot tub was being resurfaced
- Rec room
- Various outdoor games
Here’s the review Jenn wrote on Campground Reviews:
Fantastic basecamp for Disney fun!
We absolutely loved our stay at Orangeland. We stayed for two weeks in order to do Disneyland and California Adventure and a couple of other LA attractions. This was the perfect place to launch from, it was so convenient to the freeways. Despite being in the heart of a sub/urban area, it was pretty quiet and peaceful. Picking oranges right from our patio was so cool, and we really enjoyed the wonderful scent of orange blossoms. Spaces are pretty tight, but the staff was very helpful in getting us situated quickly and efficiently. The patio with table and chairs at our deluxe pull-through site was very nice. The only downside is that they positioned the patios for fifth-wheels and Class Cs, so we had to walk across the (often wet) grass to get from our door to the table since the parking pad was just wide enough for our large Class A. Not a biggie, just something we’ve noticed in other parks as well. We will absolutely stay here again when we want to revisit the LA area. We camped at Orangeland RV Park in a Motorhome.
The cover of the park booklet:
Park map; the majority of the park (brown sites) are long-term residents, with a few rows (green sites) for transient RVs (I like it when parks keep the two types separate, since long-term residents are often less tidy):
Satellite view:
As mentioned, it’s about 10 minutes from Disneyland:
This park was unusual in that they gave a little goody bag at check-in:
With a sudoku, book, note pad, pen, calendar, and more:
And to tell about trash pickup, they provided a trash bag:
Our site, with a nice paved patio area with table, chairs, and umbrella (the first time we’ve had an umbrella at a site):
Convenient utility hookups:
A nice feature of this park is the “no parking fire lane” red line around the roads, encouraging everyone to park within their site. Far too often at campgrounds vehicles are parked partly in the road, making navigation of big rigs more difficult than it needs to be. It helps that the sites are actually big enough to park the toad, too:
Have you heard that in cities you can order food online and have people drive it out to you? Crazy notion! This was the first time we’ve ordered food delivery in almost a decade, since nobody would deliver to our rural homestead:
We did it twice:
One of the rules of the park was no free-range cats, and yet there were two cats that roamed around near our site (which didn’t bother us, but I suspect that rule was added due to them):
The weather was pretty nice here, though we had a couple of days with high wind gusts:
Let’s wander around the park. The entrance:
Other RVs:
The office:
The office includes a little shop with all sorts of essentials:
Game room:
Outdoor games:
The pool; we didn’t use it, mainly because we were out late at the Disney parks on the really hot days, and the subsequent days weren’t so hot:
The spa / hot tub was being resurfaced, so unavailable; we might have wanted to use that after long days walking around Disney, but oh well:
Putting green:
Playground:
BBQ area:
Dog park:
Every site has a fruit tree, and they encourage picking fruit off your own tree, or vacant sites. They have a map of what varieties are where:
Steering wheel table
It may be shocking to learn that our coach has a steering wheel. Which is kinda useful when driving… but not so much when parked at a campsite:
A fun idea that we saw in an RV we looked at is to have a table on top of the steering wheel when parked. Which has two benefits: (a) it looks nicer, and (2) it prevents our cat from stepping on the air horn!
So we purchased a nice one from Wood Design RV Interiors.
The table has sides to enclose the wheel, and pins underneath to accommodate the angle of the steering wheel (when it is tilted almost flat):
Here it is in place:
It’s a good place for our potted plants:
How fahncy.
Wine rack and liquor holder
Since we moved into our coach, we stored the few wine and liquor bottles we brought in carrier bags, shoved in a cupboard, with some bubble wrap for extra padding. Which kept them safe from breakage and rattling while driving, but made them difficult to access.
Here they are after pulling them out of the cupboard (unfortunately I didn’t think to take a picture of them in there):
Here’s the empty cupboard, below the window in the dining area (they were actually in a different one initially, that was even more difficult to access):
This cupboard is designed as a computer center, with a power outlet at the back:
A pull-out shelf for a printer:
And a keyboard tray:
But while we had originally intended to use it as my workstation, I find it more comfortable to sit on my living room chair with my laptop on a lap tray. So it is a convenient place for our alcohol.
It gets a bit warm in there when the sun is beating on that exterior wall, so I added some Reflectix insulation to the back wall:
The Reflectix is attached with aluminum foil tape:
I spent quite some time searching for a wine rack that would fit on the bottom shelf (and tried a modular one, that didn’t work out for depth reasons). I finally found one that fits well:
Here it is in place. The bottles on the right are too tall to fit in the rack, but fortunately the shelf has extra depth on that side:
The bottles are held securely, in a way where they won’t rattle, and being on their side is best to keep the corks moist:
For the liquor bottles, my idea was to get some dividers to keep them separated and supported upright:
I also removed the keyboard tray from the top of the cupboard, to give the bottles more vertical space.
Here are the dividers in place; not perfect, but gives some structure:
To stop the bottles moving around too much, I added some bubblewrap padding:
The final result; nice and tidy, and easy to access:
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Desert Hot Springs, CA to Orange, CA
A timelapse of driving the coach 100 miles from the Desert Hot Springs in California to Orange, also in California (near Anaheim, within the greater Los Angeles region).
Travel from Desert Hot Springs to Orange, CA
We departed Catalina Spa and RV Resort in Desert Hot Springs, California, and headed to a couple of weeks at Orangeland RV Park in Orange, California — conveniently located about 10 minutes from Disneyland. Yep, we spent five days at the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure parks! You can bet there will be posts about those coming up soon.
Here’s the route map (right to left); 100 miles, about three hours drive in our coach. A non-stop drive, since California apparently doesn’t believe in rest areas (or road maintenance):
Paladin started on top of the kitchen counter; he complained a few times, but was quiet for most of the journey:
As always, Jenn drove our coach. She prefers to drive, and doesn’t enjoy being a passenger, and I feel the opposite, so that works out best for both of us:
It’s much more common for men to drive RVs than women, so people are sometimes surprised when they learn she is the driver. She’s a member of a Tiffin Lady Drivers Facebook group (with 824 members), for female drivers of Tiffin motorhomes.
The onramp to the I-10 freeway, with a snow-tipped mountain and wind turbines in the background:
Paladin used his top-entry litter box while in transit:
One area attraction we didn’t get to, but will in the future, are some big dinosaurs:
I have a phone holder to help me keep an eye on one of the RV-safe GPS apps; I have it mounted via a suction cup to a plate on the pull-out desk for the passenger chair (on which rests one of Paladin’s cardboard nests):
The shortest route, via CA-60, was closed for repairs, so we continued on I-10:
More freeway scenes:
Nearing our destination:
The entrance of Orangeland RV Park:
After unhooking our truck, I drove it following our coach to our site:
As usual, I’ll have a post about our experiences at this RV park after we’ve left it. And a timelapse video of the trip tomorrow. I still need more subscribers to the Sinclair Trails channel, so if you haven’t yet, please do so.