Our adventure for 2016 is gearing up. Today we gathered up all our stuff and departed Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes in Menifee, CA, headed northwest. We feel like this is a good thing since we are no longer close to home and we get back to travelling. Wilderness Lakes is a good campground for amenities but there is little to suggest wilderness there. It is located in some farmland at the edge of rampant housing development and has few qualities that would be confused with the concept of wilderness.
We drove through that traffic catastrophe called “Los Angeles” while on our way to the Thousand Trails Rancho Oso campground near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara. We noted in the L.A. basin that there are numerous drivers that either talk or type into their phones while meandering from lane to lane, some folks that refuse to look in their driver’s side mirror while merging until it is too late to avoid blood-curdling and tire squealing idiocy, many motorists who prefer to drive shitty little Japanese cars with cheesy aftermarket additions making them low and noisy but no faster and the always-popular #2 lane residents moseying along while maintaining a speed substantially lower than all the other traffic. It is madness, particularly if unaccustomed to the inconsiderate, reckless and terminally stupid. One might think that rear view mirrors, turn signals and side windows are merely expensive, extraneous extras provided to local drivers that appear to be completely unfamiliar with their use.
After passing through L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, traffic lightened up some and we drove onto US-101 headed through Santa Barbara where we turned north on CA-154, a steep climb over the San Marcos Pass into the Santa Ynez Valley. We left CA-154 at Paradise Road, drove the 5 miles up to the TT Rancho Oso driveway and the remaining mile into the campground. We were able to find a gorgeous slot in the highest tier on the hill which is the RV section of the site.
Our new Verizon-connected phone works here, a welcome change from our old Virgin/Sprint phone we had the last time we were here and that provided no phone nor data connection whatsoever. The last time we were here, California was within the grips of a terrible drought and all the surrounding vegetation was brown, except the oak trees. Now that there has been some recent rainfall, the place is changed and quite green. I have a very flimsy policy of not going to the same place more than once but that policy is in serious jeopardy of being revised because it was definitely worth coming here again.