Yahoo! We are back on the road again.
The last few weeks have been a flurry of meetings with old friends, visits with our son and his wonderful spouse and a bunch of tending to chores regarding our disgusting old bodies, our vehicles and finances.
The hobnobbing with our kids and friends was great. We probably overstayed our welcome at the kids’ house because we spent six days and nights there while our trailer was having a new toilet installed, bearings packed, brakes serviced and some phantom interior potable and drain water leaks fixed at San Diego RV Center. We also foisted ourselves on them every so often during our stay, particularly when we may have had something to drink.
So all our gear should be up to snuff or at least that is what we probably erroneously believe. We are headed mostly east for the first half of this year’s expedition because during the second half we will be on the way back. Our intent is to return to some of the states we passed through in 2015 when our trip took us up the east coast. If everything goes according to plan, we will skirt the west side of the Appalachians in the spring, the east side in the fall and mosey back to the toasty, sometimes ablaze or afloat state of California.
We picked up the the Barbarian Invader this morning at San Diego RV Center (which, strangely, is not in San Diego but in distant Lakeside, CA) and hooked up our F-250, Charlotte, to the kingpin on the trailer in drizzling rain. We gave the maintenance guys $1500 for their time and parts and headed on our first leg of 2018’s excursion. Maybe leg isn’t the right term because we only towed our moving home to a spot near Anza-Borrego State Park about 60 or 70 miles from where we started.
Although it was raining on our first pull of 2018, the views as we passed through San Diego County’s back country were very nice. We started on I-8, turned north up CA-67 through Ramona and up into the coastal range of mountains, crossing above 3000′ near Santa Ysabel. We turned north from there on CA-79 toward Warner Springs but before we got there, we turned off the ridge and easterly down into the desert on a road called S-2. After a slow drop down to about 2000′ and a complete change of climate zone, we pulled into the Stagecoach Trails RV campground near a small clump of residences called Shelter Valley.
The park has full hookups and almost glacially slow wifi but the surrounding desert and mountain scenery looks like it will be spectacular once the storm quits and the skies clear. Today the wind is only blowing about 50 mph so working outside the trailer has a sandblasting-like effect on any exposed flesh. We are so happy to be back on the road, however, that we were quite comfy just climbing into our trailer with our new crapper and sheltering from the breeze. I tried to be the first, inaugural happy camper with the john but Peggy was faster. It is a very nice terlet.