Today we woke up at 6:30 which is a bit early for us. Peggy and I must have been awakened by anticipation since we believed our daughter was coming up from San Diego to see us. Dana arrived pretty much on time despite being stymied by the lack of paving and the clever mis-marking of road names in this locale.
We decided to pop into a local restaurant called the Breakfast Club over where Newport crosses the I-215. It was a nice day and we got a great seat outside and were fed pretty good food at very reasonable prices. They even helped me continue my quest for the best chicken fried steak in the country. The Breakfast Club serves a good-sized portion of meat with a good coating and sausage gravy but, despite being pretty good, they can’t hold a candle to the same dish at Dean’s in Clackamas and Jake’s in Bend, OR.
We retired back to our Barbarian Invader where Dana and Peg started getting prepared for some loafing or napping. Neither occurred because they both yakked at each other until a cease fire was called around 2:00 when Dana loaded up the crud we gave her and her stuff and took off back to San Diego.
No sooner had we received a text from Dana stated she was back home when we were contacted by our son, Sam, who told us one of our two beloved dogs was on the way to the vet because the dog seemed to be extremely lethargic and walking in a very irregular line. Many texts and phone conversations ensued and soon Sam was on the way with the dog, Jezebel, from the vet’s to an animal hospital with the dog having a diagnosis of suspected neurological problems. There was no new information for a probably short but seemingly endless period of time before we were informed that the hospital staff suspected THC as the culprit. There was family-wide denial of this diagnosis but some short time and a test later, we were informed we were wrong and the dog soon got better.
We have no explanation about the dog’s alleged ailment. It is strange.

Today started out with a great Peggy-cooked skillet with nifty stuff in it along with fortified coffee. Showers came next but after that, we had to face the reality of my carpentry skills, Peggy’s beard trimming talents and the laundry. The afternoon was shaping up to be horrible.
Peggy did another great job trimming my beard and keeping dangerous sharp objects away from my talented fingers. After the trim I was obliged to continue my demonstration of woodworking acumen by finishing the shelf that had so soundly defeated me yesterday. I started by opening all the 5th wheel’s hatches so I could again gather all my tools and supplies and went to work. There are only five total pieces in the shelf assembly, two of them 18.25″ long and three of them 34.25″ long. One would not think that little, seemingly innocent pieces of lumber would not have an agenda but one would be wrong. These small wood chunks made every vicious attempt to make me put them together incorrectly but after a protracted battle that far exceeded my estimate of time required to assemble the simple shelf, I was victorious.
However, my initial design, scribbled on a piece of paper and not really checked resulted in the discovery of a rather substantial error. The 18.25″ pieces, which my design had proved were of the correct length turned out to be a bit too long and the now completed assembly would not fit in it’s designated location. The old fabricator in me quickly arrived at a new procedure. I would merely whack off the extra material with a Sawz-all and hide the cuts where only the most fastidious would find them. With the newly partially amputated wood uprights closer to the desired length, the revised construction fit in the designated space and it was screwed in with probably either too many or too few fasteners.
Feeling vaguely dissatisfied, I put the tools back in their storage spaces and cleaned up the carnage remaining from my foray into wood cabinetry. I was able to finish out the day by sharpening the knives while Peggy knocked out the dreaded laundry. I have found that I can sharpen knives quite a bit better than building wood anythings.

I sort of fancy myself as a competent carpenter but I have very little experience and my assessment may be entirely erroneous. However, my carpentry bravado compelled me to drive over to the local home improvement store and purchase materials to make a small, ordinary wood shelf for use in our 5th wheel trailer. After an hour and a half in a strange Lowe’s store, we emerged with all the pre-cut redwood, fancy stainless fasteners and little bitty cabinet angles that I was positive I needed.
We drove back to Wilderness Lakes with our loot. I opened all the hatches on our 5th wheel and stacked all the tools and other stuff I needed on the workstation – in this case a wood picnic table. I started assembling the shelf components and on my very first joint, a problem arose. It seems the expensive and snazzy-looking #6 screws Mr. Competent had purchased just minutes earlier had heads on them that would easily slip through the large holes in the angles the very same shopper had bought, rendering the purchased angles useless.
Promptly recovering from this nearly fatal faux pas, I made another decision to assemble the joints temporarily using longer, bigger #8 fancy stainless screws and had just drilled the first pilot hole when my formerly always-faithful Milwaukee 18 volt drill motor made a funny noise and dropped stone dead from a woodworking standpoint. I made some amateurish efforts to resurrect the goner but all was for naught. I replaced all the tools I had collected back to their storage locations and locked the doors on the trailer.
We re-boarded Charlotte for a drive but this time we went to Home Depot in Perris, the retailer for things Milwaukee. Their service desk was quite useless for any sort of warranty issue but they did direct us to where we could purchase new, more expensive Milwaukee tools down on Aisle 12. I ended up buying different angles with smaller holes and a chuck to fit in my Milwaukee impact driver so I could continue my project without my drill motor.
By the time we got home it was dark so I curtailed progress on the wood shelf. It would seem I have made no progress today since returning from Lowe’s but, on reflection, I see I was correct.

Attention, blog readers (if any):
Today we did maintenance stuff on the trailer. It does not warrant elaboration.
Those desiring to read further can perhaps find interest in the new sewer valve we have installed. We also put a bunch of stuff in its proper location. It was mundane.

We woke up at the kids’ house to the happy sounds of the dogs dismembering a discarded cardboard box by bashing it into fixed objects, each time accompanied by a dull corrugated cardboard thud. They were quite cute but awfully noisy. I suspect they were really trying to let us know they wanted breakfast which we were not delivering in a timely fashion.
After a bit of de-groggying with coffee, we asked our son and his girl to join us for breakfast at a place called the “Original Pancake House” where the food was great and the prices were not bad. After a short stop at a Costso Business Center across the street for some kitchen stuff for the Barbarian Invader, we jumped back on I-15 and I-215 north for the uneventful trip back north.
Stupidly, we decided to stop by the Temecula Costco for diesel, one of the few Costco fuel stations that sell anything other than gasoline. This was not wise because many folks were available to take advantage of the $1.999 per gallon price of diesel and, in front of us in the lane we were assigned, was a possibly Alzheimer’s addled dweeb who pulled his big, ugly and ancient motor home across access to both pumps on our island and then pumped a couple tons of fuel into his old wreck. The poor old geriatric dirt clod pumped fuel into his tank for quite some time until the pump shut off when he decided to have a long conversation with the stranger on the other side of the island. After collecting his receipt, he decided to start the procedure over and then spent another considerable period of time hanging around and backing up the diesel lines into the street. I became incensed and offered repeated obscene gestures to the old fart before he finally became bored and left.
We drove from Temecula to the Menifee area where we are camped on city streets, another bad idea. We needed to go north on a route called Winchester Road which was gridlocked by numerous drivers who apparently felt compelled to repeatedly change lanes in stopped traffic. We were able to average some 10 miles per hour when moving because the signals are cleverly set where traffic can only move one block at a time. Being stopped kept all the motorists out of mischief because you must be moving to get into trouble on the highways. An hour and fifteen minutes were all that was required to get fuel and drive the 10 miles to Menifee. I think that averages out to about 8 miles per hour. We were glad to get back to the Invader.

We got up pretty early for us and departed for San Diego to see our kids and dogs another time and to take Charlotte to my regular Ford dealership in San Diego since the dealership here in Hemet was unable to remove my tires due to the locking lug nuts. Since they could not remove the aftermarket lug nuts, they were also unable to replace the front brakes.
We had an appointment in San Diego at 10:30 so we left here at 8:45 which should have given us plenty of time to make the 79 mile drive without being late. Unfortunately, an asshole Riverside County mountie had one of the three available westbound lanes on Newport Road blocked during rush hour so he could give some unfortunate local resident a citation. We lost about half an hour just driving the last 4 blocks to the freeway. There was also a Highway Patrolman parked near the freeway but neither he nor the mountie seemed to be interested in keeping traffic moving since the mountie was involved in revenue generation and the HP was asleep in his cruiser while burning the taxpayers’ fuel.
We finally got onto I-215 south about 9:20 and we throttled up to about 70 for the trip south to San Diego. We arrived at the dealership with about four minutes to spare and I went in to speak with the service writer. I told him about the lug locks and asked him to replace the front disc brake pads. With a bumper jack and a jack stand I could have probably done this work in about two hours with one hand taped to my leg but Kearney Pearson Ford was able to complete the work in a mere 8 hours. To make things interesting, I noted the “check engine” light was burning as I drove away from the dealership some three minutes prior to them closing but, by making a few illegal U-turns, I was able to pull back into the service area before all the staff bailed out. Surprisingly, the service writer at Kearney Pearson Ford did take care of my locking lug nut problem by acquiring the doohickey that removes the locks and giving the thing to us, charging us only the listed cost.
A bit later, after finding one of the myriad sensor wires loose and repairing it by using their OBD device, I was able to head for my kids’ house to spend the night because we were not tempted to drive back to Wilderness Lakes through rush hour traffic in the dark. This was actually okee-dokee since it gave us more time with our offspring. Since they were gracious enough to provide us with overnight lodging, we picked up the tab for dinner and a great time was had by all.

Today we did paperwork, financial stuff, medical insurance tasks and brought some computer files up to date. We didn’t go anywhere and, frankly, it was quite boring. I’m glad that crud is behind us. I will not torture my 3 readers with a long narrative about the stuff we did. Doing it was miserable but reading about it would be worse.
It is cocktail hour.

Exploration of roads we had never seen before was the agenda for today so we put a bunch of diesel into Charlotte’s tank and took off going west. We drove across the mundane terrain between our camping spot in Menifee to Wildomar, a municipality with few attractions. From there we got onto SR-74 which passes over the coast range and emerges at I-5 in San Juan Capistrano. SR-74 is a very twisty two-lane road with turnouts for slow traffic and we turned out into most of them because we found the areas visible from the road quite attractive. The terrain is very steep with small creeks in the bottoms of the valleys.
As we approached San Juan Capistrano, we stopped in at Ronald Casper park, a facility operated by Orange County. The campground has 3 main camping loops but only one loop has water and electrical hookups for fake campers like us. The campground is located in the bottom of a wide arroyo and, due to recent rains, everything was green and happy-looking. There is a very nice visitor center, relatively flat trails, equestrian camping spots and nice restrooms with good paved roads. This year it coats $26 per night with electrical and water hookups but it cost $21 if one is over 60, like me.
After taking a spin through the campground we continued west to I-5 where we turned south for a few miles and we exited to Dana Point. When I was a kid, there was an actual point here with a good surfing break but that has all changed. Now there is an enormous marina where the affluent can park the boats they rarely use. I liked the point better.
Just south of this municipal improvement is Doheny State Beach where camping is possible but the spaces are pretty small. Other than a few pull-through spots it looks like the maximum RV size would be about 25 feet. The campground is right next to the beach and beachfront spots cost more than $60 but I think it costs less if you don’t park in the front row. We noted that the back rows are located at a slightly higher elevation and from them you can see the waves, a view which is blocked in the front row due to an enormous sand berm.
From Doheny we hopped back onto I-5 southbound through Camp Pendleton Marine Base until we got to SR-78 in Oceanside where we turned east. We continued east to San Marcos where we stopped at Camping World for some RV stuff. We continued east from there a few more miles until we hit I-15 northbound to I-215 north and ultimately back to Menifee and our temporary home in Wilderness Lakes TT.
For a couple of pix, click here

Today we started with considerable lounging but finally did some work in the afternoon. I did trailer maintenance stuff and Peggy did the laundry.
It would seem that very few of this blog’s readers would be interested in the finer points of black tank draining or holding tank additives’ chemistry so I will cut today’s report short right here.

Today we went to Pasadena, CA, to see my sister, Julie, and two of her kids, Katie and Peter, and to meet for a breakfast buffet at a place called Soup Plantation. I had never been to a Soup Plantation before but Peggy had and stated that she liked eating at the stores she had been to previously.
The drive from Hemet to Pasadena was an uneventful 75 minutes of freeway driving without the usual dreadful L.A. traffic snarls encountered on weekdays. We even beat Julie to the buffet which doesn’t happen very often because she prefers to dine slowly throughout the duration of the service.
Soup Plantation is quite strange in my view. First – there is very little soup available or I am a poor searcher because all I found was some chicken noodle soup and some chili which really isn’t soup. Second – they have an enormous salad bar such that perhaps a better name for the restaurant would be Salad Plantation. Third – they serve virtually no meat. I was able to find some miniscule pieces of some type of sausage in the gravy for biscuits and gravy plus they were offering some kind of scrambled egg dish that had some microscopic pieces of ham mixed into the eggs along with some green shit that was unidentifiable.
There were several types of bready crud like biscuits, some cinnamon nugget thingies, pizza-looking stuff with multi-colored bits of something diced into the top, some terrible french toast, tepid waffles augmented by maple syrup devoid of maple in addition to Jell-O and a sizable bowl of whipped cream. They did have coffee and orange juice but none for Julie because she used a dollar-off coupon. All in all, it was not the type of place I would care to go again.
After a couple hours of being unable to find any decent food within the restaurant, we departed and drove over to my sister Julie’s place which is on Orange Grove Avenue, home to the starting location of the Rose Parade held every New Year’s Day. Clean up from this year’s event is still in progress and some streets are still blocked of despite the parade being history for some nine days. We lounged around at Julie’s condo until about 3:00 PM when we hopped back into Charlotte for another 75 minute drive back to Hemet.
Two suggestions come to mind from today’s exploration: if you really want to eat a good breakfast, don’t go to Soup Plantation and always drive in the L.A. basin on Sunday.