Park of the Sierras

SKP - Escapees    Get it?

About a year ago, when we first decided to live in our motorhome, we joined an organization called Escapees. It is a kind of national club for full-time RVers. They offer classes and big get-togethers where members from around the country congregate. We went to their full timers boot camp in February where they taught us all of the things that can go wrong with an RV like burning to the ground with you inside it. Very encouraging. The Escapees organization owns a handful of RV parks around the country but they also have a somewhat larger number of affiliated parks that do not belong to the organization exactly but offer exclusive low cost camping opportunities for Escapees members.

Park of the Sierras is one of the affiliated parks. It operates as a cooperative. The 300 some odd members of the Park are all equal owners. They each get to use a camping spot which is assigned by the co-op. They don't actually own the spot, they own their 300th share of the Corporation and essentially lease the spot until they either move on or pass on.  When a member is out of the area, their spot can be offered for traveling Escapees members for inexpensive camping because Escapees put up a significant portion of the stake money to get the whole project started.

Park of the Sierras is located in the town of Coarsegold, about 10 miles from the south entrance of Yosemite national Park and this is where we went after we left Tehachapi. Because of the way the park operates, there are some oddities in the administration. For example, there are no check-ins on Sunday. Guess what day we arrived. Since no one had informed us of this, the first night, we found ourselves boondocking in the parking lot. That was kind of annoying but everyone was so over-the-top friendly that it was hard to hold a grudge. Early Monday morning we got signed in and given the parking space in the photo. Compared to most motorhome parks where you are packed in side-by-side like sardines, here we were about 100 feet from any of our neighbors and sat up on a hill with a beautiful view over the valley. It is a nice set up. There is a huge clubhouse available with seating for probably 150 people, a library, a fairly impressive video lending library and other amenities, all literally built by the members, either current or former.

Doggy paradise

The favorite part of the park for the four-legged members of our entourage was the very nice fenced dog park. This was terraced as it sloped down the hill toward the valley and had a lot of outdoor carpeting which kept the dogs from getting too terribly filthy. At about 75 feet on a side, there was plenty of room for the dogs to sniff the apparently intoxicating aromas of previous visitors.

At six o'clock every evening the dog posse congregated at the park to chat and admire each other's dogs. With every new arrival, the dogs were all introduced first then, if they remembered, the names of the humans might be mentioned. It was a friendly group made up primarily of elderly widows who, I think, mainly showed up to demonstrate that they were still alive. If someone did not appear on a given day, one of the other members would go check on them afterwards. It was a nice, neighborly group and we joined willingly as by far the youngest in the crowd.

It soon became apparent that many of the regulars never took their motorhomes anywhere. A lot of the sites had wooden entry stairs, attached patios and small fenced yards and vegetable gardens around motorhomes that obviously had not moved in a number of years. Talking to the dog ladies, we learned there were a fair number of members that had a permanent motorhome they lived in and a second motorhome they traveled in which was stored in a lot somewhere down the valley. I enjoy being in our Allegro, but if you're not going to take it anywhere, I think it would make more sense to get a nice double-wide and not pay for the engine and tires just to have them rust and rot.

Overall, this is one of the nicer motorhome camping spots we have stayed in and we will probably be back somewhere down the line.

Tehachapi

Last September when we visited South Dakota, we saw a series of "pigtail bridges" in Custer State Park. By spiraling around and crossing itself on a trestle bridge, the road is allowed to gain 30 feet of elevation in a very small distance without having to go up a 10% grade. There were a series of these on Iron Mountain Road, a scenic drive through the park.

The same idea lies behind the construction of the Tehachapi Loop, a three-quarter mile long railway spiral a few miles outside the town. The railway climbs at a steady 2% grade allowing a 77 foot gain in elevation when the track crosses over itself at the end of the loop. We went and looked at this engineering wonder but no trains came while we were there and Vicki wasn't willing to sit and wait indefinitely. So I stole this picture off the Internet. The loop apparently draws railroad fanatics from all over the world and is probably Tehachapi's only claim to fame. They have turned their old railroad station into a railroad museum, which I would tell you all about if I had gone into it.

We also went and visited the local campground at Brite Lake. This is a really quite lovely little camping spot for eight or nine motorhomes and a somewhat larger number of tent campers surrounding a local reservoir. Because this is the town's water supply, you're not allowed to swim, wade or otherwise dip your body parts into the lake. Oddly enough however, you are allowed to fish in it and boat on it. Hey, I've seen the bottom of some boats and they are certainly no cleaner than my bottom.

Someone did a lot of wood carving of both live and dead trees in the park, giving them animal shapes and wizards' faces. There is an RV dump station marked by an outhouse with a bear peeking out the door, presumably so you can be entertained while emptying your sewage. We might consider spending a night or two here if we ever come through this way again.

So now we have to dump our tanks (with no entertainment to help the process) so we can hit the road for Coarsegold, near the south entrance to Yosemite, the next stop on our sojourn.

Last Minute Disasters

It is May 3. Our escrow has supposedly closed although as near as I can tell no large influx of money has hit our bank account so far. Regardless of that fact, we hit the road this morning and are spending the night in Tehachapi. The last few weeks have been pretty hectic but now we have some time to kick back and relax (sort of). Towards the end, it seemed like the world was conspiring against us as we tried to get on the road.

A few weeks ago we were informed that the condominium below Christopher's (which we purchased when he started at UC San Diego) had water coming out of the light fixture in the bathroom. The presumption is that it came from our unit and it could cost a small fortune to repair the water damage. In order to confirm this theory, it is necessary to cut through the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom so that they can identify and fix the leak. We had a plumber come in and evaluate our bathroom, but he could not actually demonstrate any leak from our condo. So for the past three weeks we have been trying to get the manager/owner of the downstairs unit to have the ceiling opened so we can get a look at it. The representative for the building Homeowners Association set a 30 day deadline for repairs and is threatening to fine us $100 a day if it's not fixed by May 9th. I'm not sure he can really do that, since I don't have any legal authority to open their ceiling but he is apparently a lawyer wannabe and enjoys making threats. So now finally, this coming Monday, with 27 days elapsed in our 30 day repair window, they are finally going to get someone to come in and cut out the ceiling. Terrific. So we have basically told Christopher he's a big boy now and is going to have to deal with this since we are gone. We'll see how that turns out.

In the meantime, while the movers were removing everything we own from our house in Redlands, we discovered water seeping up between the tiles in our back bathroom. This with five days until the close of escrow. So we scrambled to get a plumber out to look at it ASAP. Fortunately, it did not appear to be a slab leak, just a leak around the wax gasket at the base of the toilet. They re-seated the toilet and that seems to have fixed it. Hopefully when the padding under the composite tiles dries out they can just be glued back down. Otherwise, we may have to pay for someone to come in and do some tile repair.

On April 30 we had a full day of running around getting last-minute chores and errands run. When we finally headed back to the motorhome park in Cherry Valley there was a huge plume of smoke coming up from behind the hills a few miles away. You may have read about the "Summit Fire" in Banning (although it has now been largely overshadowed by the much larger fire in Camarillo). The first night we were a little concerned that we might actually get evacuated. According to the news, the wind was going to blow the fire north, towards the mountains. But as we stared at the column of smoke, all of the wind we could feel was blowing straight in our faces and the smell of smoke was pretty heavy in the air. Overnight, the fire burned about 3000 acres, but not the ones we were sitting on. By the next afternoon, most of the smoke smell had gone away and we didn't notice any as we packed up to leave this morning, but the fire is still burning even now.

Everyone thinks it's going to be a horrible year for fires in California. We're happy that we will be a long ways off by August and September.