Moved

Guess I let a little time get by since my last post! We left Thousand Trails Ponderosa in Lotus California yesterday and are currently at Thousand Trails San Benito which is in Paicines, CA. We stayed here for a week last February and will be here a little over a week this time. In February it was a bit chilly and we had a fair amount of rain. I remember getting together with two other couples for wine & snacks while we were all bundled in coats and had the awnings out so we didn’t get rained on. This time it’s warm and sunny, we have even gone to the pool for a swim yesterday and today.

Today was kinda busy, laundry in the morning and then to Gilbert, CA to go to Costco, Camping World and Walmart. Nothing real exciting but it certainly took up most of the day. Back to relaxing tomorrow.

All of the photos and video on today’s post were taken at Ponderosa. For some reason I enjoyed our stay there more this time than when we stayed there before…not sure why. Maybe the weather was better, maybe it was our site close to the river, or that we met a number of nice people, who knows. It was a fun stay, I’m glad we camped there again.

Just enjoying

We’ve been having a fine time here at Ponderosa in Lotus, CA. The weather has been great, in the mid 80’s, and is supposed to get warmer over the next few days.

Our days have mostly been hanging out at the park; taking Cheye swimming, reading, doing cross stitch, relaxing, watching the rafters go by, but we have got out a bit too. There is no laundry facilities at this campground so we went into Placerville to do laundry and some grocery shopping a couple days ago. A small group of shops and restaurants are just across the road from the campground and we have tried both the Mexican restaurant and a pizza place. I thought they were both very good. All in all a very nice last few days!

Photo: Our site
Video: a slide show and some video taken at Thousand Trails Ponderosa

Rafters

Made it!

Evidently the Dodge dealership knew what they were doing! Not only does the pickup seem to be fixed but it only cost us around $100.00 rather than the $700.00 bill at the transmission shop! Quite a difference.

Our trip today was only around 80 miles, from Marysville, CA to Thousand Trails Ponderosa in Lotus, CA. We stayed at this park last October for a week and really enjoyed it so thought we would stay here again. The park is smaller than most Thousand Trails but it’s very nice. The American River runs along one side of the park and we happened to snag a site close to the river. The sites here by the river are a little close but it’s so pleasant to sit out and watch the river and occasionally see a kayak or raft float by we decide to park here.

Photos
Both taken at Thousand Trails Ponderosa of the American River

Hawthorne, NV

We took off from Thousand Trails Ponderosa this morning about 8:30 on our trek to Las Vegas, NV. The drive took us through some beautiful country of pine forests and granite boulders. We stopped at Donner Pass, we decided we really didn’t want to eat there so we traveled on. Our thought was to go as far as Fallon, NV today but decided to go a bit further and ended up in Hawthorne. I was surprised to see a light dusting of snow up in the hills around Lake Walker.

We got in to Hawthorne about 2:00 and the clerk at the Whiskey Flats RV park mentioned that a local casino, El Capitan, has a prime rib special tonight starting at 4:00...so we decided to just have a snack and go in for a early dinner. After the trailer was set up we had our snack, took Cheye out for a couple walks and sat outside enjoying the day.

As we went in for dinner there was a person out by the RV park starting up a motorized para-sail (not sure if that is the correct name). We watched for a while but he never went up in the air, maybe he was just practicing.

Photos:
Both taken today at Donner Pass
Video: Slides taken at Donner Pass and Whiskey Flats RV Park in Hawthorne, NV

Back into Town

Well, another laundry day so back into town . This time we went toward Roseville, CA because we wanted to stop at Camping World and Best Buy. Once we got to the laundromat we found it was right next to an Office Depot, which ended saving us a trip to Best Buy to buy a mapping program for me (Dave has one). After our laundry was done we made our way to Camping World and wandered around there a bit. Dave picked up a few parts and I got a cookbook and that was about it.

The afternoon was spent in the trailer figuring out the new mapping program and getting it set up. Street Atlas by DeLorme has more of a learning curve than Microsoft Streets and Trips (the program Dave has). We have the basics figured out, still need to play with it some more to see how the “bells and whistles” work.

Tonight should be quiet. Some TV and playing with the new program. Tomorrow is our last day at the Ponderosa campground. We will have to take Cheye for a long swim!

Photos & slide show from photos taken around Ponderosa campground

Another Relaxing Day

Gosh…did I say yesterday was total relaxation….what is one step beyond that? Well whatever it is, that was today! I had big plans of reorganizing and charging my ipod, cleaning up my hard drive, working on some video editing and maybe starting back up on my cross stitching. Well…I did get the ipod taken care of.

It was warm today, got up to 86 degrees. With a light breeze it was perfect. Even with the perfect weather the park is very quiet now. Some of the hook-up posts have been bagged off keeping people to certain sections. They have drained the pool and there are a lot more empty spaces than full. I’m interested in seeing how full the parks will be in Arizona and Southern California this winter.

Photo: A decorative antique in the park
Video: A slide show of Thousand Trails Ponderosa

Another Relaxing Day

Total Relaxation

Well we’ve been on the road for 5 months now…and happy to report we are still lovin’ it!

It was a beautiful day here at the Thousand Trails Ponderosa park. Our day was one of total relaxation. It consisted of computing, walks around the park, sitting outside reading and enjoying the day. We just finished a fabulous all grilled dinner; steak, potato wedges and pineapple…yum!

On one of our walks we stopped along the way and took a few pictures...somehow Cheyenne ended up in a number of them… go figure! :o)

A Little Shopping

Today we decided to do a little shopping at both Costco and Walmart so we headed over to Roseville, California. Wow…what a huge shopping area. I think you could spend months trying to visit every store! We stocked up a bit and wandered a bit at Costco, they already have Christmas stuff out. After that it was grocery shopping at Walmart and then home. Oh, we did stop at a Subway for a sandwich too. I have to say, we got a bit carried away shopping this time…I just barely managed to get everything in the refrigerator and we had to store some canned stuff in the outside storage compartment. Oh well, we did get it all in!

We relaxed the rest of the afternoon away and now we're watching Monday Night Football.

Since there was so much to see at the Coloma Gold Rush Live I decided to put together another video with clips I took yesterday. Hope you enjoy it.

Photos:
All taken yesterday at Colomo Gold Rush Live

Coloma Gold Rush Live

There is a little town just a mile or two down the road from the Ponderosa campground called Coloma. It’s where the gold rush in California started back in 1848. Every year at this time they hold a reenactment of gold rush days and we happened to be lucky enough to be here during this years event. They have people in period dress doing demonstrations and explaining how life was back in the day. They also have a few booths with goods you can purchase. The people doing the demonstrations are very knowledgeable and quite interesting. If you’re ever in the area it is definitely something to attend.

The rest of our day was the usual, watching some football, taking walks and just enjoying the beautiful day.

Photos:
Top: Miner’s cabin
Bottom: Gold panning demonstration
Video: all from Coloma Gold Rush Live