Being proactive......

Our written in Jello plan had been to stay in our 'boondock' site on NFS land until Monday, then move down the hill into the Thousand Trails RV park overnight to recharge our batteries, dump our tanks, and then put the rig in storage there Tuesday morning while we drive back to SoCal for TLE's college reunion in Pasadena.  However, Mr. Jello saw what we were planning and sent a big rain storm to melt the Jello.  

Where we were parked is all hard as a rock red clay 99% of the time, but add a little water to it and suddenly you have red, sticky, clingy mud.  When we arrived 10 days prior we saw the evidence remaining from the last rain storm of deep furrows dug by RV's trying to move out during, and after the storm, so preferring not to get stuck in the mud, or even deal with the mess of trying to extricate ourselves from it on Monday we moved up our moving date to Sunday afternoon.

Check in time at this Thousand Trails park is Noon, and we were at the gate by 12:05 pm checking in.  At this park they do not assign spots when you call for a reservation....they just guaranty you will have a spot with full hookups that will fit your rig.  We were able to use our Passport America card to get the daily price down to $22 from $44, which gives us full hookups with 30 amp.....we've been living on zero hookups, and zero amps for 10 days, so we're happy with 30....for $4 more per day we could have had 50 amps.  We really haven't had 50 amp service since we left Rancho Jurupa January 21st.

We were in our site and hooked up by 1 pm, and by 2 pm TLE was headed over to the laundry to do a big wash.....I stayed behind to refill the fresh water tank, and dump the black tank, which had only gotten to 2/3's full over the 10 days we were 'boondocking'.  Our batteries were down to 73% Sunday morning which is not really bad after 10 days.  Had we stayed put in our 'boondock' site there is no doubt we would have been running the big generator Sunday and Monday due to the heavy cloud cover and rain to bring the batteries back up.  We still had just under 100 gallons of fresh water left.  So, over all, our first extended 'boondocking' experience was successful.  We lived well within our electrical means, and had enough black tank capacity left to go several more days.  Fresh water wise we could have gone 20 more days easily.

The rain eventually made its appearance around 10 pm Sunday night, and it rained steadily all night long, and is still coming down as I write.  Of course, the one thing you come to appreciate about 'boondocking' is the big, long, uninterrupted view, and not looking out your window and seeing two other RV's within 15 feet of you.....

The rain is supposed to stop this evening, and we will pull out of our site Tuesday morning, put the coach and trailer in storage, and be on our way to SoCal for a week.

Thanks for stopping by!