We have successfully returned home from our Great RV Adventure! We left not this past Friday but two Fridays ago--me, Kevin, Theo, Scout, Digory, and a thousand pounds of crap--packed into the grandparents' 24-foot RV. We had grand plans, but the trip turned out to be a major learning experience. Of course it took us much longer to get anywhere because we had to stop and feed the baby, which you can't do while driving, and let the dogs out, which you also can't do while driving. And the RV doesn't go 80 mph like a car does. So our timing estimates were way off.
The point of our trip was to go up to Santa Rosa for a wine event at Nalle Winery, one of our longtime favorite wineries. The event was on Sunday, and Kevin had a forced vacation last week, so we decided to make a whole tour of it. Our first day we got a very late start (wait! I forgot my medicine!) and rolled into our campground at 10:30pm. I'm sure it was a very nice campground, and on the way out at noon the next day it looked pretty cool, but we spent another billion hours on the road encountering calamities like accidentally leaving one of the ceiling vents open and having it fly off on the freeway. Oops. Fortunately there's a Camping World in Gilroy. Which closed literally 5 minutes before we rolled in. We finally reached the campground that was further than we anticipated late Saturday night.
Sunday my parents came and picked us up and we did some wine tasting and relaxed at the Nalle event. Theo did fabulously, despite the 103 degree temperature. He slept half the time and the other just entertained himself either in his stroller or our laps. The meltdown was later to come. We headed back to the campground where Kevin, Theo and I got in the pool--soooooooo refreshing--and we showed Grandma and Grampa how well we swim underwater. Then it was a cookout and meltdown. Theo capped off the evening with a spectacular vomiting episode that left Mommy soaked. Well, now we know why he was so upset.
Following that we headed up to Mendocino, one of our favorite little towns. The campground there was quite nice and we had a lovely day in Mendocino. Next was camping amidst some redwoods. This campground was ideal for the dogs, and by ideal I mean they were finally able to be out on the tie-outs without tangling and strangling each other or barking their heads off at other passing dogs. We then moved to the East Bay where we had a very fun bbq dinner with our friends Anita and Derek and their two girls Paloma (almost 2) and Sabrina (9 months). Stupidly, we totally forgot to get pictures. Next time!
Then we visited our old haunt, the South Bay. My good friend from IBM, Dorothy, hosted a BBQ at her house for my other IBM friends Hai-Nhu and Sandy, as well as our friends Wendy and Marc. There were a total of 4 kids there--Sadie (belonging to Marc and Wendy, almost 2), Evelyn (belonging to Hai-Nhu and John, also almost 2), Sarah (belonging to Dorothy and Jimmy, 18 months) and Theo! It's funny because both Sadie and Evelyn were born within two weeks of each other, and Sarah is exactly 1 year and 2 days older than Theo. It was a blast seeing all of them and the kids. The last time we visited was a year ago and the kids have all changed so much. Getting a group shot of the kids and mommies was a challenge, but I think we got some fun ones.
Disaster struck on our way home. We arrived at the campground late only to find that our spot had been given to "overflow parking" from someone else's spot. This despite the fact that we pre-paid for the site and the confirmation clearly said that they would hold it until 7am the following morning. This campground was run by the Forest Service, and what a difference that made. The others were all State Parks and were just fabulous. Clean, well-run, friendly people, respectful other campers. This one seemed to be a madhouse. Since it was too late to find the concessionaire, we just pulled off into a turnout and slept there for the night. Kevin greeted the guy in the morning, expressed our displeasure at the site last night, and told him we would be leaving (we had planned to spend the 4th there as well). We then went and took pictures of the site that was supposed to be ours so we can submit them to the credit card company if they question our charge-back. Grrrrrrrr.
All in all it was a fun trip. We'll definitely be borrowing the RV again (the grandparents were practically begging us to borrow it the first time) and now we have a much better handle on what to expect and how to prepare. Hope you all had a fun 4th!
Posted by Shelby at July 5, 2009 06:46 PM