Dry Camping in Cali

I've read a lot about dry camping but this was the first time we actually did it.  We stayed at Spring Lake in Santa Rosa, CA for 3 nights.  It's a real nice campground with 31 campsites; 2 are first come, first served, the others are a mix between tents & RV sites and are by reservation. They have  potable water, restrooms with electrical outlets, flush toilets, a dump station and showers, although their showers are a bit on the expensive side at $2.00 for 5 minutes.  We didn't use the showers except for the last day when our fresh water tank was getting low.  

The great thing about being able to travel with your pets is that they are with you all the time, you don't have to board them so that saves on money.  The bad thing about traveling with your pets is when one of them barfs in your sleeping bag at 4am and that's the only thing you have to sleep in or if one pee's on it (the puppy, who is still going through the potty training stage).  Fortunately, this all happened on the last night and our next campground destination has full service including a laundromat so we will be able to wash everything.  All in all, I wouldn't change it.  It's no different than having kids except that you don't have to feed them all day, they don't whine when they are bored, they are happy to be laying down or sitting on your lap and our 24' RV fits us just fine.

On the second day of dry camping we decided to use a handy little barbecue grill we bought online.  It's from a company by the name of Fox Outfitters.  This grill is great because it folds flat! Since we have very limited storage this was a good addition to our collection of RV needs.  The one thing we didn't think of is that because this is a much smaller grill we may not need as many coals.  It heats up a lot faster and as a consequence burnt our tri-tip, only on one side.  We were able to cut around the burnt part and enjoyed the perfectly cooked other side.  

Great barbecue

1

Everything fits in this bag

Burnt tri-tip

I forgot to turn off the outside light before we went to sleep and it ran our battery down.  The campground has generator restrictions so we had to wait until 8am before we could turn it on to charge the battery and even then the battery didn't stay charged.  It was fine though, we were able to get by.

We packed up and set our sights on the next campground; Flying Flags RV Resort & Campground in Buellton, CA.    It took us about 6 hours to get there mostly because of the bay area traffic    but the view on the way was so pretty. 

I've never been to a campground like Flying Flags.  It's a little overwhelming at first with so many sites and being pretty close together.  Our site was on a corner just down from the playground and next to a trailer with 4 small boys, "yippee", not.  It wasn't bad really.  It was nice to see kids riding their bikes, laughing and yelling at each other.  They were having a great time and it reminded me of when our kids were younger.

We got everything set-up and had dinner and then we walked around.   It was a long day so we called it a night.  The next day we walked into town, just a few blocks up the road to Anderson's Pea Soup.  If you like pea soup you'll love Anderson's.    We walked into the gift store and I was surprised at all the different things they had.  There is definitely something for everyone, 

except us.  Remember in my earlier blog I told you we are collecting patches from our trips, well Anderson Pea Soup doesn't carry patches anymore because their supplier went out of business.  I guess they were the only supplier in the U.S. Maybe they weren't a big selling item.  We walked back to Flying Flags and took the girls out for a walk.  We sat at our site until we started getting hungry and decided to eat at the Campfire Cafe located in the Flying Flags campground. My husband had a country burger which had bacon, onion rings, bbq sauce and the usual fixins.  I opted to try the veggie burger made from tofu as I'm trying to stick as close as possible to my new eating regiment which is low carb high protein.  Surprisingly my burger was good, I enjoyed it.  Sitting outside at the cafe on the patio my husband noticed that their are mainly younger families with just a handful of us older RVers and all have top of the line travel trailers and trucks.  We enjoy walking around the camp sites and seeing the different set-ups people have.  One thing I really liked and I'm going to buy is a portable folding hammock.  I saw it at one of the RV sites and it looked so comfortable.  I have a hammock now but you need to put it onto 2 trees and finding the 2 perfectly spaced trees for it is difficult.  I guess I should have thought that through a bit more.

As close as the RV sites are at this campground

 we enjoyed it and would stay here again.  Tomorrow we pack up and head to Indio for the end of our trip.

Until then . . .

"Adventure is out there"