We have been married almost 36 years, but learning to back a 40-foot 5th wheel into a small camp spot around trees will teach you all sorts of new communication skills. With lots of practice, followed by some good wine, we are slowly getting the hang of it.

We left Longview, WA, on March 1st and headed South. With an overnight stop in Rogue Valley, OR, we then made our way to Grants Pass, OR, to spend a few days. While in Grants Pass we spent time with Lara’s cousins and had a great visit. They recommended a great winery where we met Leo the welcoming kitty and tasted some amazing wines. After leaving Grant’s Pass we continued South and tested Hercules and Athena as we drove thru the Siskiyou Pass, our first mountain pass with a truck and 5th wheel. They both performed wonderful, but knew it was just a warm up for driving thru the Rockies.

Getting into California, the weather started to warm up, which made us very happy. Our 1st night in CA we stopped just outside of Redding at a beautiful little RV Park. As we were setting up a lady came by and asked us if we would like some limes (turns out they were lemons) and proceeded to hand us a huge bag of fresh lemons off her tree. Fresh squeezed lemon juice freezes nicely for lemon drop martini’s on super hot days, which we needed when we got to Southern CA where we spent 2 weeks in a heat dome.

As we continued south, we stopped for a week just outside of Sacramento and hit a bucket list item, the California State Railroad Museum. We have driven the I-5 from Bremerton to San Diego many many times and always said “we need to stop at that museum”, but time never allowed. Now we had the time, and loved sightseeing Old Town and the Train Museum. My uncle would have loved to have seen that and we could have spent days reading everything. After the Train Museum, we couldn’t be in that area and not go to the Ghiradelli outlet and get our favorite milkshakes.

We continued south with a stop at our first Harvest Host stay for the night. Harvest Hosts is a large group of wineries, breweries, museums and other small business’ that have room for a few RV’s to spend the night, all they ask is you spend around $30 to support that small business. We stopped at Vista Ranch Winery where we met lots of people, chatted with people who worked there and had some great wine. After tasting and enjoying talking with everyone, we went back to our RV to an amazing sunset.

We finally got to Southern CA, just outside of L.A. where we spent a couple weeks to relax and visit family. While at the campground in the middle of the hills we discovered that the Pacific Crest Trail went thru that area. So we set out to hike some of that trail. When we got there, a woman with her dog was coming down and warned us of a rattlesnake on the trail up a few switch backs. We hiked a little way up and decided to let the Rattlesnake continue his nap and choose another trail. As we passed a sign warning of us cougars, we continued on up, then saw large cougar prints going across the path. We hiked for a 1/2 hr or so, and then decided we were going to respect the wildlife that day and leave them alone.

It was time to finally head east. A quick stop in Palm Springs and continued on to Southern AZ. We spent some time in Casa Grande where our first order of business was to have an RV Mobile Tech come check our brakes for a squeaking noise. Once he check everything out and fixed our dragging brake problem, we were able to explore the cute little town. Moving on to visit some friends about an hour south of Tucson, AZ, we spent several days relaxing and catching up and playing with their fur babies. While there we spent a day in Tombstone, which was a fun little tourist trap and spent another day at the Pima Air & Space museum. After a great visit, we headed north to Cottonwood, AZ for a couple weeks. We loved the area and did some hiking at the Grand Canyon, visited Sedona, Jerome (an old mining town) and saw Montezuma’s Castle; we loved the Northern AZ area. While in Cottonwood, we made some great friends and enjoyed happy hour and watched baseball with them. We are finally getting to stop and see all those little places that we would pass on road trips, but had time restrictions so had to pass.

Next stop and post: heading east to Albuquerque, NM, then north to Colorado…