Memorial Day 2013
Appropriate holiday name for a weekend that will be forever in our memory as the time we realized that not all parking is created equal.
Rob had planned a fun filled weekend with his family from Oregon to come camping with us. Rob and I took off Friday morning for the 5 hour drive north at around 11. We hit a little traffic and a little construction but nothing too bad, got into the park around 5pm. We pulled in and the ranger didn't really know where our site was, or really how to get to it. I think it was the first weekend that this particular campground was open for the year. I knew it was going to be a little difficult because I had read on other blogs how there were large trees, you had to go slow around them, and it MIGHT be hard if you are like 28 footer or something. I did think it was a little strange how there was virtually no discussion of trailers/RVs in this Hidden Springs Campground. I could never have planned for it to be THIS stressful.
So we are going through the campground... and we go up and up and up more hills... the FJ is pulling the little trailer well. Then we go up the final hill to our little (very LITTLE) campsite. The site is on the right hand side of a one way road pointing downhill (if that makes any sense!). We get out and asses the situation. hummmm.... how are we possibly going to do this? Rob starts to back down the road, and tries to turn back into the spot, but there is no way, there is not enough turning radius and I am very afraid he is going to jack-knife in the middle of the road. Tries a little more... we try to turn around... no space to be able to turn around. Then a helpful fellow camper comes out and says you need to go the wrong way "down" the road then back in. Well we knew that was what we needed to do, but there was no way to turn around! We ended up going all the way out of the park.... and redoing the loop backwards (crossing our fingers we didn't run into anyone coming the other way!) So we came up to our campsite again, now pointing downhill and Rob tries to back into the spot on this big incline.... pedal to the floor the trailer barely moves... the clutch in the FJ starts to really smell! Slowly the FJ pushes the trailer back into the tiny spot. PHEEW... this took us over an hour! I am done!... then Rob says we really need to level left/right... I am like NO WAY! did you see how hard that little FJ just worked. No more... the FJ is done for the weekend! But we did it and got level. Now that we parked, we got everything unloaded and set up camp. Much more stuff for this weekend as we had a total of 9 people and it was much more outdoor cooking then we normally do in the trailer.
This was our first weekend without ANY hookups. We brought one of our generators and it worked GREAT (after Rob changed the oil with a paper plate and filled the gas with a plastic cup.. sure that is up to code!) We learned that our batteries with NOTHING consciously turned on (no lights, no heaters, etc.) will last less than 12 hours, doesn't sound quite right (we will have that looked into). Because we learned that the fridge (running on propane) needs a little electricity to run the thermometer to stay cool, if it does not get power it turns off!
We threw together some hamburgers and had some wine that we picked up in Mendocino on the way up and had a great first night in Humboldt.
On Saturday the rest of the family joined us for lots of food, drinks and some hiking!
Monday morning I heard this ping ping ping.... ahhh the sound of rain... so nice to hear when you are warm and cozy... OH WAIT all of our family is in tents outside... as well as all of our stuff! Monday morning was a bit hectic picking everything up and getting everyone dried off.
Looking forward to making this an annual family camping trip... but maybe next time somewhere a bit warmer and dryer!
NOTE for next time... the worst site had to be the one we were in for trailers. It was site 58HS another bad one would be 56HS. 64 and 66 looked a bit better. Some of the markers on the sites were trailers and some were RVs. I see that on the reserve America site it does not distinguish between RVs/Trailers (like site 58 shows for both) but I think we learned that here you would want to choose an RV site (they were longer and flatter). 38HS looked like a really good site... it was back off the road, but had an intersection in front of it so you could back in easily. We drove by the other campgrounds they were more out in the open but seemed to be much less of a challenge!
