We're Outta Here! On to the RV Dreams Rally

Roger here....  Sunday morning.  The sun was up.  I was enjoying a few more minutes of sleep while Bandido watched for intruders.  Time to get up.  Big day ahead.

We finished packing and moving the outside furniture into the coach house on Saturday night, so the only tasks before leaving were setting off a bug bomb inside the coach house and locking the doors.  Our lot sure looks empty right now.

Time to connect the Matrix to the motor home for the first time in six months.

On to Kerrville (an hour west of San Antonio), 300+ miles and six hours away.   We worried a bit about how Tequila would handle her first trip in the motor home.  As it turns out, there was really nothing to be concerned about.  When she was not sleeping, she sat next to Dianne watching the scenery go by.

The Border Patrol checkpoint greeted us after about an hour of driving at Falfurrias.  We have passed through this checkpoint enough times now that it is just another part of the trip.  We waited a little longer this time as the agents were very interested in the vehicle at the front of our line.  The patrol dogs must have detected something.  The vehicle was eventually pulled over to the side for a more thorough search.  Uh-oh.  Someone was having a bad day. 

We arrived at our destination, Buckhorn Lake Resort, at about 4:30 p.m.  We have stayed here before, but it has been almost three years.  It is an upscale place (nicer than most of the places we stay) with lots of amenities, a good place to enjoy the RV Dreams Rally, sponsored by Howard and Linda Payne.


On Monday, we drove  17 miles to the idyllic town of Fredericksburg in the heart of the Texas Hill Country.  We have been there many times before.  This time, our sole purpose for the trip was to have lunch at Auslander's, our favorite German restaurant.  I had a reuben sandwich (outstanding) and a mug of Spaten.  Yum.  It brought back memories of a similar lunch last year with our Indiana camping buddies - Chuck and Cindy.    

When we returned, Dianne found some time to enjoy the view from our site.

Later in the day we joined a large group of "RV Dreamers" enjoying happy hour outside Howard and Linda's RV.


Tuesday morning we took the dogs on a three-mile hike to the end of Goat Creek Road, and back.  It was a nice hike (only saw two cars the whole time) in one of the most picturesque areas of Texas.  


Dianne enjoyed the adolescent calves.

Bandido enjoyed a quick dip in Goat Creek.

The Rally started in the afternoon.  I volunteered to help with registration.  Then a bizarre thing happened.  One of the attendees, Greg, came up to me and asked if I was from Pendleton, IN.  After a moment of confusion I realized that I went to school with Greg and his wife Diana.  They graduated one year before me.  Pendleton is a small place.  There were only about 600 students in the entire high school at the time we were there.  Running into people I knew decades ago from my hometown, in a place that was hundreds of miles away,  was amazing.  We will have a lot of catching up to do.


The pet picture of the day shows Tequila enjoying one of her frequent naps.  Smelling all the new smells in this place is exhausting.

Our Winter Home - Retama Village, Mission Texas

Roger here....  Back to South Texas!  Now that we have returned, we remember why we liked it so much last winter.  

The climate is great during the winter months.  Since we have been here, the lowest high temperature has been 68 and the highest high temperature has been 88.  It does not get cold at night -- great to feel the breeze through open windows and listen to the coyotes.

The landscaping around our RV lot and brand new coach house looks great.  More than half of the plantings are required to be indigenous to the area, so we have plants that attract butterflies and birds.  We also have roses (because the developer's wife loves them).

We have lots of space, all of it either concrete or maintained (drip-irrigated) lawn.  The 17 x 12 patio behind the coach house seems huge.  We plan to cover it with a pergola, add a solar fountain and maybe even an above-ground fire pit.  We also intend to put in outdoor lighting, a counter with a tub for icing drinks/warming food, and a stainless steel grill.  With pots full of flowers we hope to have a shady outdoor oasis for eating, reading, and enjoying the very private view.  

Our camping furniture looks okay right now, but we will be replacing it with the garden furniture from our Indiana house that has been in storage.  Dianne's lemon tree in the foreground below has finally found a permanent home - no more lugging it in and out of the motor home shower.  Hallelujah!  (Lemon tree should like it here in the  Rio Grande Valley, because this is where they grow Texas grapefruit.  -- D.)

I don't have photos of the people here, but we both agree that they are the friendliest, most accommodating people we have ever encountered in our travels.  The Winter Texans (like us) are far more laid back than the snowbirds we have previously encountered in other warm areas.  Our new neighbors at Retama Village have made us feel very, very welcome.  AND we have fallen in love with the local Hispanic population -- so friendly (always smiling), so warm, so hard-working, so competent, so genuinely happy to meet you.  I did not know that a general population could be this nice:  from the bank personnel at our new bank, to the servers at the restaurants, to the check-out people at the H.E.B. (the nicest grocery we have ever encountered - another story), to the contractor who is finishing the inside of our coach house, even the public servants at the water company, despite long lines of folks waiting patiently (which we also found amazing).

Retama is such a relaxing place with soooo many things to do.  Our first social event was the New Year's Eve party in the club house that eventually moved to the pool area.  Unfortunately, since then, we have already missed a few of the activities that we hope to be a part of -- including a men's breakfast (finally something just for the men :-),  a weekly hors d'oeuvres evening social, ping pong (for me), bicycling, bird watching, hot tubbing, lap swimming, etc., etc., etc.

We missed all this because we were busy getting our new coach house ready to be finished on the inside.  We have been anticipating this for almost a year.  I could not believe how quickly things came together.  We spent a couple of days at Home Depot and Lowe's measuring the appliances that we wanted to include.  We then taped off the inside of the coach house with four colors of tape: blue for walls, green for cabinets and appliances, red for anything electrical, and regular old dull masking tape for the furniture we have in storage.  (Anal- retentive me reigns supreme).  After two days of taping, I left a cell phone message for Raul, our contractor, and was amazed when he showed up, smiling,  at our doorstep ten minutes later.  After a preliminary review, he gave us a price for the work (amazingly reasonable, in fact our friends from the midwest would be astonished).  He took us to a site that he recently finished to see if we approved of the work.  (We already knew we did from the open houses we viewed last spring).  He then told us he could start the next day (today) and sent us on our way to buy recessed lighting, a ceiling fan, and bathroom vent fan.  Wow.  I expected hassles.  I am sure that there will be some, but the start was more positive than I could possibly have dreamed. 

 We have just scratched the surface of all the joys we intend to experience here.  More to come as we become true Winter Texans.  (Not as athletic fans, of course, Purdue basketball, the HS swim team that I coached decades ago,  and the Colts are still at the top of my loyalties.)


The Whippet Picture of the Day shows our ever laid-back dogs enjoying some deck time in their new relaxation area.  (Chaplin is very happy because he has soft, green grass to lay in.  He absolutely LOVES the dog park and has reacquainted with some of his dog friends from last winter.  --D.)  We are soon hoping to include a video of whippets running at the dog park to prove that they can also be active.

A Malibu Christmas

Roger here....   Well, we moved from the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to sunny (hah!)  Malibu.  The Malibu Beach RV Park sits on a bluff overlooking the Dan Blocker Beach on the Pacific Coast Highway, a walk away from Cher's house.  Our stay here is our  (Dianne and my) Christmas gifts to each other.  This is a high-end place -- highlighted by the spectacular views.  When you can see them.

We arrived on Sunday, a windy, wet day.  The first of many.   Our site is on a bluff with a direct view of the beach.  Sweet.  The Pacific Coast Highway is directly below us, but because we are on a cliff we cannot see it.  We had the option of backing in or pulling in so that we could see the ocean from the front. 

 Obviously, we pulled in.  It was a pain to run the hookups diagonally under the motor home to the hook-up station, but the view was worth it --  gray though it was.   

The view looked a little more festive after dark, but note the wet drops on the windshield.  They did not disappear for days.  (The Merry Christmas scroll was my Mom's -- good memories).


RAIN, RAIN, RAIN, RAIN, RAIN, RAIN, RAIN....  If you followed the news this week, you know that it rained constantly here.  When they closed the Pacific Coast Highway just north of us (still closed) due to a mudslide over the roadway, we were a little concerned about our motor home -- and us.  Remember we are on a vertical bluff directly over the highway.  Being from the flatlands, we really did not understand the mudslide thing.  Now we do.  We took a couple of pics of the dirt bluffs south of us along the Pacific Coast Highway (where it's still open), to show how scary it could be.

Watching the ocean, what we could see of it, was fascinating for us, but after a while the gloomy view forced us to find something else to do.  I read a novel on my Kindle.  Dianne became domestic, preparing to cook some of our daughter, Robyn's, favorite foods for Christmas day.  

(Dianne here:  Robyn has been performing on cruise ships the past two years, so this is the first holiday we've been able to spend with her since Thanksgiving 2007.   We had a fun evening at El Torito's last night, and I wanted to take a photo of her with her ever-present iPhone.  She kept making faces at me at the last minute, and after ten tries, I finally got one.  By that time I was laughing and giggling so hard it was difficult to hold the camera still.

Wednesday morning....   Look!  Is that a bright area under the dark gray clouds?  I think it is.  We have not seen a bright spot in the sky for who knows when.  

Notice the line in the ocean that separates the dark water from the brown water?  The brown water is obviously run-off from a nearby canyon.  Interesting for a former science teacher.  Glad that we and our motor home are not part of the run-off!

When I took the "boys" for their morning walk on Wednesday, it was clear enough to get a couple of shots of our motor home above the pathway.  

The dog-walk area here is probably the most scenic of any we have experienced, even though Chaplin is not always inspired to pee.  He's been known to stubbornly go two days without peeing if the conditions aren't to his liking.  Probably too pretty!?

After our walk, we were finally able to enjoy the view from our picnic table in front of the motor home.

I can see CLEARLY now the rain is gone!  Dianne (not me) took some beautiful sunset pictures.

Soon to come...  Three days with our daughter, Robyn:  the Getty art museum, shopping and a movie, and a quiet Christmas day looking at the beach and eating Dianne's delicious food.  The only way to make it more perfect would be to have our other daughter, Amanda, and our granddaughter, Kaia, with us as well.  Maybe.... some time in the future?


The Whippet Picture of the Day....  Chaplin -- having a nightmare of five days of rain making it difficult for his gentle bladder to pee on command.

The Misadventures of Roger and Dianne

Roger here...  We are currently parked in a bucolic and peaceful setting in the middle of the Paso Robles wine country, but our visit to this beautiful place did not start in a peaceful way.


Moving from Three Rivers (Sequoia NP) to Paso Robles was uneventful, other than a little wind -- but our arrival was certainly not uneventful.  


We are members of Harvest Hosts, a $20/year club that allows its members to park their RVs overnight in selected (more than 100) winery parking lots.  The rules are simple:  Make sure that the parking area is big enough for the size of motor home that you have by looking at the icon on the website, call the winery to ask permission, and show up on the designated day.  It is a good deal for the RVer (free parking) and the winery (probable wine purchases).  We like the concept and like the way it is organized.  We did this in North Carolina and had a great time.  Here's a link to their web site, for our rv'er friends who might be interested:


Harvest Hosts



We had hoped to spend nights in two different winery lots in Paso Robles.  We picked wineries that indicated they could accommodate 45+ foot motor homes, called ahead, received permission and thought we were set for two pleasant, non-hassle days.


It started badly, got worse, got a little better, got worse, and finally ended well.


In following the directions to our Saturday-night winery, we were directed to Peachy Canyon Road. I was hesitant to turn onto the road (should have followed my instincts).  The road, though paved, was extremely narrow, did not have shoulders, but did have hills.  It was also full of blind, sharp turns.  When meeting a car, we were forced to come to a complete stop while the vehicle squeezed by.  (Dianne here:  We held our breath each time we neared one of these blind curves, praying there was no oncoming car or truck).  We were only supposed to travel on the road for a mile, so on we went.


When we arrived at the designated winery, we discovered that there was no way to even make the turn into the extremely narrow parking lot.  A large pickup truck would have had trouble.  If we had been able to make the turn, we would have bottomed out while going down the extremely steep drop.  From where we sat, it did not look like there was room in the lot for even one large motor home, even though the website said it could fit four.  What to do?  We could not get in the lot, and honestly did not want to attempt it.  We had no place to spend the night.  We were stopped in the middle of the road, with no place to turn around, no place to turn around, no place to turn around.  We did not have a map of the area.  The car behind us with the honking horn forced our decision.  We moved forward, hoping to find a place to turn around or a better road.


One mile later, several hills and turns -- no place to turn around.


Two miles later, several hills and turns -- no place to turn around.


Three miles later, several hills and turns -- no place to turn around.


Four miles later, several hills and turns -- no place to turn around;  however, we were able to ask a lady in an oncoming car if there was a way to get off the road or a place to turn around.  Hope.  She smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and said good luck.


Four and a half miles later - ANOTHER WINERY!  However, we could not see the parking lot at the top of the steep hill, and were reluctant to drive to the lot where we might discover a tiny lot (with no place to turn around).  So....  we stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic, disconnected the Toyota and parked the Toyota on the side of the road.  Dianne then helped me back the motor home into the uphill entrance of the winery (now blocking the winery entrance and the road).  I was able to get the motor home turned around, but we still had to stop in the roadway to reconnect the Toyota.  A big breath of relief.  We were on our way out!  I directed a few unkind words at the winery that gave us incorrect information as we passed it on the way back to civilization.  Fortunately, no one except Dianne heard me :-)


We still needed a place to stay.  I remembered that the Tobin James Winery that we had passed on the main road was also a Harvest Hosts member.  Even though we did not have previous permission,  I thought it would be worth asking.  BIG unpaved parking area across the small road from the winery:-)  I went in to ask permission.  It took a while.  Lots going on (bacherlorette party, bus tours, limo tours, laughter, people having a good time).  After finding the right person, I was given permission to park overnight.  Couldn't wait to park, get Dianne and enjoy the rest of the day.  


However, the very kind manager then told me that heavy rain was expected, and that the parking area turns into mud.  At least one motor home had to be towed in the past. :-(  She said we could park on the side of the road.  (Seemed risky to me.)  She said that there was a private RV Park (Wine Country RV Resort) just down the road.  The way the day was going we opted for the RV Resort, and decided to spend two nights rather than possibly find a muddy parking lot at the second winery, as well.  Finally, a good decision.

Wine Country RV Resort was a little pricey, BUT it truly was a resort.  In this case we got what we paid for.  We had a beautiful site (vineyard views, concrete, level), just across from the adult-only spa.  There was even a fenced dog run for the boys.  Oh, and the management could not have been more helpful. 

Whew, the rest of the day was great.  We parked the motor home and drove the car back to Tobin James where we tasted some wine, enjoyed the upbeat atmosphere, bought a couple bottles, and thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor areas at the winery - some of the most beautiful stonework I have ever seen.

Before dinner, we enjoyed some relaxing time back at the RV Resort at the outdoor spa.  Wow, the setting was surrounded by boulders, gardens, water falls and even a fire pit.  After an hour, the stress of the day drifted away.

Our second day in Paso Robles was a day of enjoying scenery, meeting new people, and oh, yes, a little wine sampling.  (Actually quite a bit of wine sampling....  :-)   -- D.)

We ate an early lunch in the motor home before visiting our first winery of the day, J Lohr.

Then Peachy Canyon (not in Peachy Canyon!).  Then Windward.

Then Bianchi.

The day ended back at the spa -- this time in a misty rain; the best time to enjoy a spa.

The Whippet Picture of the Day shows the dogs enjoying their every-morning routine:  Keeping warm under the blanket until it's time for their walk.