On the Road 2013, Dave, Kaye and Kyle

Hello Friends and Family;
Our travels are about a week ahead of this blog but that is mainly because; we were on a mission to get some work done on our trailer, we were driving through solid rain on Interstate Freeways day after day and really tired of saying: " Oh look, another WalMart!", and to top things off, we were not stopping to see anything except our hotel rooms...

However, it was not all that bad except for a few peek moments.  The ferry ride from the island made my blood boil (or the little bit of Scot blood in me) as our 53 foot travel train cost $258 one way and all we got to see was fog.  The border guards got soaking wet checking out the trailer as we did not fit under the covered area and poor Kyle howled and whined when he had to be put into a bare kennel while they did their inspection.  Only took about 45 minutes total.  When we have our Nexus cards that ordeal should be eliminated.

We have nothing but praise for the Holiday Inn Express chain.  We were still having troubles with our Rewards Program not recognizing us as "Platinum" cardholders when we tried to do our bookings on-line or via the phone.  However the desk staff everywhere we stopped honoured our status, gave us upgrades and exceptionally low rates.  They even let me plug in the trailer to charge the batteries.

When we hit the Southern mountain chain leaving Washington State the sky cleared and the sun even popped out for about half the day.  We were able to snap some great shots of Mt. Shasta.



Kaye is practising with her new camera so Dave; AKA 'Japanese Tourist', has a new competitor.  Kyle has been very attentive to our travels and seems to pay close attention when we are driving.  No barking outbreaks yet, but the most wildlife we have seen are cows and sheep.

We closely watch the outside temperature gauge in the truck and amid the gloomy sky it is exciting every time it climbs another degree!

When we arrived in Fresno, Ca (where we bought the trailer last year) the dealer promised to take us in first thing on Mon morning and let us drop the unit off on the Sunday.  We finally put our bags down for a couple of days and it was heaven.  Hot Tub here we come!

If any of you would like to buy a trailer or a motor home we would be happy to assist you in making a deal with Dan Gamel, owner of RVMall.com in Ca.   They fixed our furnace, replaced our torn slide cover awning, installed the centre jacks I brought from Canada, ordered and shipped a bike rack for me and charged me......nothing...  Gave me $30 off the bike rack and also covered the shipping.  Customer service is what they make their repeat business from and it shows.   Dan showed off his new purchase of a 1953 Jaguar somethingorother, cute but not my cup of tea... And I did not like the look on Kaye's face.


We left Dan's feeling like a million bucks for our first night of truly camping.  We raced to the West Coast of Ca to settle into a nice RV Park just South of Pismo Beach.  We were late getting in and as we went through the check list of hooking everything up we discovered that the flush valve on the toilet was spraying water up the wall of the bathroom.   Too late to deal with it, turn water off and use the community showers.


The morning investigation revealed a hairline crack in the plastic (meant removing the toilet).  We had noticed a trace of water around the toilet last summer but it was hit and miss.  One of our neighbours noticed me and the toilet on the front lawn (gawk) and came for a chat.  He  mentioned that the water pressure at this park was very high (75psi) and that this was a common finding at Ca parks.  The local RV parts dealer wanted almost as much for the replacement parts as the cost of the whole toilet (good business to be in) so I decided to upgrade the toilet to a domestic unit (same as a home) and added a pressure regulator to the water supply.  Bottom line, short $350 bucks and we're OK with that.  Kaye has a full size elongated ceramic biffy and I don't have a leak to deal with.

We are going to stay in Pismo for at least a couple of days.  Our goal is to try and relax and get back into the camping mode.  Hopefully our next post will have a better story line attached.