Mothers Day 2011

Saturday & Sunday May 7th and 8th, 2011

Hi there Everyone,

We got to have a wonderful mothers day weekend with the family. On Saturday, we spent the evening with Carol's sister Sandy, Sandy's husband Bill, Sandy's daughter Brandee and Brandee's husband Kevin. We had dinner at Fat's Asian Bistro in Folsom. Fat's is one of our favorite resturaunts. The food is delicious, but it is a higher end resturaunt that you can afford to eat at very often. The food this time did not disappoint. Though generally the food is generally a little on the fattening side, Carol and I found a great vegitable Chow Mein that can be fried in water instead of oil. It was yummy.

On Sunday, Katie joined, Carol, Sandy, Bill and I at a Rivercats game. The Rivercats are a favorite team for all of us, and it was a great place to go for a mothers day celebration. And, the Rivercats won! a definite bonus!

Rosie, who we adopted from the Amador county animal shelter continues to get more and more comfortable with her new home with us. She has been experiencing seperation anxiety. A number of times, we came home a number of times and found that Rosie had dismantled something in the house. Sometimes it was the tissue box or a pillow. However, some of her most destructive efforts are against cables within the Motorhome. Most recently, it was wires under the dash, and then cables that control the power awnings on the side of the motorhome. Fortunately, we have managed to survive and her urges have started to subside. The last week or so, she has been an absolute angel. We really love Rosie and are so glad that she is part of our life.

Happy camping! Eric and Carol!

Easter and an end to a long tradition

Hi there everyone, We're a little behind in our posting to the blog, so i will try to do some catching up. First off, we'll talk about Easter, a Rivercats game and an end to something I did traditionally every week, for years, but has come to an end...

Early in April we went to a Rivercats game with Carol's sister Sandy and her husband Bill. We always have a wonderful time at these games. We'd like to go to everyone of them, especially now that we live in Sacramento, but we wouldn't be able to afford that. But, we'll go to them as we can swing it. (Get it swing it???, Pretty funny huh!)

We had another wonderful Easter this year. We were suppose to go to a Winery in Shenandoah Valley, but mother nature threw a rain storm at us and so we had to go with Plan B, which was to met up at Brandee and Kevins house in Drytown. We always enjoy our gatherings at Brandee and Kevins though, so we are always ok with that as a Plan 'B'. Speaking of Brandee, things seem to be going well at her new business 'Studio B' which she opened up in April as well.

Just before we got together for Easter with the Family, I went and did my last 'Volunteer gig' at the Amador County Animal Shelter. I've been doing that every Sunday morning since 2005. I will miss that group of people and all of the pooches that I have walked there over the years, but many of the dogs have wonderful new homes, including our little Rosie! I'll also miss Tom and Sandy two other volunteers that I have worked with over the years. After I finished at the shelter that morning, I had time to run home, hook up with Carol and Katie and head over to Brandee and Kevins.

Well, that is about it for now. Take care all. Eric and Carol

Greetings from our new digs

Hi there one and all,

Greetings from our new digs in Rancho Cordova California. We have relocated our home base from Plymouth (in Amador County California) about 30 miles down the road to Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County California). Our move, at this point, was pretty much justified by the fact that the rent is substantially less here in Sacramento then in Amador county. We cut our rent in half, although the rent at the new location doesn't include electricity. We expect even though we will have to pay electricity, we should be able to save about $400 a month on living expenses. :-)

Our new location isn't quite as fancy as our old one, but of the some 12 or so that we looked at in Sacramento, this is the one that would allow us our 3 medium size dogs, and was a fairly clean location. There were a lot of dives in this region, and all of the nicer parks didn't allow dogs over 20 pounds, and Carol and I would have had to been over the age of 55.

There is a little bit of noise at night from the Light rail station just across the street, but it reminds us of many other KOA's and other camp grounds that we have stayed at over the years. :-) We've now been here an entire week and even Friday and Saturday nights were fairly un-eventful. There are less than 40 spots in this Park, but half of them have dogs, all of which are over 20 pounds, and most of the residents are under the age of 55. So, it's obvious where all of us in our current demographic end up gravitating towards. The three dogs and our cat all continue to take it in stride. As far as they are concerned, as long as we come home at night from work and feed them, they are good to go!

Katie and Russ came by and visited for a few hours today which was wonderful! That is going to be one of the great things about living down here. We'll be much closer to get together for a visit. But, neither Carol or I want to be a bother too them by invading their space, and we are thinking we are just far enough away to accomplish that. :-)

We also added some out door furniture to our new home, so we are looking forward to having some nice quiet and relaxing weekends going forward.

Our next trip will be to the Northern California Samboree, at the Lodi Grape festival grounds, the last week in April.

Happy Camping! Eric and Carol

What a wonderful trip to Coarsegold

Hi there everyone,

Well, it is almost time to pull up stakes and head back to our new Long term parking spot, but more about that in a later post. For now, we have had a wonderful four day weekend here at Park Sierra in Coarsegold California. The weekend started with me working from 6 to 3 on Wednesday and then driving the Honda home, hooking it up solo to our trusty Motorhome and heading off to Sacramento to pick up Carol and then heading to Park Sierra. This is a wonderful RV park and we are both really glad that we have become Escapee members.

While we were here, we were hoping to make it to Kings Canyon and to Sequia National park, but the roads are still closed for the winter. It has been a pretty nasty winter here this year. So, we have just been kind of bouncing around the Madera County area, just kind of checking things out. We saw a wonderful KOA here in Coarsegold that we would stay at if we weren't already Escapee's members. We took the dogs to a couple of dog parks so they could get out and stretch their legs. We also found Eddie, the wood sign guy who is making us a new 'The Andersons' sign which will also have bones with our dogs names on them as well.

We topped off the weekend with a very tasty dinner at the Buffet in Chukchansi Gold Casino which is right here in Coarsegold. We even won $20 at the slots right after dinner. Nothing spectacular, but it helped to pay for dinner! The view outside the dining room was wonderful.

Our departure on Sunday was a little clunky. Our new sign wasn't ready so hopefully, the guy will ship it to us and Rosie ate our sandwich which I guess I didn't hide well enough as we ran in to get our Starbucks. Oh well...

All in all, this has been a wonderful four day get-away. Carol and I both could get use to these three day work weeks!

Happy Camping! Eric and Carol

Carols turn to surprise me

Hi there everyone, Well, it was Carol's turn to come up with a surprise get away for me. She took us to Coursegold, just north of Sequoia National Forest. We are staying at an Escapee's park called 'Park Sierra' in a town called Coursegold. It's only $16 a night, very secluded, very secure sort of place. There are about 200 sites, each owned by an RV'er. When they are out on the road, the park management rents out the spot. The residents all pitch in to do the maintenance and improvements around the common area. They are into a bunch of 'Barn Raising' sorts of projects. One year they did a dog park, last year they did a waterwheel and steam bed. This year they are working on a gazebo. We'd buy in here, if we could find work down this way! Right now though, the commute would be a killer! We had to boon-dock the first night 'cause we got here to late to check in. We were hoping to go to Kings Canyon and Sequoia national park, but they are still closed for the Winter. No matter, we are still having a great time! I hope to have more updates shortly. Happy Camping! - Eric and Carol -

And the rain just keeps on coming!!!

Hi there everyone, well this has been one of the rainier seasons on record for northern California. The ski resorts have reported near record snow fall this year. Some resorts have reported up to 56 feet of snow this year!!! WOW!!! There has been so much snow this year that the 'Carson Spur' which is one of the sections of the Highest pass in California, at 8,650 feet, actually looks like a giant 'bob sled' run!!! Another picture is of 'Hams Station' which is an old 'Stage Coach' station that is pretty high up the mountain as well!!! We are getting ready to move our home location from Plymouth California to Rancho Cordova. Carol's job is in Sacramento, and mine is in Pine Grove. We are needing to improve our financial situation, so we found a new location to park the Moho. Though it isn't nearly as nice as the RV park in Plymouth, it is a safe location, where the monthly rent is half of what we are paying now. Making this change will allow us to get out a bit more often with the motor home and enjoy some new adventures. The new location is between Carol's job and my job, so her commute will get a lot shorter, and mine will get longer, but that's OK, it's my turn to drive for a while. :-) Rosie is continuing to adjust to living in our home. At times, it's been a tough adjustment. She has been given the nick-name 'The destroyer'. She has destroyed some check books and pulled wiring out from behind the dash of the Motor home. Eric almost had a melt down when he found all of these wires from behind the dashboard chewed up. Fortunately, the previous owner of the Moho was a ham-radio operator. The cabling that Rosie chewed up was antenna cables for the Ham-Radio antennas and nothing else. Though Eric's dad is probably spinning in his grave at the destruction, Eric is less devastated by it, now knowing that it wasn't anything critical that was damaged. Speaking of the motor home, we've only owned the Moho since September and we finally found out that the Splendide Washer/Drier has two lint filters! Over time, it's ability to dry clothes seems to have gotten worse. After posting a question on the 'trailerlife' webpage forums, we found that not only is there a lint filter on the front of the unit, but on the back as well. That is one of the problems with buying a used RV, you don't always get all of the owners manuals and the quality walk-thru's that you need sometimes. We were told about the one one the front in the walk-thru, but not the one on the back of it. We are also taking a 'Mystery Trip' next week. It is something that Carol has wanted to do for a while and that Eric has no idea where they are going, but is equally looking forward to it. We'll update the blog after we have had a chance to enjoy our get-away a little bit. Happy camping! Eric and Carol Anderson

A quick weekend get away

Hi there everyone,

Well, I thought it would be nice to be somewhat spontaneous and surprise Carol with a weekend getaway for the two of us. Of course, because Carol and I are both 'Gainfully' employed, being spontaneous is a little hard to do. So, I have to plan and try to make the outing as spontaneous as possible. I started by making reservations at the West Sacramento KOA for the weekend. I got the Ok from my boss to come in early and leave early on Friday. I left work at noon and headed to Safeway to do some grocery shopping.

When I got home, I found that Rosie had re-decorated the house once again. It's becoming a daily ritual to find 'Rosie Fallout' when I get home everyday. Ah the joy of having a new doggie addition in the house-hold. :-)

At any rate, I got the motor home on the road at around 2:30 PM. I arrived at the West Sacramento KOA at 4:00 PM which gave me an hour to get the Motor home set up for Carol's arrival from work around 5:15 PM. We had a very nice evening dining on Bar-b-que'd chicken, Black beans and Cauliflower. We topped the evening off with sitting by the fire outside. A practically perfect evening in every way.

Saturday, we hung out close to camp for the majority of the day. We took the dogs to the KOA park dog park for a couple of runs and then took a walk to the neighborhood Starbucks for a couple of Yummy drinks. We topped off the evening with dinner at Applebee's and getting some 'Pet supplies' at the nearby 'Petsmart'. We're going to try a Kong filled with Peanut butter to see if that keeps Rosie occupied so that she doesn't tear the house apart while we are at work on Monday. Rosie has separation anxiety when we go to work each day. We know she will grow out of this phase, but we want to minimize the damage until she does.

Sunday morning we had to get a much earlier start than I had thought we initially would, but Carol had a lunch date on Sunday, so we had to head for home pretty early.

After we got home, while Carol was gone, I got a couple of loads of laundry done, a modification done to the step ladder on the back of the moho, Worked on cleaning up a neighbors Single wide mobile home for them, I gave our three dogs each baths and now I am getting the blog updated. :-) So, it's a busy Sunday for me.

It's just really nice to know that at the drop of a hat, home doesn't have to be 'At Home' if we don't want it to be. We're both looking forward to our next trip which will be later this month. Carol hasn't told me what the plan is yet, but I'm game for what ever she has planned. :-)

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol Anderson -