We were invited to see our niece Morgan is get married on the 4th of May in Southern California, and never wanting to miss a party, we accepted the invitation. Carol had the amazing idea that while on the way that we stop at Sequoia National park for a couple of days so that we could check it, as well as it's sister park of 'Kings Canyon' out. Well, as usually, Carol's idea was amazing! We chose as our base of operations the 'Sequoia Ranch RV park' in Three rivers California. The RV park here is a little on the rustic side, but for us, it was very enjoyable. This park has everything we could want. It has full hook ups, a river near many of the camp sites, and an amazing Dog Bark Park that was rarely used by the other RV'ers. Though the park is a little on the rustic side, it is very well maintained. We even found that there is a swimming hole on the property. Though dogs are not allowed in the swimming hole, they are allowed down stream a ways.
The park has RV sites as well as tent camping sites and is open all year long.
We arrived at the park on Sunday and set up camp. On Monday we set out to Sequoia National park to see the beautiful ancient trees of this forest. Though it was a cloudy day, we could not have been more pleasantly surprised by what we discovered. This national park is just amazing as far as the vista's that you come across while you are exploring the area.
There are many amazing places to check out in this park such as 'Hospital Rock'.
The furthest point of our drive on this day was to the Wuksachi Lodge for lunch. This lodge hasn't been here that long, it was built back in 1999 as a replacement to some of the more rural accommodations that use to be down among the Sequoia Trees that were threatening to the trees and also in danger of being damaged by falling limbs from trees.
We went on a half mile hike down to the General Sherman Tree which is the largest tree by volume in the world. Though the hike was only a half mile, it did descend about 300 feet down to the tree. And as we all know, what goes down must go up! So, the hike up took us a little longer than the hike down. None the less, this was well worth the experience.
There is a great visitor center here with a lot of great information about the trees and how they have survived for literally thousands of years.
We would definitely like to return here again soon! Safe Travels! Eric and Carol Anderson
Within a couple days of getting our house back in order after having the radiator worked on, Carol found a bump on Rosie which we thought might have been a 'Mast Cell Tumor'. Unfortunately these sort of things have to come off. So, after having it looked at by Dr. Beth Johnson and having Carol's diagnosis confirmed, we were referred to the Sacramento Veterinary Referral center to have Dr. Runion remove it.
The folks at the referral center are truly wonderful. We really enjoyed going there for our General Practice visits, but we understand that they were too busy with all their specialty work. None the less, we are so glad that we have the referral center to go to when the need arises.
Dr. Runion did a marvelous job on Rosie's tumor removal and she is healing up wonderfully. Carol and I both stayed home on separate days to make sure that she didn't lick her incision. Rosie is a really good patient, as long as you just leave her to her self! :-)
We have had our Allegro Bus for 7 years, and we love our rig. There really has only been one problem that we have experienced over time that we have not been able to resolve. That problem is that the Motorhome overheats on the mountain passes when we are towing a car behind it. We had tried various things including using 'Extreme Simple Green' to clean out the coolant pack and improve performance. We had the radiator flushed and we even had the cooling fan set in override by having it run all of the time and that never resolved the problem. So, we finally decided the time had come to have the radiator, A/C Condenser and Transmission Cooler removed and cleaned.
In order to do this however, Sacramento Truck Center was going to need the Motorhome for two days because of the labor involved. Our challenge is the fact that with our three dogs that are considered by some to be pit bulls, finding a place to stay is going to be very difficult. Luckily however, we found that there is an RV Park and Campground in West Sacramento that does not discriminate against dog breeds, they just say that you can not have aggressive dogs in the park.
So, we ended up staying at the 'SAC-WEST RV Park and Campground' which was formerly known as the 'West Sacramento KOA'. They had a camping cabin there that would allow us to stay with our three dogs in the Cabin for a couple nights. So, we arrived on Sunday afternoon and set up camp in the cabin. It was like a very small studio apartment. A bedroom area with a small table, a kitchenette (with Microwave, sink and refrigerator) and a bathroom. The bed was a king size bed so there was plenty of room for a lot of 'Family bed time'! :-)
The whole area was heated by a small ceramic space heater which actually worked surprisingly well! The space was small, but it served our needs while we awaited the work on the motorhome to be completed.
We were quite surprised on Monday afternoon when we heard from Lawrence at the Sacramento Truck center that the radiator had been removed and they found about a pound of gravel and sand in the coolant pack area.
The only thing we can figure is that the previous owner of the motorhome must have used the motorhome to launch a boat and backed the motorhome into a sandy and silty area which placed a lot of debris in the coolant pack area.
They cleaned out the coolant pack area as best they could and sent us on our way.
We will see over the next month if their work paid off. If not, we will have to have the radiator replaced.
One of the biggest drawbacks to our trip to the Tucson tiffin rally this year was many of the places we chose to stay did not have adequate Wi-Fi. More and more we are coming to the conclusion that at least one of our phones should be on the Verizon network. Many times we find ourselves in rural areas that have cell towers, but we have very pour signal. Our only conclusion is that we must be in a Verizon network area. We think the next time we hit the road and are going to an unfamiliar area; we will get a pay-as-you-go phone through Verizon, just to give it a try. After we left the Jurupa regional park, we headed to Alamo Lake which was North West of Phoenix.
We spent two nights at Alamo Lake which was a nice break. We went to explore some Saguaro cactus in the area of the lake, and to just explore the rest of the various campgrounds that are part of this large state park. As we were exploring the campsites, we came across a shorter version of our Allegro bus. We think the one we found was maybe a 35 or 38 foot rig. It looked to have one less set of bays than our rig.
Eric had an opportunity to take his drone for a series of prolonged flights. It was interesting that as Eric took the drone up to higher altitudes that it would view RV’ers who were not staying at the campgrounds, but were boon docking in the desert.
We Stayed at Alamo lake because there were no RV parks in Phoenix that we could find that would allow pit bull type dogs. In fact, most of the RV parks were senior parks that didn’t allow dogs over 25 pounds. After enjoying a couple nights at the Alamo Lake state park, we headed south to Tucson to experience our first Tiffin Rally at the Pima County Fairgrounds. The fairgrounds is south of Tucson. With the exception of the poor cell phone coverage, we found that most of our retail needs could be met in this area.
This was our first Tiffin Rally and we had heard a lot of great things about them, but had never experienced one first hand. What we experienced is great food; we had two meals catered to the over 600 attendees (300 rigs) every day of the rally.
The sessions were very informative. We got to meet and ask questions of factory representatives from Freightliner, Cummins, Allison and Tiffin. We learned more about our rig than we ever could have thought possible.
We got to check out some of the latest in Tiffin Motorhomes. We even had a chance to meet Bob Tiffin, the founder of the company.
Every evening, there was great entertainment from some sort of ‘Tribute band’. We had ‘Piano Men’ (for Billy Joel and Elton Jon) and ‘December 68’ for a tribute of a 60’s era pop group.
Before we started the trip, we thought we would have a chance for some side trips, but there was just too much going on at the rally to pass up on, so we only got one side trip. We got to the Saguaro National park which was a truly wonderful experience.
We had hoped to make it to the Pima Air museum, but unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough time to do that. Eric still had a few moments to fly his drone to see an overview of the rally goers.
We also had a visit from a pair of Tiffin technicians who were wonderful at making a few minor repairs and answering questions about our rig. The Tiffin Rally was a definite hit with both of us. The fairgrounds even had a dog park that we could let the dogs run a bit of energy off in.
The trip to Tucson went off with out a hitch. We had a great time as always on the road, and the dogs were very well behaved as always.
For almost a year, we have known about the Tiffin Motorhomes rally in Tucson Arizona was going to take place in February of 2018. Several months ago, we found out that Carol would have a series of Cal-fire exams held at the Riverside training facility by the name of the Ben Clark Training Facility which is a multi-agency facility located on land adjacent to the March Air Reserve base. This land was originally part of the sprawling March Air Force base, before it was decommissioned.
Ben Clark serves as the southern California ‘Academy’ for Cal-fire operations as well as that for the California Highway patrol, in addition to Riverside county fire (which operates under the umbrella of Cal-fire) as well as the ‘Riverside county sheriff’s office’.
Since the exam dates backed right up to the week for the Rally, we decided that we would make the trip one where we would make two trips out of one.
Since we own dogs that are considered by some to be pit bulls, we needed to find an RV park that would allow us to come in and stay a week and not be in violation of their rules. We selected the ‘Rancho Jurupa Regional Park’ in Riverside for our home base, and we could not be happier! This parked turned out to be the perfect place to stay. The park is nice and quiet and a beautiful location! It is a gated park with controlled access that provided the additional passive security that is always welcomed.
We wish we could have found a location that was a little closer to Ben Clark, but the ability to have our dogs with us was of paramount desire. The park is only 22 miles from Ben Clark and most of the commutes were in the reverse commute direction so the drive didn’t take long at all. The old downtown Mission District of Riverside is just down the road from the park, and there is some beautiful old architecture down there.
Though Eric doesn’t miss living in Southern California at all, the Riverside area has been good to us during this visit and it’s hard to beat the sunsets!
Our next stop, tomorrow, Friday the 16th of February is Alamo Lake which is north east of Phoenix!
