Another great trailer trip. We traveled north east for about three and a half hours to the south western edge of the Sierras, Kernville. Definitely a more beautiful, family run campground in comparison to the Beullton Flying Flags campground. A fairly uneventful trip except for one little navigation disagreement, until we traveled a ways down the 178. This highway is up through a beautiful rock canyon on a very narrow feeling two lane. I was quite concerned for a while about having my trailer ripped to shreds catching a rock edge.
We had some wonderful neighbors again this trip. On one side of us were neophyte campers like ourselves, but only on their first trip. So I got the chance to help them like I was helped on our first trip. It is a neat thing to be given something and then be able to pass along that gift to another. Our other neighbors, the Klopes, I recognized the gentleman right away but could not place him. It was not until nearly leaving on Sunday morning did I finally figure out where I had met them. At their home, in Ventura, where we did some traffic engineering work in their neighborhood. Small world keeps shrinking. We later met their son and daughter-in-law, who were staying around the corner is a homemade "midget" trailer, a big tear drop. It was another inspiration to want to build my own tear drop. As we pulled in, we spotted one of our neighbors from the Buellton rally, and residents of Santa Paula, around the corner from Ma, the Colemans, in their beautifully rebuilt 1976 12' Cardinal.
They were on the same row as us, the "called at the last minute (catlm)" row. Funny how my acronym sounds like "cattle em". The neat thing was being in the front row, so everyone saw our awesome little trailer on the way in, there were several not so neat things. So we pull in to the catlm row around 4:30pm after a longish drive. I'm more ready this time with my understandings of hook-ups and such. We both still feel very neophyte-like with so few trips under our belt, but more ready each time. So we pull into our pull through site, chalk the tires and disconnect the trailer, level it, stabilize it, start to get the hook-ups connected and come to find out my electrical cord is rather short. NOOO! So guess what I have to do, everything, again to move the trailer about 5'. Oh well, so everything gets redone, we settle in, then notice the fridge isn't on. What the? Turns out our electric box is being problematic. We work it out with the park manager that we will stay over night, and not move, again, and they will just refund us the difference in hook-up cost. After all of this we decide not to cook dinner but to go out instead. We didn't pick the best place to eat but we were full.
After a fairly good sleep we woke up at our standard early. Tisha brought some delicious cinnamon rolls. So after a little lesson from our first trailer excursion, I fired the stove up with not to much difficulty, which was awesome. We also picked up an explosive gas alarm so we got that hooked up and then it promptly went off. Then to add insult to injury, our smoke alarm goes off too. So we ended up having slightly warmed cinnamon rolls. After breakfast our electric got hooked up, so we were in business again.
Later in the morning we took a walk to go visit our friends from the Buellton rally. They weren't home but we met several new friends. Those friends introduced us to a guy I had been talking with via email for some time. Tom is another cardinal owner, another 1966 17' delux owner. Tom and I talked for a couple of hours I think. It was great to see and compare another trailer, the same as ours. We spotted several things we want to change/add/tweak/modify. The main things were the original fridge and containing cupboard with drawers. The other original feature in Tom's Cardinal was the cushion and upholstery setup in the nook.
We finally met up with our Buellton neighbors later in the afternoon. First we walked down and sat at the very beautiful Kern river. There were several men fly fishing. I think that is something I am interested trying out, especially when camping. Their was a psuedo organized potluck on Saturday night that we were told about as we were eating our traditional mac 'n cheese with hotdogs, green beans and salad. So we passed.
The next morning we made super camp breakfast. We helped our neighbors get packed up a little, got ourselves packed up, said our good byes and hit the road. The trip home felt way faster.
Later in the morning we took a walk to go visit our friends from the Buellton rally. They weren't home but we met several new friends. Those friends introduced us to a guy I had been talking with via email for some time. Tom is another cardinal owner, another 1966 17' delux owner. Tom and I talked for a couple of hours I think. It was great to see and compare another trailer, the same as ours. We spotted several things we want to change/add/tweak/modify. The main things were the original fridge and containing cupboard with drawers. The other original feature in Tom's Cardinal was the cushion and upholstery setup in the nook.
We finally met up with our Buellton neighbors later in the afternoon. First we walked down and sat at the very beautiful Kern river. There were several men fly fishing. I think that is something I am interested trying out, especially when camping. Their was a psuedo organized potluck on Saturday night that we were told about as we were eating our traditional mac 'n cheese with hotdogs, green beans and salad. So we passed.
The next morning we made super camp breakfast. We helped our neighbors get packed up a little, got ourselves packed up, said our good byes and hit the road. The trip home felt way faster.
