Lake Mono Vista during our 2021 Full-Time RV Adventure
2021 was both a nightmare and a fun year despite the world still being in the throes of Covid. It was also a year of serious challenges for full-time RV life. We traveled the northwest U.S., the Pacific Northwest, and down through California. I think Melinda enjoyed it more than I did, but we both checked California off as “Done it!”
I didn’t realize how “challenging” the year was until I wrote all this down. Despite having a number of mechanical problems, medical issues, and a sick dog, we still managed to have a great time.
Vegas RV Parks: small, expensive, & bad hoods
We wintered in Vegas. The RV parks in Vegas, for the most part, are in bad neighborhoods. They were built in the ’60s when land was cheap and the parks were designed for small pull-behind travel trailers. Cut to 60 years later and the cheap land fosters “unlovable” areas and those small parks that catered to tiny travel trailers won’t handle Class A motorhomes pulling a large trailer. There were some so small, we wouldn’t have even been able to drive through them, let alone park.
February was a rough month. The day we picked Melinda up from the hospital for her hip surgery, we had to put Jake down. He had been fighting problems for years and at thirteen, he went downhill suddenly and badly. Melinda was physically better in almost a week, but the loss of Jake is still painful.
Vegas itself was of course a blast. We attended our friend, Rebecca’s wedding. I did well at the casinos and we rode around becoming even more familiar with the Motherland, and seeing the sites!
Death Valley
Lives up to its name. By far, the most boring stretch of road we have ever traveled. And this is coming from a guy who drove through Nebraska! Imagine every movie you’ve ever seen about some poor schlub walking across a cactus-filled, scrub-covered wasteland and you pretty much have Death Valley. But there is no other way to get to Tahoe from Las Vegas, so gas up beforehand, check the coolant, and drink lots of caffeine.
Lake Mono Vista
We stopped at Lake Mono Vista for a night or two before heading up the mountain (one big mother of a mountain I might add) to Tahoe. We took the bikes for a ride out to the lake via a dirt road that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. The lake was gorgeous. We had to stop because that was about as far as I could drive after the soul-crushing boringness of Death Valley. Luckily, I had planned it that way so we had reservations when we got there. The town had an ice cream parlor. Period. Oh, it had one gas station, but because it was on the California side of the border, diesel was nearly $6 per gallon. The RV has a 100-gallon tank, We opted to wait to get back over on the Nevada side.
Lake Ta-Ho!
We stayed at Lake Tahoe for a few weeks. I did very well at the poker rooms in Lake Tahoe and even in Reno. We took a boat tour of Lake Tahoe itself, which was scenic and interesting. We rode the bikes up to Virginia City (this is where you start humming the theme song for Bonanza.) and had lunch at a saloon. No, Hoss or Little Joe did not come by, but it was like going back 150 years or so, right down to the lopsided wooden sidewalks.
As part of our one-million-easy-lessons-in-owning-an-RV, our next little hiccup was the night before we were supposed to leave Tahoe. The upside of this trip was the RV park was a Thousand Trails park, so we stayed for free. The bad news: A storm (is all I can imagine it was) zapped our inverter/convert (it converts our 12v batteries to 120 and 120 into 12v) and fried it. (The same storm ripped one of the slide-out awnings. Let me tell you how happy I was.) The “house” (RV storage) batteries wouldn’t give us any power. Even the generator wouldn’t get power to the rig. So there we sat in Lake Tahoe, our slide-outs out and unable to get them in without power in order to travel and no electricity, even for the refrigerator. 8 am on a Sunday, on Memorial Day weekend. (Fun.) Try and get a mobile RV repairman out on a day like that. I dare you! Luckily, the park had an electrician we could call. He doesn’t work on RVs, but on the park’s electrical needs, and he was able to bypass our inverter/converter in order for us to use “city” power from the post to get our slide-ins in and us on our way. We called our next reservation and told them we would be a day or two late because of the power problem and hit the road.
The Longest Drive
From Tahoe, we opted to drive across Nevada, past Salt Lake City, and up into Wyoming. We stayed one night at the Riverton Casino (the poker room was NOT open the night were there. Damn!) That drive was over 500 miles and our longest to date. The general rule is “drive the RV 300 miles or 3 pm, whichever comes first.” Let me tell you, driving a 40′ RV, and towing a 22′ trailer across Nevada, Utah, and into Wyoming for over 500 miles is a workout. I don’t think the color has come back into my knuckles yet. But the minute we drove across the Wyoming border, we started seeing bison, mountain sheep, and unusual birds and wildlife. What a difference.
Cody or Bust!
Riverton Casino in Wyoming
From Riverton, Wyoming we followed the GPS to Cody, Wyoming. What the GPS doesn’t know is that the stretch of winding road is out in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t even see another car for miles and miles. I kept picturing a breakdown and us with no “shore power” or generator. They still wouldn’t have found our bodies. (Full-Time RV Tip #20,194: Boldly going where no man has gone before is HIGHLY overrated.)
Cody Wyoming rodeo during our Full-Time RV Adventure.
We finally got to Cody and stayed at the Cody Trout Camp on the outskirts of Cody. We got the RV into M&P RV Repair. We had used them before and Joe, the owner, was able to fight his way through all the barriers the Good Sam Extended Warranty threw at us and got all our work done and the power problem fixed. The work got delayed a day or two because it was outside and it was snowing. In June. I was not amused. My nephew, Keith, and his daughter Kay Marie joined us for a week or so and we toured Yellowstone, the Buffalo Bill Museum and Dam, the Old West Town, and the Cody Rodeo. We did the same when Rachel and Felton Bollinger came up. It eventually warmed up and we took some cool rides around Yellowstone Park and up through Beartooth pass. Note: Beartooth Pass is a PHENOMENAL motorcycle ride with its views and twists and turns. However, it does go up to 11,000 feet, and wearing shorts and not bringing jeans MAY have been a tactical error. We did bring jackets. (We’re not COMPLETE idiots!) Our favorite sandwich shop in the world is in Red Lodge, Montana, but it was closed the day we rode through. (Okay, not calling ahead to make sure may have invalidated the complete idiot statement above.)
Kevin Costner can kiss my butt!
So, after a month, we left Cody, Wyoming to travel through Montana. We wanted to go to Glacier National Park. We had heard that the glaciers will be gone in ten years’ time. The national park had just reopened from Covid, but we were hearing nightmare stories about only certain parts being open, you had to have hard-to-come-by reservations just to get into the park, and the traffic was miserable. As we cross over into Montana, I decided to give our next RV park (near the national park) one more try. I had been trying for weeks to get them on the phone to confirm our reservations. They very coldly told me that since we had not confirmed our reservations, we didn’t have one. Too bad, so sad. This was Fourth of July weekend. The height of the northwest’s tourist season. I was beyond pissed. I had made those reservations months ago so we WOULD have a place to stay for the Fourth. We couldn’t find a single RV park in Montana that could get us in immediately. We called over 14 places before we finally found one in Spokane, Washington (our next destination) that could take us for a month. Melinda eventually wants to go back and see Glacier National Park, but I personally don’t care if I ever set foot in Montana again. She wants to go, so…you know…we’ll probably go.
Spokane Can!
Spokane WA
We actually spent 6 weeks in Spokane. The 4 we had planned for Montana and 2 we had booked at the casino there. We had a slight mishap on the way to the first park. We tagged the side of an overpass (I was so busy looking to see if we would clear the bottom of it, I didn’t notice how close we were to the side.) and damaged our two passenger side slide-out covers. We found a mobile RV guy to come to fix it. We ordered the $800 tops he recommended, but when it came time for him to replace them, he no-showed. After numerous calls to him to see when he was coming, he eventually said he was on vacation and wouldn’t do it. (Full-Time RV Tip #20,195: When having an aneurysm, try to stay cool.) To say that I was “mildly annoyed” doesn’t begin to describe it. Whatever.
Despite that little incident, Spokane turned out to be a lot of fun. We rode over to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and checked it out for lunch. We went down to the fabulous park in downtown Spokane (Melinda rode their antique Merry-Go-Round.) I absolutely crushed the Northern Quest poker room, where we stayed for the last 2 of our 6 weeks there. All in all, Spokane was a fun place to visit.
Portland
From Spokane, we traveled to Portland, OR. We don’t recommend it. Portland has one of the country’s largest homeless populations because the city ordinances are so “homeless-friendly.” As a result, there are hundreds of tent cities throughout the city that you can smell from the street.
Crescent City
Seals in Crescent City
Suspension walkways near Crescent City
We spent a couple of weeks at the Village Camper Inn RV Park in Crescent City, CA, which is at the Pacific border of Oregon. Melinda really enjoyed this little town. We made several excursions including seeing the seals and sea lions, the giant redwoods, as well as traversing the treetop suspension pathways. Trees of Mystery is best known for its 49-foot statue of Paul Bunyan and 35-foot statue of Bunyan’s companion, Babe the Blue Ox. An aerial tramway called the Skytrail takes guests on a 1/3-mile ride through the forest, culminating at an observation deck where the Pacific Ocean is visible above the surrounding forest. Aerial netted suspension bridges run through these majestic old-growth redwoods at mid-canopy level with viewing platforms from 50-100 feet high in the trees. There are 10 platforms, 2 of which are connected by a spiral staircase, and 8 suspension bridges.
Sacramento
Tubing down the Sacramento River
We took a couple of days to get to Sacramento. We stayed at a Thousand Trails park, but the daily news was full of the wildfires that were ravaging not far away and Lake Tahoe, exactly where we just stayed a short time earlier. We were able to finally get the slide-out awnings fixed at RV Time Repair (awesome place and people) and insurance covered it. They were quick and accommodating. While in Sacramento, we checked out the Sutter’s Mill gold mine, took a tube ride down the Sacramento river, and of course, played some cards.
Oceano/San Luis Obispo/Pismo Beach
We spent a couple of weeks in Oceano, CA, south of San Francisco, about halfway between San Francisco and LA. We rode the bike down the beach to see the dunes, Melinda went horseback riding, and I had a pretty good streak at the Central Coast Casino in Grover Beach. As poker rooms go, it was the smallest I had ever seen, only 4 tables and no casino. It was all local regulars and while I was at a disadvantage of not knowing how they play, they didn’t know how I played either.
Los Angeles
After Oceano, we headed for San Diego, but genius that I am, I wanted to play poker at the Bicycle Club. I had heard about it my whole life and wanted to check it off my bucket list. We called ahead and found we could stay in the Bike’s parking lot for free overnight. I mentioned genius because the next thing I know, we are driving a 40′ RV and 22′ trailer in 16 lanes of gridlocked traffic through downtown LA. It takes a lifetime to build up this much stupidity. To make matters worse, I get to the Bike and lose my ass. L.A. actually stands for Lost Ass.
San Diego
San Diego has been on my bucket list for a long time. I had never been to any of the California areas we visited. We did all the tourist activities: Seaworld, The San Diego Zoo, the Midway, Coronado Island, and rented a speedboat for a tour of San Diego Bay. We only stayed a week, but we jammed as much as we could into it. The Zoo was a bit of a letdown, but the rest was a blast!
Palm Springs
The home of Bob Hope. I am a huge fan. I have all his movies on DVD. And that wasn’t even the reason we went to Palm Springs. It just happened to be halfway to Vegas. Did I mention that Palm Springs had a casino? This was another poker room I did well. The RV park was a tight fit, but we enjoyed our stay.
Las Vegas
November found us back in Las Vegas. Melinda had scheduled some foot surgery in November and it would require months to recover. She had dropped some dumbbells on it years earlier and weirdly, the foot surgery was more painful, difficult, and involved a longer recovery time than her hip replacement.
We stayed at Las Vegas RV Resort which we had stayed at before. It was still not a great neighborhood, but it was the best we could find. Actually, not really. Oasis RV down in the southwest corner of Las Vegas is much nicer, but we tried to make reservations for several months a year in advance and not only were they sold out, but they wanted $2000 per month. I worked as a work-camper on “courtesy patrol” a few nights a week (imagine security without any guns or ability actually to secure anything). But I am a night owl anyway, and it allowed us to stay for almost free for 4 months. (Full-Time RV Tip #20,196: Work-camping – working part-time for the park can save you money on your campground rent.)
Half of our stay in Vegas was in 2021 and half in 2023.
Summary
2021 was a rough year for us. We were having so much fun that I didn’t even realize it until I started writing this recap of the year. Numerous RV repairs, lost camping reservations, multiple (elective) surgeries, and losing Jake. On the upside, it was a good year for poker, we enjoyed the giant redwoods of the Pacific Northwest, the tourist activities of the southern California/Pacific area, San Diego, and seeing places we have never seen before.
RVonTheRoadYet.com is a blog to keep our friends and family informed of our latest adventures or misadventures. We are NOT RV professionals, doctors, lawyers, or travel guides. We are a couple of people who have decided to embrace the full-time RV lifestyle of idiots and gypsies.