San Benito, Hollister CA 10/14-10/21

It took us about five hours to get to our next campground, San Benito. We have decided that California does not have the best roads we have seen! Besides that, autos pulling trailers and trucks can only go 55mph on good roads where other vehicles can go 70. Although this helps us get better fuel mileage, we sure don't get there in the amount of time that Map Quest says we will! Each of the parks we have been to have all had their own personalities. San Benito was no exception. Of course, all of the parks are getting their Halloween decorations up and most of them have quite a celebration on Halloween. The ones in the woods all have really good places for haunted wagon rides and lots of places for scary goblins to jump out at you!

We got a really nice spot, with some big trees around us. We were just thankful we didn't choose an acorn tree to park under because they had acorns falling from them constantly. The weather was really nice so we enjoyed having the shade most of the time.

We hadn't been parked long when we heard tapping on our window. There were three or four woodpeckers whose home was in the tree next to us. For some reason, they would land on the rubber around our windows and peck on the window. We thought maybe they were pecking at the woodpecker they saw in the window. After a while, they became quite annoying and we would chase them off. But, soon they would be back. They must have gone visiting relatives for several days because we didn't see them. But, they were back before we left, probably to tell us good-bye.

We learned that these woodpeckers were called Acorn Woodpeckers. They would find holes, or drill holes into the trees, put acorns in them, wait for the acorns and the wood around them to rot, and then eat the bugs that came to eat the rotted acorns! These were the flagpoles by the Ranger Station. They were almost solid acorns. I guess they really get to be a nuisance because they can cause the trees to die. We saw a lot of dead trees in the park.

This park covers over 300 acres and is very flat, once you get to it. (You have to climb a steep hill and then go down a steep hill as you come into the park.) So, it was a really good place to ride our bike. The only thing is, I get pretty tired of people telling Terry that I am not pedaling. (I try to keep it a secret from him.)

All of the Thousand Trails Parks we have been in have all had 5mph speed limits in the park. San Benito had some really cute signs all over to remind you. We don't have a problem going that slow. If Terry puts the hippo (our Dodge dually) in second gear and doesn't push on the gas, it goes exactly 5mph.

This park has a beautiful family swimming pool. They also have an "adult only" pool on the other side of the park. They had just closed down this pool for the season, but the adult pool was still open. It still wasn't quite warm enough for us to venture into the pool.

The park has beautiful, big, strange trees. I don't know what kind they all were, but I know that a lot of them had acorns on them, so I guess that makes them oak trees. Some would fall over like they had died and then new ones would grow from the dead tree. (Maybe part of this is from the woodpeckers.)

None of the trees grew straight up, and they were really big. There was one that was just a huge stump of a tree, about fifteen feet tall, and all hollowed out. It was about five feet in diameter and about a third of the trunk was open. There was another tree growing inside of the trunk. I didn't have the camera with me when we saw it.

When we first got to the park, we noticed that the grass around the clubhouse was all dug up. We thought that was a crazy way to put in a sprinkler system. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Well, come to find out, critters were coming into the park at night and doing all of the damage!

And this is one of the critters! Yes, they have javelina pigs all over the area. It is so dry right now that the pigs go to the wet grass and root it all up looking for grubs. It is against the law to shoot them, so they just put up with them and keep repairing the lawn. I guess it happens every year. This pig looks a little funny because it is one that is mounted on the clubhouse wall and they had him all decorated for Halloween! I was pretty glad we didn't run into a real one to take a picture of. They pretty much only came out at night and you could hear them squealing once in a while.

There were also dear in the camp, and bobcats and mountain lions. We did see a bobcat one day that was perched on top of a horseshoe pit mound. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me that day, either. They told us as we came into the camp to take your camera with you wherever you went. I guess it was good advise.

Lake Minden/Yuba City CA 10/7-10/14

Terry has a sister who lives in Yuba City, CA. We have two Thousand Trail Parks within about 20 miles from there, so we chose to stay at Lake Minden this time.
It was a nice park, but separated by a lake. The older, smaller sites and the clubhouse and store are on one side and the sites with more room, ball fields, and pavilion are on the other side of the lake. But, it made a really nice walk or ride on our bike because it was about a mile and a quarter around the lake.There were paddle boats, fishing boats, kayaks, and row boats to rent. The lake is a private lake so the park charges a $5/day fee to fish in it. We heard there were lots of fish--catfish, bass, and crappie, but we never tried our luck

Most of the Thousand Trail parks have little cabins that members and their guests can rent. This one is right on the lake. What a nice view it has!

This picture is looking across the lake as we are driving around to get to our campsite. The weather was nice part of the time, but there were times that there were whitecaps out on the lake.
You can see out 5th wheel in this picture. It is the one with the "Montana" under the window, just on the other side of the white car and white pickup. Most of the time we were there, we had no one on either side of us. But, on Fridays and Saturdays, the parks tend to fill up for the weekend.

This is Terry's Sister, Barbara, and her husband, Wayne. She is Terry's oldest sister and is 19 years older than he is. Their five kids and their families all live in the Yuba City area. They had a get-together while we were there, at their daughter, Judy's, home. All of their kids (Terry's five nieces and nephews who are more the ages of cousins) were there, and most of their kids.

This is John, their oldest, who is two months older than Terry. He has an appartment at his mom and dad's home and is so much help to them.

This is Gary, their second son. We went to their home and Terry hung out with him for a day. They were going to go golfing, but the wind was blowing too hard. They have a new 5th Wheel and told us they would try to meet up with us sometime this winter. That would be fun! We actually went with Barb and Wayne to Gary's almond orchard and stole some almonds!

This is Randy. He is Barbara's third son. We hadn't seen him for a long time, so we were really glad he made it to the get-together.

Debbie is the oldest daughter. She is really good about going to her mom's home almost each morning to help her with things. Judy is the youngest in the family. We had the get-together at her house. They also have a fairly new RV (a toy-hauler) and go to southern California in the the winter sometimes. It would also be fun to meet up with them later on.

This is Debbie's daughter Tina. I had to put her picture on the BLOG for my kids. She and Judy's daughter, Amy, came to Emmett years ago and stayed with our family for a couple of days. This is Amy. Our kids remember getting acquainted with them when we went to Yuba City and parked our trailer in their back yard and swam for several days in their pool. Then later that summer, Tina and Amy got to come to Emmett. I thought our kids would have fun seeing them again. They said to tell all of you kids, "Hi."
Wayne was so good to us and got us some walnuts. They have tons of orchards and lots of other agriculture in the Yuba City area. They grow a lot of nuts, rice, olives, peaches, and plums, plus lots of other things. We cracked all of Gary's almonds with a hammer, but decided we needed something better for the walnuts. We went all over town looking for a good nut cracker and finally found one. It was just like one we had used at my brother's house to crack walnuts. Boy, did it ever do a good job. We cracked some of the nuts at Lake Minden and will hopefully get the rest done next week at San Benito.

We told Barb and Wayne goodbye and promised we would try to make this a yearly trip on our way down south. We sure had a good time seeing them and their family again.

Redwood Trails, Trinidad CA 9/30-10/07

We weren't too excited abut staying at Redwood Trails because in the info we had, it didn't seem like there was too much to do there, except visit our niece, Megan, who goes to Humboldt University 30 miles away. Well, I ended up taking over 100 pictures, so you can see, we were pretty busy. Redwood Trails park is famous for two things. One is the "Little Red School House Museum." It was closed while we were there, but we got to go through it ten years ago when we stayed at this park. We had forgotten that we stayed there until we saw it. We rented one of their trailers for a couple of nights when Terry and I took a vacation down the coast. My mom was supposed to go with us, but she got sick while she was in Portland with my brother, so we had to leave her there.
The other thing Redwood Trails campground is famous for is the Roosevelt elk that hang out at the park. It is a protected area for the elk and they are simply amazing! They were in the rutting season so it was exciting watching the bulls try to compete for the cows. This was one of the smaller bulls. He didn't seem to be too successful in wooing many of the cows away from the big bull. There was a continual succession of vehicles stopping for people to take pictures when the elk were out front in the park. The elk didn't seem to mind the vehicles, but if a person got too close, they would take off.
The wooded part of the park was closed down because of large electricity bills, so we parked out in the open part of the park. That was okay, because we wanted all of the sun we could get. It was in the 60's most of the days. The back of our 5th wheel, where the big window is, faced a pasture with over 30 horses that they rented out for rides. They often shared their pasture with all of the elk. I took movies of the elk jumping over the fence into the pasture.
There is a really pretty "lake" in the park. We would call these "ponds" at home. With a permit from the park, you could fish in it, but we didn't. This bull elk, one of the small ones, was right outside out door when I took this picture.

He was pretty cooperative while I took some "zoomed-in" pictures. I think I took about 50 pictures of the elk. The bulls would bugle all day and all night. One morning about 5:00, I could hear something rubbing against our picnic table. I got up and looked outside. It was just beginning to get light. Our 5th wheel was totally surrounded by about 30 elk, including the big bull. It was too dark for pictures and I didn't want to scare them away by opening the door. I woke Terry up and we went from window to window looking at them. It was just amazing.

Right across the road from the park was a road leading to the beach. We rode our bike down there one day, and walked down another day.
The morning we walked to the beach, we saw these big ugly slugs everywhere. They were like worms that come out on the roads and sidewalks when it rains, only they were much larger than even night crawlers. Later on, our niece, Megan, told us they were Banana slugs and they are everywhere. She said there is even a college in the area that has them as their mascot! Ugh!

The beach we went to was kind of a scary beach because it had large, loud waves. There were warning signs that there was a lot of undertow in the waves and to not play in the water. You could actually see the waves pull gobs of sand back with them as they went out. I waded just a little ways out in the water, but got surprised by a wave and got pretty wet.

We walked along the beach and some people were there looking for agates, which are rocks that are popular for polishing and making jewelry out of. Terry even took his shoes off!
We walked down to where the waves were beating against some rocks and splashing way up. It was a beautiful beach, but not one that you would want to go out into the waves too far!
Terry is always looking for treasures, and he usually finds some. But that day, all he found was a baby's lost pacifier!
There were some really neat plants that grew in the area. They would be really pretty in flower arrangements. They were really feathery and were almost a purple color. They were everywhere in big clusters.
When we came back from the beach, the large elk herd was all around the entrance road into the campground and cars were lined up to take pictures of them. Some of them are very large--as big or bigger than a large cow.

I couldn't believe I got a picture of this calf nursing! It is probably the only time I will ever get to see this again. And these are not like elk in a elk farm, like some we have in Idaho. These are actually wild elk, but are protected from being shot. Sometimes there gets to be so many in the park that they have to move some of them to a different area because they get to be such a nuisance.
They don't seem to have to mow the grass around the campground because the elk keep it eaten down. They would hang around close one day an then be gone for a couple of days, but then come back.
Here are a couple of the smaller bucks with the few cows they had enticed to join them. One day a cow went running by our fifth wheel and her tongue was hanging out she was so tired. Right behind her was one of the smaller bulls. It kind of looked like, to us, that he had gotten her away from the large herd and was "on the run" with her.
Our niece, Megan, goes to school at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. It is about 30 miles away from where we were camping. She is a nursing student and runs on their cross county and their track teams. She does really well. She is a straight-A student and is their star runner on the track teams. She also has a part-time job!
One night she made time to visit with us for a while, go have pizza, and show us around campus. We posted this picture of her in her "clean" kitchen so her mom could see it!

We had to have a picture of her and us in her living room in front of a tapestry they had on the wall . Of course, she is a special niece to us and I am sure that we are her "favorite aunt and uncle!"
Then, on Sunday, Megan came to our campground to have a BBQ with us. She got to see all of the elk. She had heard about them, but I don't think she had seem them so close before.
Right behind Megan was the big bull and his cows. I had to zoom in on him for this picture. His antlers are huge! One morning he was rubbing them on a little tree just down from out 5th wheel and I thought he was going to knock over the tree! He will loose his antlers soon, probably somewhere in the park, and will grow new ones. It would sure be fun to find them.

We took Megan down to "our" beach because I wanted to get a picture of her on this piece of driftwood that was there. Her roommates were supposed to come with her and have the BBQ with us, but they ended up not coming. I thought it would be a fun place to take their picture.

Then Megan took our picture on the driftwood log. We are not quite as photogenic as Megan, but it is still a cool place for a picture.

We had a good time at Redwood Trails. It is not one of our Thousand Trails campgrounds, but it is one of the affiliate campgrounds that we can stay at, for a small fee. We are now off to Lake Minden where we will be close to Yuba City where Terry's oldest sister and family live. It will be fun to see them. Well, we are on the road again!