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.