California Complaint Commission

To whom it may concern:
We are a family of four traveling for six months across America in an Airstream trailer. We had been anxiously awaiting our arrival to the California coast, but have found the camping facilities to be sub-par, and very expensive.

The cheapest camping we've found was outside the fence of a trailer park in Santa Cruz - the park itself was full, but the owner offered us an ad hoc spot outside the fence, together with an extension cord, for $25.
That's about the most we had paid for any camping before reaching California.
The bathroom looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a month, but the WiFi did work.

Which is an improvement upon the WiFi access advertised by many campgrounds we've encountered. "Oh, the signal must not reach your site." "Oh, our WiFi is really low-tech". "Oh, most people just sit outside the office to get a signal [in the cold, dark night, sitting on the ground?]".

Here, people want a lot of money - we're talking $40 at the minimum - to stay in parking lots with nary a tree, inches from other RVs. In some of these, RVers are expected to have extra-long sewer pipes, electrical cords, water hoses, etc, since to save money, the amenities are located on the wrong side for trailers.

In one place, we had to ask neighboring campers to plug us into their rig, since our standard issue cord couldn't reach our own slot's outlet.

Children are not allowed to ride bikes in these parking lots -- something about more expensive insurance policies, apparently.

Bathrooms have been grotty as a rule, with some places (costing $45, $48) even demanding that guests PAY for showers (only 25 cents or a dollar, but still!).

And what are we supposed to do with dirty water at campgrounds that have neither sewers nor dump stations, where washing dishes is banned in bathrooms and no separate sinks are provided? Are guests supposed to pollute the rivers?

We understand that the California economy, something like the world's eighth largest, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but these examples were all private campgrounds.

We wish that coastal campgrounds could follow the lead of the best campground we've seen so far on our trip - one located inland, below Mount Shasta in northern California. Mountain Gate RV Park had the cleanest, most sparkling bathrooms, a welcoming staff that practically broke out into song, a playground, its own trails, a rec room stuffed with TV, sofa, movies and games...AND...get this, a complimentary continental breakfast (coffee, pastries, toast, cereal, juice, etc).
Not to mention special events like pumpkin carving for Halloween and a Thanksgiving dinner.

And guess what? Guests are so blown away by the thoughtfulness of the owners that they do their very best to treat the campground as if it were their own home.

All for under $30.

http://www.mt-gatervpark.com/

Complaints off our chests, we must congratulate you on having the most breathtaking coastline we've ever seen, offering hundreds of miles of eyepoppingly beautiful beaches, towering redwoods, dramatic craggy rockiness, mountains surely carved by God himself and the most azure water anyone could hope for. Thanks also for maintaining Highway 1, that road is nuts!

Kind regards,
Claire, Daniel, Sophia and Lulu

Call for Thanksgiving recipes!

Hi, and sorry we've been out of touch for a while. California's too amazing to look at, and too skimpy on Wi-Fi, so we're way behind.

We promise to have a number of posts - and pictures by Daniel - up in the next couple of days.

For now, though, we're looking for Thanksgiving recipes. Thursday's the day, and our friend Laura will be joining us with her dog Claude for a couple of days.

Here are the parameters: all recipes need to be non-meat and prepared on the stovetop, since our oven doesn't work.

All ideas appreciated!

Comedown

Having finally reached California after seven or so weeks traversing Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, deserts, and canyons, we had a bit of a comedown. We had managed to catch friends and family in Chico and Nevada City before they left town and enjoyed happy catch-ups.
But now what?
Unsure of where to go or how we would spend the months stretching ahead of us, we started yearning after our Real House and wondering what exactly we were doing thousands upon thousands of miles from our bases in London and New York.
So we spent four nights at the Nevada County Fairgrounds RV Park in Grass Valley, California. We hung out with Daniel’s aunt Patricia – a well known immunologist who helped develop a glutathione based food supplement called Immunocal – and her husband Peter. We visited the duck pond. We enjoyed the fall colors, and the warm weather. We ate pancakes. We drank California wine.
We weighed our options: we could go early to Sonoma wine country, where we’d be spending a couple days with my childhood friend Dave McRobie in a week’s time; we could head down to San Francisco. Or we could go to Vancouver, Canada, to get Daniel’s visa renewed for another six months.
We decided on Canada. Daniel’s cousin Harald lives there. And it’s sort of close – just a quarter of California and two states away.

Sophia Day, or how to crash a three-year old’s birthday party

We haven’t been that good at finding kids for Sophia to play with since we set off on September 2nd.
Mainly, this is because most families with young children are at home attending to things like school and work. Thus, we have mainly been meeting full-timer retirees, the occasional weekender and a few others who like to travel off-peak.
Also, we’ve been rushing towards California and away from winter.
So, we decided to celebrate Sophia and her patience with a special event, Sophia Day, which took place on Saturday October 24. In Grass Valley, California.
In honor of this, the whole day was dedicated to her pleasure. Kind of like a birthday, but maybe even better since it came totally out of the blue.

So, she got to choose what to have for breakfast: pancakes, a peanut butter blend, spiced up with fresh pomegranate.
Then, we cut shapes from colored construction paper: triangles, circles and hearts.
Following a quick shower, we ambled over to the duck pond, where we promptly met Two Kids – Hannah and Doug, ages almost 3 and almost 6, who with their parents have recently moved to the Nevada County area from Santa Cruz.
They had a grand old time, feeding a whole box of graham crackers to a pack of about 25 fearless ducks, riding bikes, sharing toys and comparing ages and heights.
Then, it was on to Cornish pasties – yes, Cornish pasties in California. The Cornish were brought here for their hard rock mining skills during the Gold Rush. Daniel, who grew up in Cornwall, said they tasted like the real thing.

On the suggestion of Hannah and Douglas’ mother Tracey, we then stopped by the Condon Park playground. She was right – it was perfect for the 2-5 age group, featuring slides, a mini fire engine, a built-in walkie-talkie like apparatus, swings and the like.
She ran around for ages, with plenty of kids to play with – even some who willingly played round after round of shopkeeper.

What we didn’t expect was to insinuate ourselves into a birthday party.
We think it was a group of firefighter parents, who had gathered with their kids to celebrate someone’s daughter’s third(?) birthday. Anyway, as soon as we saw that Sophia had joined the tug-of-war, we doubted there would be any getting out.
And when the Dora the Explorer piñata came out, there was definitely no escape.
We wondered whether the actual party participants noticed there was a small interloper, the one joining the chorus of “candy, candy, smash it, smash it”. She kept almost getting to the front of the line, as kid after kid took swings at the papier-mâché with a plastic bat.
So, Daniel and I sat innocently on the sidelines, trying to eye each other very, very quietly and suppress any and all giggles, lest anyone ruin Sophia Day.

Finally, we couldn’t take Sophia’s possible rejection any longer. I approached the very athletic lady in charge of blind batting and said something like “Um, we’re totally not supposed to be at this party, but could our daughter please-please-please take a whack at the piñata?” So she eventually did, and then someone managed to break Dora’s neck, and then all the candy came pouring out. The athletic lady gave a gleeful whoop and shook the rest out. All the kids came running and filled up their appointed decorative plastic bags, and all the parents cheered, forgetful for a moment about how bad all that sugar is for one’s teeth.
It was so exciting, almost as good as if it had actually been Sophia’s own birthday party, with her own friends.

Then, we all realized we were at someone else’s party in someone else’s town.

So we went for pizza, lemonade/beer and frozen yoghurt, completing a very successful Sophia Day.

This photo is from Wyoming - it's sunny and warm during the day here - our camera's gone fuzzy, so we have to use stock images.