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Our Travel Adventures
Welcome to the Adventures of Larry and Connie Farquhar.
April 2007 Travel Log
04/29/07: DorraBelle Campground, Sierra NF, CA: Soon after I wrote my previous entry, we had snow again. Over 3" this time! But that's been the last time and the weather has been great for the past week. We've started the physical labor of working on this campground and do our muscles HURT! We've started by simply clearing the roads and sanitizing the water system. Clearing the roads has involved shoveling LOTS of dirt off the roads, and blowing/raking the pine needles. Larry also gets to play with a chainsaw tree pruner. Connie started sanitizing the water system, but the snow came and we found a broken pipe. We've fixed the broken water pipe and have started over. This simply involves pouring gallons of chlorine bleach into our water tank, running the well pump, and getting the bleached water through all of the water spigots. Tomorrow, we'll drain the system completely, then run clean water through the pipes and fill the large water tank again. Hopefully, our water will pass health tests. A few more workers also start showing up tomorrow, so we'll have help cleaning this campground.
Connie and I have been up to the campground we'll be staying at, and Connie will be a host at. It's Rancheria campground located on Huntington Lake at 7,000' altitude. We're currently staying about 16 miles from there at 5,000'. When we first went up there, there was still quite a bit of snow. We've gone back twice, most recently today. The snow is melting pretty quick and we hope we can move up there with our motor home next week. We'll have to make sure electric works first, then we can move into our host site there and start getting that campground ready. Larry's managing 9 campground's in the area, with a staff of about 15 people. Luckily, we get to use a company truck for all of this travel. We've been here 2 weeks and haven't had to drive our Jeep. This is going to save on gas money this season!
04/21/07: DorraBelle Campground, Sierra NF, CA: I'm back from training, but still confused. There's a ton of paperwork to accomplish to run the campground. But I'm confident it'll all come together once we get started. It was nice to be back home, but it started snowing again. We had 
about 2" of snow in the evening and over night. We're staying home, but it's a small struggle. Although we have 30amp electric, it's not the greatest voltage. It's safe, but we can't run two appliances at the same time. So we need to turn off the heater to run the microwave, etc. Today, Connie and I hope to drive up to the area we'll actually be working at, to take a look around. The weather looks good today. It's clear and sunny. It's going to be a lot of work getting these campgrounds ready. Here, pine needles are an inch think all over the roads and campsites. Then there's painting and cleaning to do. It just needs to warm up and dry out before we can start cleaning up the campground.
04/15/07: DorraBelle Campground, Sierra NF, CA: Our time at Lemoore went by pretty quick! We sold quite a few extra items we've been lugging around through eBay. Everything sold except a couple books on RV'ing in Australia. I've tried selling them 3 times on eBay now, so they're destined for the dumpster. Connie also finished scanning her cooking magazines. So we're a couple hundred dollars richer (?), and a couple hundred pounds lighter. We also played games almost everyday. We got hooked on a game called "Pegs and Jokers" with friends in December when staying with them in the desert. We had made a real cheap set with nails, but recently bought a "fair" set through eBay. It's a small competition with Connie and I, which I'm currently ahead.
Today, we moved up to 5000' elevation into the Sierra National Forest and are staying in one of the National Forest campgrounds operated by California Land Management (CLM). This campground is located at Shaver Lake. We'll be working for CLM all summer 30 miles from here, at an elevation of 7000'+. Currently, there's too much snow up there. We met our boss, who is also at this campground. He's real nice and I'm sure we'll get along good. Larry heads out for a few days of training tomorrow, while Connie will hang around at the RV with the other lady. We're the only two campers in this campground, since it's not open yet. From now until
the end of October, we have a free full hook-up site! There's still a little snow on the ground here, but not much. We're expecting 25°F tonight. The days are in the mid 60's. Without anyone else in the campground, it's extremely quiet! It's heavy forest, and we were lucky to get satellite coverage. Actually, we parked the RV in the campsite backwards to clear some trees. We'll be here for 3 - 4 weeks before moving to "our" campground. Connie will be the primary camp host at the Rancheria campground located on Huntington Lake. I'll be working as "Site Manager" for the area, in which I'll manage the hosts for about 8 campground's. We've been looking forward to this summer, as it's not a commercial campground, and work is right out our front door. We hope it'll be as much fun as we expect. We'll see.......
04/03/07: Naval Air Station Lemoore, CA: Happy Birthday Wendy! I feel bad, as we had planned to go to Washington state this summer to work, and visit my sister Wendy. But we were offered the jobs that sounded great in mid-California. To save on expenses this year, we decided not to travel that much. Boy! This sure didn't work out when we had major brake problems and tire replacements. March's expense for camp fees is also high, but that figure actually includes pre-paid for half of April. We're finding California to be a VERY expensive state to travel in. Although we've stayed almost entirely in military campgrounds, we still averaged over $20 a night! We probably could have paid less staying in State parks, but then we wouldn't have full hookups. Since we've been staying in each location for longer periods, the full hookups are nice. We were willing to have an expensive month for campground fees, as don't plan on paying much for campground fees for the rest of the year.
We report for our summer job training in a couple weeks, then we hope to attend the Escapee's RV Club Spring Escapade (Rally) in Stockton, then we return to start our jobs. The rally should be our only campground expense until the end of October. We received applications to work for See's Candies this Christmas season, selling candy in the mall. They pay well, but we're not 100% sure we'll apply (yet). You need to be referred to work for them, and are glad some friends referred us. We might also have the opportunity to manage a Christmas Tree lot for December.
Okay, enough future planning. Back to the present... After spending a week at San Louis Obispo, we traveled an hour North to a small Army campground North of Paso Robles, at Camp Roberts. Not much of a RV Park, but FHU sites were only $10 a night. This is the cheapest we've had in California. Gas prices have also been TERRIBLE! We filled up the motor home at $3.10 a gallon. OUCH! That's over $210 to fill! The gas station is across the street from us, and within 5 days, the prices has gone up to $3.19 a gallon. Perhaps you can see why we're not moving much. After only a few days at Camp Roberts, we traveled through miles of wine country again, ending up at the Naval Air Station in Lemoore, CA. We're only 60 miles from where we go for training in a couple weeks.
Connie finished knitting some more socks, and is now taking the time to digitally scan a few dozen cooking magazines. When we sold the house, she had a hard time giving up her cooking magazines. She did very well, narrowing it down to about 3 dozen. We've been carrying these around with us, and they weigh a ton! Since she now has time, she finally started to scan and organize the articles and recipes she wants to keep. She motivated me to also clean out some of the "stuff" I've been lugging around. I currently have quite a few items listed on eBay to get rid of.
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