the california loop: part one

The start of our full-time journey took place all along California. We were already in SoCal to celebrate Christmas with my family after finishing the remodel and wanted to be in town again when my sister's family would come out to visit in February, so we came up with a travel plan that made a pretty cohesive trek around the state before heading east. But before going up north to snowboard in California (well, so Chris could snowboard), we wanted to enjoy some (relative) downtime and familiarity after many weeks of physical labor.

Largely, we were lazy during this time, aside from constantly fixing things. We spent a lot of time at Disneyland and with friends and family, and cooking a ton of new recipes now that we had the time and some new equipment from Christmas. We're now big fans of making homemade pasta and InstaPot recipes, the former of which I had never considered doing because it seemed so time consuming (it's not, really, you just have to plan for it).

We'd made the decision to hit the road for California (from Arizona, where we'd been remodeling the house-on-wheels) a little late, and we somewhat underestimated the amount of work left to do to finish up our work. As a result, the trailer was a bit of a disaster:

We spent the first couple weeks in SoCal between holiday and family events finishing up the little pieces that were left (light fixtures, hanging the projector screen, some paint touch-up). We also discovered a LOT of issues. Free Real Estate is ten years old but I'm told it's more well-made than most RVs because of the brand, so the things we ran into were due to our own error, or simply due to age.

Initially we went park-hopping about every week or so to new campgrounds in Orange and San Bernardino Counties. Here's a recap of the places we stayed:

Newport Dunes

By far the most expensive RV park we've stayed in to date (over $100/night!), Newport Dunes is really more of a resort. It must take real dedication to choose a Porsche 911 Turbo as your tow-behind vehicle (on an enclosed trailer behind your $500,000+ motorhome), but someone at Newport Dunes was living that life.

Newport Dunes backed up right against a trail that took you to Balboa Island, which was p sweet~

This was a clean, well-kept park with beach access, a huge pool area, and other amenities - but pretty cramped sites. We had to back into a spot for the second time ever, and we managed to not be completely awful at it. Only one guy had to move his car out of the way so we had room to park.

The weather was beautiful and even though the park was full, it didn't feel very crowded (which I can imagine changes in the summer). There seemed to be events going on every week for RVers and guests, and the staff was constantly going by on their golf carts, which was kind of a weird luxury. It was a very posh trailer experience.

This was also where we learned how not to fill the fresh water tank:

We got some strange looks while this was going on. Everyone at Newport knows you -hire- someone to deal with problems, not fix them yourselves.

Modjeska Canyon

We made a quick trek into the hills of Orange County to visit our friends who are building a beautiful house designed by a renowned architect, and got to enjoy this rent-free view for the night (and since our friends camp frequently in their vintage chrome trailer, they even had 50 amp electrical hookups)! This was our most perilous drive in SoCal due to narrow residential streets and some high grades, but it turned out better than anticipated. We only damaged one awning in the process.

Glen Helen Regional Park

Next, we headed northeast to San Bernardino where we spent a week or so in Glen Helen Regional Park. This was a rather unassuming little campground right at the edge of where I-15 leaves civilization. I guess Glen Helen is known for its amphitheater, so this would've been the perfect place to stay if we wanted to go to a concert there. No one was playing there at the time, sadly.

We continued work on the house and discovered probably the most frustrating problem of all of the maintenance issues and equipment failures we've experienced: we noticed a leak in the bathroom around the toilet. Turns out, the seal around the base of the toilet (rubber in an RV, unlike the ones in a house which are usually wax) hadn't been seated on properly when we reattached the toilet, or perhaps was already degraded from age.

All of the flooring in the water closet - one of the hardest areas to measure and saw due to all of the complicated round parts - had been soaked through and ruined. As frustrating as this problem was to discover, it ended up being a (relatively) easy fix. We opted to buy some peel-and-stick white marble tile from Home Depot, which was something we could cut easily with scissors and apply without much misery. We found the replacement toilet flange seal from a Camping World and reinstalled the toilet. The silver lining out of all of this was that our bathroom was only out of commission for about 24 hours. I mean, we learned a lot, too, but practically: 24 hours isn't bad. It could've been much more uncomfortable.

East Shore RV Park

We then moved to San Dimas (near Pomona) and stayed at one of our favorite SoCal parks, East Shore. For us, this struck a pretty nice balance: it was within a regional park on a hill, so it felt isolated, had beautiful views, and spacious sites. But it was also close enough to civilization that it was easy to make a grocery run. If it was a little closer to LA or Orange County, it'd have been perfect (as it is, it was a decent commute to visit friends or family). The sites were paved with a good deal of grass in between your neighbors, there were tennis courts, barbeques, a large general store, and a lot of nice people here.

Orangeland and Anaheim Harbor

We stayed at two Disneyland-adjacent RV parks in late January to finish up our SoCal visit (for the time being). We understand why Orangeland is the most highly regarded park in OC - it was beautifully kept, with tons of citrus trees throughout the grounds (free for guests to pick). I didn't take any photos because I'm The Worst, sorry. They had a cute minigolf green, too.

Anaheim Harbor was a little less manicured, but was cheaper, within walking distance of Disneyland, and had front-row seats for the fireworks. As an avid lover of going to Disneyland (though not necessarily Disney the company), being able to walk there was a dream. Parking there is like $15 or $20. That sucks. Don't do that if you don't have to.

While Newport and San Dimas were our favorite places to stay overall, you honestly can't go wrong with any of these parks. Orange County is so dense and easy to navigate (assuming you don't get too close to LA) that we never felt restricted in what we could do or see.

After our SoCal circuit, we headed north, which we'll cover in an upcoming post!