O'Neill Regional Park

Dry Camping. Boondocking. RV Dispersed Camping.

Dry camping (boondocking):

Is camping in a campground or any area without water, electricity, and sewage hookups, including parking lots or driveways. In the United States, most campgrounds operated by the US Department of the Interior and most state and county campgrounds do not have full hookups for water, sewage, or electricity.

Whatever you want to call it, we needed to become more familiar with it. Earlier in the month we booked our Anniversary trip for Big Sur, where we would be dry camping for 4 nights/5 days. We have never done this before. I like electricity. I really like lights. I like being able to see at night. This could really be an issue. In an effort to be better prepared for our anniversary trip we thought a dry run (get it? Dry run? Dry Camping? heeheehee) would be best. We are lucky enough to have a great little campground right down the road from us, O'Neill Regional Park, where they do not have hook ups. This was the best test run for dry camping. The only downside was that we had zero free time. The Husby was working EVERY weekend from Labor Day on through our anniversary trip (and after, for that matter) in November. However, we knew this was non-negotiable. We HAD to do this while still being pretty close to home/civilization. So, he took a weekend off. October 11th - 13th. 

It was by far the most unorganized, most slapped together, hair pully-outy trip ever. EVER. We forgot just about everything. We both had the attitude of its only 10 miles away...it's only the next city over...its only O'Neill...it's only 2 nights....it's only... This was our downfall. We didn't leave our house until after dusk. We didn't bring fire wood. We only brought fire needed foods. We forgot our dog leases. We left our house hungry. I think the list had like 3 more items on it, but I must have blocked them out. By the time we got set up, it was after 8pm and we were grumpy, cold, and starving. As mentioned earlier, we weren't far from civilization. We had In&Out for dinner. I had a shake. While camping. I added Baileys to said shake. It made everything better.

After all the drama the first night, the rest of the trip went fairly smoothly. We were able to figure which items pulled the most battery power and how far the battery would take us. We found out that the overhead fan, which I love, sadly, sucks up the most power. That and the Fridge. Everything else was fairly minimal.

Always futzing with something ;-)

Puppies enjoying some sun.

Our camping buddies joined us for the day

We had a pretty decent site - #41

Finally got firewood!

Poor cold puppies lol

Shush! I'm not a morning person!

Things we learned on our 5th camping trip (1st Dry Trip):

1. Do not arrive at the site hungry. DO NOT.
2. Regardless of how far or how close the campground is, you still need to prepare your trip ahead of time.
3. We do not need to have the lights on inside the trailer when we're not in it. ...kinda fee like that one's a duh. Oops.
4. In & Out is always good. 
5. The fridge will last 36hrs without a hookup. After that it beeps every 10 seconds. It still keeps the insides cool-ish, but not for long. 
6. 36hrs really isn't that long. Uh-oh. 

Stay tuned! Coming up Next: Big Sur Anniversary Trip!

Lake Cachuma!

Well, I wasn't a better blogger, but I somehow don't think anyone really cares. Lol

Lake Cachuma was our next destination, the furthest camping locale to date. And the longest stay as well! We were there 3 nights from August 23rd to the 26th. And it was approximately 150° during the day, thankfully once the sun set it was a much more reasonable temperature. We went with our camping buddies, and overall it was an excellent trip.

Since we left home on a Friday, and we needed to get to the other side of LA we left at the butt-crack of dawn - 5am. Thankfully the puppies and I really didn't have to do much other than get out of bed and sit in the truck. Since we did leave so early, we were able to kill sometime in Santa Barbara, which was lovely.

We ended up arriving a couple of hours before check in, however we were able to pull into the day use area, relax, have lunch, and just rest up a bit before setting up camp. During this down time we wandered around the camp store and took a quick look into the Nature Center they had there. Nothing too special, but you could tell they did put quite a bit of effort into everything, and I'm sure its a big hit with kids. Shortly after we set up camp our camping buddies showed up. They had a tent site directly across from us, which was really nice. Our Friday night agenda was pretty slim, mostly due to my getting up at 4:45am that morning, so we had dinner, hung around the campfire, and went to bed early. I should also mention that we were in site # 121, and other than the blaring sun beating down in the afternoon, the site was pretty awesome. It was on the very end, and was right next to a large clearing. Made the whole site feel 10x the size.

Site # 121

Site # 121

Saturday we ventured into the closest city, Los Olivos for some olive oil tasting. Which was amazing! We went to Global Gardens and ended up buying this delish Blood Orange infused Olive Oil. Seriously we need to go back there! Mmmm, olive oil.... Anyways, after a quick lunch we headed to Solvang. Sadly there was a car show and the place was PACKED! So, we drove through the city center, kinda looking around while sitting in traffic, and the consensus was that was enough of Solvang.

We got back to camp, jumped on our bikes, and took a good tour of the campground. Which is huge. With lots of hills. And huge. And hilly. Ugh. Ok, so it wasn't that bad. But at times it really, really was! I, of course, had thrown out my back the night before so was bitching pretty much the whole time. ....yaaaaaay.... Being the party pooper I was, we ended up cutting the ride short. Plus the 150° sun beating down on us wasn't really helping the situation either. Heh. We all just pretty much tried to move as little as possible between the end of the ride, around 2ish, and sunset, around 6ish. Having an air conditioned Trailer is a wonderful thing!!

A rare site indeed! Frederick men relaxing!

Sunday was, supposed, to be the day on the Lake! Which ended up as a fail. All of the boats were already booked. Instead we wandered some more.

Poor cold puppies!

And since this was our last night there we made sure to go down and enjoy the gorgeous sunset.

The nights up here were just amazing. It was so clear, and you could just see so many stars. This was the first time for both The Husby and myself to see the Milky Way. It really just leaves you astonished, and wanted to see more.

Well, that was it. Our 3 night adventure at Lake Cachuma had come to an end, all that was left was to drive home! We will definitely see you again, Lake Cachuma!

Hey, that's us!

Things we learned on our 4th Camping Adventure:

1. If I need to be a vertically coherent human, I need to not wake up at 4:45am and still be expected to walk/talk/interact after about 4pm.
2. Patience is a virtue - and lack of sleep is NOT its friend. 
3. One, if not both, of us will hurt ourselves while away. 
4. Poison Oak stays around. For weeks. ahem Husby! ahem
5. We have the Best. Camping. Chairs. Ever.

Stay tuned! Coming up Next: O'Neill Regional Park! (Our 1st "dry" camping experience!!)
 

Canyon RV Park

Epa! Here I am only 2 posts in and already dropping the ball! I will be a better blogger I promise...in theory. ;-)

So our summer was a pretty busy one with one of my best friends getting married, so that really enveloped the majority of end of May and all of June. In a "MUST TAKE TRAILER OUT!!!" desire we opted to keep it simple and stay a weekend at a local campground. We stayed at Canyon RV Park on July 12th to the 14th at site # 37. It is a small, cute little park right off the 91 in Yorba Linda. This could not have been a more perfect location for this quick kind of trip. It has an on ramp/off ramp right off the freeway which made our lives super easy coming and going. We went with Josh and Candace, who tented it in the same site as the trailer. It was great. We all brought our bikes and on Saturday took a decent ride up and down the Santa Ana River trail. At the park they have a big Rope Course that you can rent to try your hand at climbing. Some other campers were trying to get a group together, to lower the overall cost, but we sat this one out as it was way too way. Perhaps we'll go back with the whole family - make a day out of it. :-)

We kept it simple and did standard camping fare of Hot Dogs and Baked Potatoes.

Puppies still working out this whole traveling deal

Of course I burnt myself! Annnnd only I could burn racing stripes on me too...fail.

Oh good! We didn't forget the Oreo's!

Stay tuned! Coming up Next: Lake Cachuma!