Thousand Trails/Morgan Hill RV Resort

Tuesday August 25 we left Coyote Valley RV Park – As we headed out at 10:00am, Acey’s mileage 66,172 – Thor has 71,222 miles, and arrived at the nearby Thousand Trails Park at about 10:30 – our shortest drive between parks! This park does not have sewer connections, but we DO have 50 amps at our site! That will be a big help since the forecast is for highs in the 90’s and even over 100… We will be here for 2 weeks. Get ready – this is a LONG post!!

Wednesday morning we went for a bike ride on the Coyote Creek Trail – a paved trail that runs from Morgan Hill up to San Jose. It was a bit hazy because of smoke from the wildfires.

Coyote Creek runs along the trail – or is it the other way around?!

We rode past a field with sheep – they were closer to the fence on our way out, but moved under the trees on our way back. I missed a good photo op with the black sheep that was out front!

and there were 2 or 3 large fields with goats – made me think of Tammi and her goats back home!

Part of the trail ran through the middle of one of the recent wildfires; the Coyote fire – last week! (August 17)

This barn and the other buildings were spared – the burnt area showed that the fire came very close!

We rode out 6 miles with the wind – so the 6 miles back was a bit harder, but it was good to get out and ride again.

Because many of the Thousand Trail parks seem to NOT have sewer, we bought a portable waste tank — also known as a “blue boy” as that is the common color for these tanks – though ours is gray!

That way we can dump the grey water every few days – the black tank takes about a week for the two of us to fill – and we will either unhook and drive to the dump station or pay for the “honey wagon” service (where the park brings a tank truck to empty our holding tanks at our site). In case you want to know more RV lingo, the sewer hose is also known as the “stinky slinky”! There is a page of RV terms on the landing page of our website.

Friday morning we returned to ride on the Coyote Creek Trail – and it was hazy again from fires but a little cooler today, still in the 60’s when we started out. There were many squirrels scampering across the trail, and we saw a rabbit and a small snake.

Fire damaged trees

We rode out 8.5 miles, again with the wind – and the ride back to the trailhead was a little more strenuous. We discovered the ride back is an uphill climb – gaining 173 feet! When we finished, it was after Noon, and we thought we would visit an In-n-Out to have a burger for lunch. The cheese burger had lettuce, tomato and a “secret sauce”. We both thought they were pretty tasty! Glad we split the small order of fries – they could have been cooked a bit longer. With Covid restrictions in place, no restaurants are open for dine-in, Several eateries have put up tents in their parking lots and are serving food outside – even in this heat!

Sunday we Zoomed with our Sunday School class and then joined the worship service live via YouTube. Its wonderful to be able to be with Stephens Valley Church in Nashville while we are on the road! Since we are catching these events live in the Central Time Zone while we are in the Pacific time zone, church is over by 10am. It was still early and the weather was good, clear and not even 70 yet, so we went for a bike ride again on the Coyote Creek Trail.

There were several folks out walking, jogging and biking today. Some families were enjoying the morning on the trail but it was not a hinderance to our ride. A beautiful clearer day today!

We saw just a few squirrels today, a flock of wild turkeys!

The sheep had been moved to the other side of the trail and were closer to the fence near the trail today. No sign of the black sheep…

We rode out 7 miles with the wind again – and against it on the 7 miles back.

Monday – We drove down to Monterey and walked around the Fisherman’s Wharf area and beyond. It was a cool clear day and really nice to be away from the smoke from the wildfires.

They are pretty strictly enforcing the wearing of masks here.

No one had put a mask on this statue 🙂

These gulls appeared to be “social distancing” on the roof!

This otter and gull were fun to watch as they played by the buoy.

This fella was floating by the pier

We have been to Crabby Bill’s when in Florida – but did not check out this place…

Across from Fisherman’s Wharf was the old Custom House built in 1827 by the Mexican government – Monterey was the capital of Alta California. The American flag (which was NOT flying today) was raised here on July 7, 1846.

There was certainly a lot to see here!

This is a replica of the glass bottom Swan Boats that were first introduced at Lover’s Point in the 1890’s! The concession operated there until the mid 1970’s.

We saw a couple of fire trucks from San Diego County that must have been going home after working on the fires in Northern California.

We walked along the beach – it was open but had restrictions.

Not too many folks here today!

After we walked around a while, we decided to drive up the coast a bit and came to Pebble Beach. We drove the “17-mile-drive” through the area. They charged $10.50 for us to visit – just imagine what they charge to play 18 holes on their public course! (We looked it up – its $575 to play a round plus $45/person for a cart) The beach was quite rocky – not just pebbles!!

The “Pro tee” for one of the holes is nestled among the rocks!

There were lots of seals and sea lions hanging out on some of the rocks

And birds also hung out with the seals.

The shoreline was beautiful and the waves were choppy.

Some pricey homes dotted the shore

The Crocker Grove has the largest and oldest Monterey Cypress trees in existence.

The “Lone Cypress” has been called one of the most photographed trees in North America and is the tree featured in the Pebble Beach logo. The tree is thought to be 250 years old!

Tuesday – Jim changed water filters and other maintenance jobs – nothing too exciting going on today!

Wednesday – We rode 14 miles on the Coyote Creek Trail. Less folks were out today, and just a couple of squirrels – and the goats and sheep were grazing. A nice day for a ride. The scent of the burned area is getting less each time we ride through it!

Thursday – We drove up to San Francisco, but it was smokier there than we had anticipated. On our way – we saw some letters on the hillside – who knew there was any industry in California?

We found free parking on the street not far from Fisherman’s Wharf – which beat the $20 for 2 hours at a lot nearby. We found that someone ♪♫ left their heart in San Francisco ♫♪

We walked up to a park by Fort Mason and found some interesting things – a statue of Congressman Phillip Burton (1926-1983)  A Democrat, he was instrumental in creating the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Burton was one of the first members of Congress to acknowledge the need for AIDS research and introduce an AIDS bill. 

These unusual flowers caught my eye – the gold centers are the size and shape of a golf ball!

Some rather stately palm trees

Two sculptures by Guiseppe Penone were also unusual. This one called Idee di pietra -2004 -(Ideas of Stone) was bronze with river stones. You can sort of see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. It was very foggy and smoky that day.

This one is called La logica del vegetale (The Logic of the Vegetal) -2012- also of bronze – and the small trees to the left and behind the bronze tree are part of the art.

It was too hazy to get a good photo of the Golden Gate bridge – if we got closer, you couldn’t see the whole bridge.. so we didn’t try, It was a 3 mile hike anyway!

We finally got a fairly good shot of Alcatraz. We visited the island prison a few years ago with our boys. One of the interesting things we learned was that the prisoners had hot showers so that they couldn’t get accustomed to the cold water should they try to escape. Also, they were close enough to the city that they were “tortured” by the aroma of food cooking at night when the winds were right.

We drove over to Telegraph Hill and Pioneer Park. We saw this tree growing out of rock!

The 219 foot Coit tower stands atop Telegraph Hill. It was closed of course.

On a clear day – the Golden Gate bridge would be magnificent!

We finished off our visit to San Francisco with a drive down Lombard Street – the zig-zaggy street at the top center of the photo below.

Friday – We drove to Monterey again. We had noticed a paved bike trail there – the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail – and thought we would go for a ride!

We had noticed a lighthouse on Monday that looked like it was on the other side of the golf course – and figured out how to ride over to see it! The Point Pinos Lighthouse was surrounded by Monterey Cypress trees. We could not get very close to it.

On our ride back, we saw several birds perched on the rocks

The water looked especially blue today!

Some seals were chilling out on the beach.

Sunday we Zoomed with our Sunday School class and looking at the Beatitudes. After that, we joined the worship service at Stephens Valley via YouTube. Pastor Jim is beginning a series on the Miracles in Mark.

Temperatures were going to be well over 100 in Morgan Hill, so we drove back to Monterey to ride and have lunch. It wasn’t even 80 at the beach – but there were TONS of folks there – also escaping the heat! We only rode about 7 miles today – at a very slow pace as there were so many folks walking, biking and in pedal-cars on the trail. The water was a beautiful shade of blue and we watched this seal hamming it up on the slightly submerged rock.

We stopped for lunch at Dust Bowl Brewing – they had a taco truck since they had to serve food in order to be open to serve beer – with outdoor seating only. There was quite a crowd there too!

The building used to be the Monterey train station.

The Monterey and Salinas Valley Railroad was established in 1874.

Our book club read East of Eden where the idea of shipping lettuce by rail to the East by loading ice in the rail cars with the lettuce – hence the term “Iceberg lettuce”!

Monday was Labor Day – but no special events were planned – we stayed close to home and Linda worked on the blog and we prepared to make our move tomorrow as we head to Thousand Trails – Soledad Canyon in Acton, CA where we will stay for 2 weeks.

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1 thought on “Thousand Trails/Morgan Hill RV Resort”

  1. Another fabulous entry on your epic journey. That coyote trail looked very sturdy and safe. Quite a line, socially distanced at the brewery. Hope it wasn’t as long as it looked. We had a similar experience at the Blue Heron French Cheese Bistro in Tillamook on our Bike Tour of NW Oregon. Looking forward to you next entry! Ted & Nancy

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