Thousand Trails – Wilderness Lakes RV Resort in Menifee, CA

Tuesday September 22 we left the TT Soledad Canyon Park at 9am. Acey’s mileage 66,510.1 and Thor has 72,731 miles. This was basically a maintenance week! And not so many photos…

We have found it to be rather interesting while being on the left coast, and especially in California, how ironic their “save the earth” environmental strategies work.

On the road thru all the states we have visited, it seemed most, if not all, of the RV parks had a place to take our recyclables. Once we got to Oregon and started to pay bottle deposits, it was easy to get our 10 cent bottle/can deposits refunded.

Then we got to California – the state that brought us CAFE standards for our cars (by the way the Governor now wants to have no new gas driven cars sold in California by the year 2035). We have had to actually throw away our recyclables as we can’t find places to take them! Cardboard, paper, tin cans, jars… all the things we easily recycled back in Nashville we have had to throw away! They have a 5 and 10 cent CA CRV deposit on most beverage cans and bottles. It is difficult to find a place that will refund the “deposit” There are supposedly only 1,234 such places in the entire state. The roads, etc. are littered with more beverage containers and trash in this state than anywhere else we have been! We got thinking that perhaps we should consider the “deposit” we pay on beverage containers as just a tax?! When we finally found a place in Acton to get the cash refund, they paid by weight; we actually got back MORE than we paid!  They accepted glass and plastic bottles and aluminum cans even if they were NOT marked with the CA CRV. Go figure!

While I am sharing about things that just make you shake your head… I need to tell you about our cell phone service. Jim and I had been customers of AT&T since way back when we had “bag phones” in the early ‘90s.  We had always been pleased with their cell service but it was costly. We changed our service to T-mobile in April because they included service in all of North America for only $45/month per phone. Once the Canadian border was closed, due to the virus, and we had to change our travel plans, we went to a less expensive plan with T-mobile ($35/month per phone). We have been VERY unhappy with the service provided by them. We could be in the middle of a big city and could not always connect to the internet. Even if the phone showed full signal, data didn’t always connect. But, sometimes with the phone showing a weak signal, it would work! Phone calls seemed to work OK, when we had service, but data was always “iffy”. (Jim says the “T” in T-mobile stands for Terrible!) SO, last week we changed to Consumer Cellular which offers service thru T-mobile or AT&T. It’s good the be back with AT&T again and for just a few dollars more – it’s a bargain!

This Thousand Trails Park is probably the busiest and fullest park we have stayed at so far. They had many 50-amp sites with full hookups, but none were available. We found a partially shaded 30-amp site, so we had to be careful what we had running so as not to trip the breaker. It got into the 90’s during the day, so we had to run the AC for sure!

Thursday we drove to Newport Beach to ride along the beach on the West Oceanfront Trail to the Huntington Beach Trail. It was a bit cooler at the beach than in Menifee, and good air quality as well! We found free parking in a residential area on the Balboa Peninsula, which added a short distance to the trial.  The trail ran right in front of the beachfront homes along Balboa Beach.

Lots of folks enjoying the ocean today!

At Huntington Beach, several palm trees stood along the path.

There was an RV park right on the beach.

We stopped for lunch at a Subway at the end of the trail and headed back to the car. A beautiful day to be out riding. In all, we rode 27 miles again!

On Friday we drove over to Alpine – to Jim’s brother Bill’s place to pick up some items we had shipped there – including a macerator pump. We just didn’t realize how mountainous California is!

During our stay in Menifee, Jim has been working on several projects on Acey. The water pump had to be replaced, and he sanitized the freshwater holding tank. The last 2 places we stayed at had problems with their water systems; Morgan Hill had the pump for the well break, so they had to install a new pump – which may have allowed contaminants into the water supply. Then at Soledad Canyon, they had a busted water pipe and as they replaced the broken pipe and started the pump, more pipes broke. So, in both cases, we were put on a “boil water” order – and it was time to sanitize the holding tank anyway. Jim also had to make a pigtail to hook into Bill’s electric box. I had time to finish reading Leopard at the Door – my Book Club’s choice for this month.

Jim also installed the macerator pump so we can empty the tanks into the sewer while we stay at Bill and Charlene’s place. He had to do some rewiring to get that installed as there was a really bad wiring job by a previous owner.

Sunday morning, we Zoomed for Sunday School and tuned into You Tube for the worship service at Stephens Valley Church back in Nashville. Jim needed a few more parts for the macerator installation, so we ran a few errands and Zoomed with the family later.

We decided we would go ahead and move on to Bill and Charlene’s on Monday, so we made preparations to leave in the morning. It’s going to be quite warm in Menifee, so we are hoping it may be cooler in Alpine.