November 2023 will be remembered by us as the first time we had a major incident with Tabitha! Luckily we had the flexibility to pivot and the financial means to take care of ourselves and repair the Airstream! All told we ended up increasing our camping costs by about $200 this month, added a $150 stay at a hotel, and had $180 in repairs to the trailer. Not too bad considering how sticky of a situation we found ourselves in with Tabitha. Read on for our thoughts on our November Airstream stays.
Rollin Home RV Park was an affordable and easy stop for us on way to Salt Lake City. We can't say there is too much to do in Nephi, but the location right off I80, and the price made this a great stop for us. They had a large clean laundry room, restrooms, and a nice little restaurant that we sadly didn't take advantage off. If we were heading through here again, we would stay here, if only to catch the stunning sunset again!
We have purposely avoided KOA campgrounds due to their nightly cost (sometimes more than $100 a night!) But we knew we wanted to be as close to downtown Salt Lake City as possible, so we made our first KOA reservation. Was it worth $70 a night? We're not sure....but we can say for sure that having a campground in walking distance to a light rail stop is a major major bonus. Getting to ride the light rail in to town to attend a concert as well as explore the downtown area made this campground almost worth the nightly cost. Though it pains our wallets, we would absolutely stay here again just for the convenience of the location.
If you have read any of our previous camping reviews, you know how much we love our Harvest Hosts membership and look forward to our stays. We were very excited to stay at this sustainable cattle ranch and fill our freezer with grass fed ground beef. Unfortunately, we learned a difficult lesson about the importance of always getting out to check a parking spot, even when the spot is just pulling off the highway! We didn't realize how sharp an angle there was between the country highway and the gravel shoulder on which we planned to park and Tabitha bottomed out. Our weight distribution hitch dug into the asphalt, we severed our propane line, and ripped off one of our stabilizer jacks. Thankfully, our host for the night came out with his floor jack and we were able to get ourselves unstuck. The temperatures dropped into the low 20s and with our propane line severed, we had no way to heat the trailer. We end ended up making a reservation at a Hampton Inn a few miles away to spend a warm night in a hotel. We documented the whole ordeal on our Instagram stories if you missed it while it happened. Bottoming Out
From this stay, we had planned to string another handful of Harvest Hosts and boondocking sites together to finish up our Loneliest Road Highway 50 Adventure However, with temperatures hovering around freezing and no propane heat available, we pivoted and booked two RV parks (and bought a space heater!)
We had planned to return to our favorite BLM site in Winnemucca, but selected this RV park instead so we could have power to run our new space heater. The nightly price was right and the location very convenient to I80 making this a great location if you're traveling through Nevada. We would stay here again if we wanted an RV Park in Winnemucca.
Still pivoting from our planned route, we selected Gold Ranch Casino & RV Park so we could explore the Lake Tahoe region and hit our last two stops on Highway 50 (Carson City and Dayton). This RV Park was absolutely underwhelming, but it had full hookups and power. If we return to the Lake Tahoe region, we would stay elsewhere!
We've said it before and we'll say it again! Moochdocking friends are worth their weight in gold when you're living a full-time RV Life! We met Scott and Trude on our Rick Steves Best of Sicily trip and immediately became friends! They are also RVers, and told us we were welcome to come park at their place any time. Well, we took them up on it and had the best time exploring the region around Sacramento with them. If you offer us a place to park, you better believe we will come stay with you!
We love Boondockers Welcome stays as much as Harvest Host stays and this location was lovely. We were definitely still a bit jumpy about driving down an incline after our disastrous bottoming out adventure, but we managed to get in and out of this parking spot next to navel orange trees without incident!
Our final November stop was the delightful Kern River Campground in Bakersfield, CA. County campgrounds often surprise us with how great they are and this was no exception! Even though it was dry camping, we loved being camped right near the river with trees all around. It would have been beyond peaceful if it wasn't for the constant sound of a gas generator from the camper next to us. Oh well you win some you lose some. And the sunset almost made up for the constant generator sound. :)
Whew, November was A LOT! We are planning to slow down our pace quite a bit over the next few months and looking forward to fewer travel days and more time to really explore our locations.
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