2024 RV Vacation to California is underway! This trip plans to include visits to Big Sur, Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
I enjoy blogging like I’ve done on previous trips- mainly to help record memories, but also to share with others what may be helpful who are planning similar trips. I’m always so grateful for the blogs I find as I research and plan our trips, so maybe I can pass along the favor. I’ll also include a link to view my Google doc with all our plans on it, as well as what we do or don’t end up doing, and what we learn along the way. Grateful for the opportunity to go! I’ll be posting video reels to my Instagram throughout our trip so feel free to follow along there as well @jamileegainey
A few facts about us:
– we are a family of 6, and this trip also includes my mother, so we are currently a party of 7!
– our kids at the time of this trip are ages 11, 9, 5 and 18 months
– we travel in a 2003 Fleetwood Discovery, Class A motorhome, 38 feet long with 2 slides on the driver side, and we tow our 2018 Cadillac Escalade, which includes a bike rack with four bikes on the back
– we fully believe there is no perfect time to travel- so we make it happen despite the ages of our kids, whether or not we are pregnant (see our 2022 Montana trip), or even if my husband is recovering from a bicep surgery that happened three weeks ago 😉 We value the memories, the time together, and all the sanctification that comes with traveling as a family. As my husband likes to say, the question is not whether or not it’s challenging; the question is whether or not it’s worth it. And to us, it is!
So, with all that said, here we go! We hope you enjoy the journey with us as I record our adventures.
We left Saturday evening after our church’s worship service, pulling out around 7:15pm. We always stop at Buccee’s in Denton on our way out of the metroplex, so that was where we grabbed dinner before settling everyone for the night. The goal was to make it to Flagstaff by Sunday night, a total of almost 1000 miles.
Carmen made the comment that “doon-bocking” was hard. The actual word, boondocking, is used for camping without hooking up to electricity/water/sewage, and is what we usually do our first or last few nights traveling. Nick will drive until he’s tired and pull over at a gas station, truck stop, or Wal Mart, and so usually the rest of us are sleeping at some point while he drives. Carmen apparently dislikes the bumps when he drives. 😂 Saturday night he made it to Chillicothe at 11pm, then slept until about 5am when he awoke and drove the rest of the day. We gained two hours as we crossed into New Mexico and then Arizona, so by the time Nick went to sleep at 8:30 (10:30 at home), he crashed for sure!
Our favorite part of Woody Mountain Campground was the pine trees – including the walking trail! We prefer pull-thru sites with 50amp service, but Nick let me book this campground due to my weakness for trees. The sacrifice was that we had to unhook the car since we couldn’t pull thru, and we had to use 30amp, so only one AC unit could run, but this wasn’t a problem since it was so cool and even chilly at night. For dinner, we ate tacos outside on the picnic table with ground beef I cooked before we left. We were not here very long but definitely plan to return whenever we hike the Grand Canyon in the future.
On Monday, the goal was to make it to California! Talk about drastic changes in scenery during our nearly 500 mile trek – we went from the pines and cooler weather of Flagstaff (which surprised me), through the Mojave desert, where we discovered we needed to unhook the car since pulling it through 112 degree heat up and down some steep grades was causing our 2003 Discovery Fleetwood to overheat. 🤪😅🥵
So I drove the car behind Nick in the RV, and the others took turns riding with me to cool off because the AC units couldn’t keep up with cooling the inside of the rig.
One interesting thing we observed…Bridges cross over what would normally be rivers, but are all called “washes” in Arizona…our favorites were the Rattlesnake Wash and Holy Moses Wash 😂 And no, there was no water in any of them currently 😂
One we passed the desert, we drove through some version of the Tehachapi Mountains / Bear Mountain (someone correct me who knows, ha). Windmills were on the sides and tops of these mountain ranges, and slowly the desert landscape gave way to golden waving grasses spotted with knob-cone pine trees (if Google told me correctly).
Once we arrived in Bakersfield, we found Bakersfield River Run RV Park, which was wonderful- super spacious with pull-thru sites, and we definitely needed the shade that trees provided at our site to help cool down the RV. We hooked up and then drove a few miles to Fireside Grill for dinner, which was reasonably priced for the amount of food we ordered. Then we returned to our RV and the boys played catch with a light-up spike ball and Nick and I hung outside after putting the girls to bed. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time here since our stay was sandwiched between two moving days, but the park included a rec room, where the boys played a game of chess and would have utilized the pool table if we had been there during office hours. There was also a swimming pool and fitness room with a few machines in it. We would definitely return to this park in the future.
jami lee gainey 