Let’s try something new in this post. How about I start with a nice scenic shot of the beautiful campsite we stayed at for 8 nights before jumping into the details. Ahhhhhh….. Lake Cahuilla. I don’t know how to pronounce you but I surely adore you.
OK, on I go with the rest of the story…
After finally getting the upper hand on our unlevel site at Malibu Creek State Park, we got to sit back and enjoy the beautiful view from our Airstream… for a few minutes at least.
When you have a toddler, you don’t have hours and hours of nothing to do. Because there is always something to do. Like exploring the campground. So, if Ava sits still and “relaxes” for few minutes, we soak it in… fast!
Having been house bound for months since our last trip in February to Newport Dunes for the FOTR rally, we were antsy to get out and do some camping in ‘The Mish’. We rallied up some friends and family during the week and got a group of us to hit up a local campground. Lake Piru.
Lake Piru is located in Ventura County, California, in the Los Padres National Forest next to the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. They have camp sites ranging from a primitive tent site to full hookup sites. Electric only sites cost $31 a night during the peak season with tent sites at $27 while a full-hookup site costs $42 a night but only 5 of them are available per the map.
Last week we were graciously approached by a fellow Airstreamer from our home town to tag along with them and some others in the area on a trip to a local beach for the weekend. We were at the right place at the right time to get in on this trip as it had been planned for some time and one of the campers dropped out in the last moment with a non-refundable fee which we were happy to fill in for them.
We ended up camping at the San Mateo Campground in San Onofre during New Year’s week for 5 nights. If I had to rate this campground, I would probably give it just an average score. We haven’t been to too many sites so far with the Mali Mish Airstream but Catalina State Park in Tuscon, The Shady Dell in Bisbee and El Capitan State Beach just outside of Santa Barbara are still my top three campgrounds so far. And if these are my references, San Mateo is just “alright”.
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This week we are finally back on the road again. This time, we are headed down to the border of San Diego and Orange County to camp at San Onofre State Beach. Actually, the beach campsites are closed in the winter time so we settled for San Mateo Campground a mile inland from the beach. I know, it’s difficult.
We’ve blogged a lot about our stay in Bisbee, AZ. It really is a lovely little old mining town that we love visiting. As we are about to wrap up a series of posts from our 10-day Arizona trip, I want to give you another photo tour of the cool little RV park called The Shady Dell.
This is their famous mural on the street side of the office wall that greets visitors as they pull into the campground.
Just after taking Ava trick-or-treating for her first time around the neighborhood, we packed ourselves in the van and headed out of town for our VERY FIRST ROAD TRIP in the Airstream. Yeah! We decided to break up the drive into two parts, in order to make the drive more enjoyable for Ava, and therefore… for everyone.
Just around midnight, we arrived at a Walmart that sits on the outskirts of Bakersfield. It’s not the “ideal” place for our very first night in the Airstream, not even close, but it was the most logically place to stop prior to heading up the winding road to Lake Isabella. Walmart is known for letting RVers spend the night in their parking lots. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. RVers get to boondock for free and Walmart usually gets their business… because who doesn’t forget to pack a thing or two for a trip. Not us. We weren’t really sure where we should park when we arrived. A helpful security guard was on the scene and gladly guided us to a private corner of the parking lot. We decided to park just shy of the dirt patch designed for RVs due to the impending storm that was headed our way.
At 6am, we were awoken by a light drizzle. The sound of the rain on the Airstream made waking up just perfect. There’s nothing like sleeping in a warm cozy bed when it is raining outside your window. After a few minutes of drizzle, it started to pour outside. And on the inside? Well, on the inside it sounded like we were being bombarded by machine guns. Rata-tat-tat-tat!
