The original plan was to leave on Christmas Day, after going to Wayne’s brother Scott’s house for Christmas. But we found out at the last minute that they had actually flown to Nevada to spend Christmas with their dad. So now not only was there no reason to wait, but if we hurry we could get to Dad’s house right before everyone leaves. One full day of togetherness sounds about right! :)
If it sounds to you like there was a failure to communicate here, you would be entirely correct. But it doesn’t come from the usual sort of family strife. This sort of thing is just normal for them. Heck, their mom didn’t find out until the last minute either, and she’s their pet sitter! It’s not the way I would do things, but it is their way so I try to roll with it.
We rolled out of the driveway at 4:30 pm on Christmas Eve. Our first stop was Bar Avignon, where they were having an awesome prix fixe dinner. Crab cakes, a twist on the usual pear-walnut salad with chicory in place of lettuce, duck leg in lentils, and spice cake with hard sauce. Can you say yum? I had hard pear cider, which not everyone offers; it went perfectly with everything.
After dinner we rolled out to the RV and hit the road. Not long after leaving we realized that something is amiss with the heater controls. You have to turn it all the way down to cold in order to get moderate temperature air; setting it to the white area between hot and cold gives you hot air, and anything above that actually hurts your hand if you hold it in front of the vent. Also the knob that controls which vents get air didn’t seem to be working at all. It wasn’t doing this before we took it in.. I have no idea what went wrong, but after all the hassle and expense we already went through, it kind of added insult to injury.
Our next surprise came when we stopped to use the bathroom – no water! Usually when the water pump doesn’t work it’s due to the switch in the flap over the city water intake; if the switch isn’t pressed in, it thinks the van is hooked up to a water supply and turns off the inside pump. But we checked that and no joy. It was looking like an interesting trip!
We continued on and arrived at our destination, Jack’s Landing RV Resort. That is, we arrived behind it – the directions from Google Maps on my iPhone sent us to a dead end, right next to their freeway sign. Oops! After a many-point turnaround right next to a huge ditch, we made our way around and found the RV park.
As we were circling about, I remembered that we hadn’t brought any bottled water. I’m not a big fan of tap water, or of drinking water from the tank in the van, so I asked Wayne to drive us over to a gas station where I could buy one. He was very nice about it… of course, that might be due to the fact that he was the one who didn’t pack any water!:)
Finally, we settled into our spot a bit after 11:00 pm.