Our wine country campsite view

Greetings from Sonoma County, California. Melissa and I have been perched high atop vineyards at the Cloverdale KOA, which is actually one of the best campgrounds we’ve been to. We’ve been here since Wednesday night and we leave in a couple of hours for a day and a half in San Francisco. Our experience here has been just about everything we had hoped it would be, and will be the subject of a post Melissa is already composing in her head. The weather has been amazing, and you know what, after the rain we endured for a week, we deserve it, dammit. The wine has been flowing, and the food has been amazing. Don’t think of wine country as wine country. It is wine and food country. Food is taken just as seriously here, and sometimes I even think more so.

It’s been hard for me to find time to download all of the video we’ve taken to the computer, edit it, and then re-upload it to Vimeo. Campground WIFI differs wildly, which contributes to the delays. What we have here is a 20-plus minute video that captures a bit of our travels through the rest of Kansas, including Hays (my mom’s hometown), Nebraska and South Dakota. You’ll see what Wall Drug is all about, the ‘South of the Border’ of the great plains.

I’ll get us caught up on the video someday. Until then, enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After spending mid-afternoon in Hays, Kansas (my mom’s hometown) we shot up a desolate US 183 to 1-80. We rolled into Gothenburg just as the World Series started, and we were able to catch the beginning of the game on using the trusty MLB app on the iPhone. It was a long day of driving, so we were ready to get cozy with some wine and the game in the trailer.

I followed the signs off the exit ramp to the campground. As we pulled into a Sinclair gas station, we saw a giant KOA beacon next to a dirt road. Melissa was driving at the time, so I told her to proceed down the dirt road. It looked logical.

About a mile and a half later, we reached a dead end. Just a fence that said ‘No trespassing’. Oh, and no room to turn around. This, my friends, is a bad situation for someone pulling a 23 foot travel trailer. I took the wheel, and tried to attempt several 89-point turns. No go. After multiple attempts, the only choice we had was to back out – for 1.5 miles.

After the obligatory 10 minutes of profanity, I put the Tundra in reverse and started backing up. Those of you who have backed up a trailer before know that any little encouragement you give the wheel left or right has a huge affect on the trailer’s direction. I’d end up moving the trailer sharply left and right. Then, I’d have to stop, pull forward, straighten out, and begin again. All of this while Melissa is walking next to me coaching me in a cold, misty rain. I don’t know why they don’t put reverse lights or a back up camera on Airstreams – it sure would have been handy.

About 30 minutes later, we reached an opening wide enough where we could somewhat easily k-turn the trailer and proceed forward. I measured this whole experience in innings of the Phillies game we had missed. 4.5 innings of bullshit.

When we found the right road to the campground, we took it. We saw campsites, We saw campers. We didn’t see an office. What? Where the hell is the office? We drove back out to the Sinclair gas station, only to discover that the campground office was in the gas station. Logical.

I went into the office and said a few things to the nice woman with the British accent (they have those in Nebraska!) about the lack of clear markings to the campground. She said, “Oh, we haven’t had anyone do that in a while”. I was glad I was able to keep the dream alive. Then she told me the campsites had no water, but we could fill up our water tank behind the building. Joy.

We pulled around back and began to fill up our water tank. The problem was, it was never topping off. I had then realized I left the drain valve open under the trailer and the water I was putting in was that silly stream of water I saw coming out. Ugh. I closed the damn water drain valve.

We finally wheeled into our campsite after missing it the first time due to – guess what – lack of signage. We set up the trailer, fed the cat, and I scrambled to raise the digital antenna and auto-program the TV so we could catch the end of the Philies World Series game. In my head, I was making bets as to whetehr or not we’d be able to pull in a Fox affiliate from somewhere like North Platte. Nope.

Let’s try plan B – the Slingbox. The Slingbox allows me to pull up my cable box at home on my computer using WIFI or a really good cellular signal. I had neither. Slingbox was a no go. We ended up listening to the rest of the game squeaking the most out of the 1.5 bars of signal I had on the iPhone with the MLB app. We ate cheese and went through 2 bottles of wine. I worked out nicely in the end.

Map courtesy of accuweather.com

Now, it’s early and I’m trying to formulate a plan for how to get around this nonsense. I don’t think we can. North of us looks bad. West of us looks bad. Going East would mean we’re pussies. We go. We go West. We drive carefully.

I do know this – I want to end up in a decent sized city that has a Fox station. And a bar.