#1 - Coveys Great Adventure - We have liftoff!

August 28, 2014

Hi Folks,

Casa Covey

Many of you asked us to keep you posted about this new adv that we have embarked on, so here is the first edition.  As most of you know, we sold the house in Thousand Oaks and moved into Casa Covey, our 2003 Monaco 43’ coach. We spent the first night in at the Tapo Canyon Park in Simi Valley trying to get our bearings and a little sleep. The final week in the house was a blur, starting with the third (and final!) garage sale, packing the storage container, wrapping up an HVAC and completely unnecessary roof enhancement and packing the coach. We have stuffed every nook and cranny in this thing and have now spent a couple of weeks trying to find the stuff we know we packed! If anyone is thinking about following us down the road, don’t try to pack up and load in a week.

Anyway, late Sunday night we pulled into the county RV park in Simi, thus violating the first rule I had made: don’t set up by flashlight. The house sale officially closed on Monday, August 11, and we hit the road that morning for Santa Maria to spend a week repacking, stocking up and unwinding.

Santa Maria Pines RV Park

Santa Maria is a relatively short drive from Simi and turned out to be a great choice because it had a Home Depot, Petsmart, Target and the most vital of all, Trader Joe’s, to meet all of our hardware and culinary needs.  I think we made four trips to Home Depot.

Santa Maria Pines RV Park had a few pluses and a number of drawbacks, but qave us a convenient  location and good access to the stuff we needed. It is also across the street from a great park that the dogs really enjoyed and needed. We stayed a week and departed on the 18^th for Paso Robles.

I can’t imagine how a place could be cleaner than Paso Robles RV Ranch. About 70% of the spaces were taken by long term or semi-permanent tenants who are in the area to work for months or years on large construction projects or in the oil fields. These folks all seem to favor large 5^th wheeler trailers over motorhomes. Some of them are large enough to need modified semi tractors to haul them around.

You can’t go to Paso and not taste wine, so on Jay Homel’s recommendation we visited J&J and Graveyard wineries, both well worth it. Our very limited storage space is a curse and a blessing: we can’t buy much so we save money, but we have to pass on buying some really great wines.

Paso Robles RV Ranch

If you haven’t been to Paso Robles add it to the list of places to see. The 280 area wineries aside, downtown Paso has lots to do and see. Downtown Paso is easy to access and interesting to walk around. There are a number of restaurants, shops, and, of course, many tasting rooms if you don’t feel like driving around to the wineries themselves. Two of our favorites were a large used book store and Lilly’s yogurt shop. Lilly’s faces the park and is a must go. The pomegranate raspberry is really good. Every Tuesday afternoon the park hosts a small farmer’s market that is a real treat.

Set aside some time to visit Cambria for the shops, the beaches and the scenery. For a real adventure, find Santa Rosa Road from Cambria to Rt 46. Most of it is one lane and goes through really interesting county that you won’t see sticking to the main roads. Watch out for the cows in the road.  Seriously.

On the 25^th we packed up and headed to Cloverdale in the Russian River valley. More soon.