#6 - Coveys Great Adventure - Christmas at Meadowbrook RV Park

December 2014

Kayeanne has decided to publish her own blog, so watch for it coming soon.

It was great to get together with so many of our friends from Thousand Oaks and Pasadena during the latter part of November, but we needed to move closer to family in Hemet, CA for Christmas. I don’t remember how we found Meadowbrook RV Park in Perris, CA. At first glance, it didn’t seem very interesting: a 55+ residential park with a few short-term spaces is not usually what we look for when searching for a place to stay. Something on the website caught my eye, though, and we ended up spending the month of December.

Casa Covey fit right in among the full time residents

Meadowbrook is a co-op formed in the mid-80’s by fulltime RV’ers who wanted a home base that fit their unique needs. It is a very eclectic mix of about 160 park model RVs, 5th wheels trailers and motor homes nestled in a small valley off Rt. 74 about half way between Perris and Lake Elsinore. The park is spotless, with wide roads, a small pond, and some shade trees. Cell phone service is not good because the park is in a valley, but we did get WIFI via the hotspot feature on our phones despite missing lots of voice calls. For some reason, WIFI seems to be easier to connect to than voice when conditions are marginal.

One of the many park model homes that
permanent residents have built

This park is a real gem: it's clean, very quiet, and the residents couldn't be friendlier. Everyone also seems to be dog friendly; Lucy in particular became very popular because she is quite outgoing. There are trails around the perimeter of the park that Lucy, Schroeder and I hiked at least once every day. Since we were staying for the whole month, management found us an unoccupied resident’s site rather than putting us in the transient area. Because we were in a “resident” site, people treated us like a local. The neighbors couldn't have been nicer.

Meadowbrook is surrounded by hiking trails

One reason we chose Meadowbrook was its proximity to Ed and Christine Woznickis. When we camped together in Nevada City, Ed and I decided to tackle a major upgrade to Casa Covey. Our coach still had a square CRT-type TV that dominated the overhead cabinets over the dashboard. Not only was the TV not up to modern standards, the cabinet that housed it had some serious drawbacks: it hung down several inches below the adjoining cabinets, obscured the view through the windshield and caused real pain to both of us. We have several lumps on our heads from knocking into it. It had to go.

The new TV and cabinet mods transformed
the front of our coach

Once we got to Meadowbrook, Ed and I pulled out the old TV (yikes, it was heavy!) and managed to remove the cabinet without doing any permanent damage to the adjoining cabinets or ourselves. A local woodworking shop did a great job shortening the cabinet by 6 inches and adding a filler strip on the back that matched the original cherry wood and finish. We re-installed the cabinet (making the whole assembly a little stronger in the process) and mounted a new flat screen TV that looks like it was a factory job!  No more lumps on our heads, and it really opened up the view through the windshield. I love it when a plan works!

Meadowbrook gave us good access to our family in Hemet for Christmas, but it seemed like we spent December in the car. We made trips to Thousand Oaks, Los Angeles, San Pedro, Pasadena, West Covina, Temecula, Carlsbad, Redlands, Riverside and other places I forgot. We wracked up over 2,000 miles on the car! It certainly was great to see everyone, but by the end of the month we were ready for some peace and quiet.

Really?? We are out of here!

Beyond spending time with our friends and family over the holidays, we came back to SoCal for the warm winter weather. The Oregon coast was getting decidedly nippy when we left.  So we were more than surprised when we woke up on December 30^th to snow, ice and temperatures in the 20’s. RV’s do many things well, but freezing temperatures, snow and ice aren’t what they are designed for. It was clearly time to move on, so on the first day of 2015 we pulled out for Arizona.