San Benito Thousand Trails

On Monday, we traveled from Acton to Paicines (near Hollister), California. It was a relatively long drive (for us, in the motorhome) -- about 325 miles and over 6 hours as calculated by the Garmin.

Approximate route -- google maps link here

 

Outside of Lancaster on our way to I-5, we saw lots of poppies (we think -- there is a Poppy Reserve near there, and the pictures from their website show orange poppies).

Another field of poppies

I was hoping that we might be getting onto I-5 north of "the grapevine", but I think we would have needed to go up through Bakersfield to accomplish that... This was in the downhill section - we went from about 4400 feet to about 400 feet in 5-6 miles. The truck lane had a posted speed limit of 35MPH and the California Highway Patrol was enforcing (a Law Enforcement Officer pulled a truck over just in front of us).

Almost to the valley (Grapevine, CA)

Beautiful valley

We stopped for fuel at a Love's Truck Stop (for some reason, our TSD Fleet card, in California, is not giving us a very good discount from TA/Petro and Love's is giving a better discount). Carl thinks this is the most money he has ever paid for fueling Gracie -- and it was barely more than 1/2 tank.

$6.19/gallon -- yikes! With our TSD Fleet card, we "only" paid $5.88/gallon, I think...

In our campsite at San Benito RV & Camping Resort

View out the front (there is an empty site next to the Prevost that is in front of us).

View down the road in front of our site to the east. We are in a valley, and, while the cell service is giving us 2-4 bars, we think it must be overloaded because the internet is really slow.

We went for a walk around a couple of the campground loops near us -- some of the deer in the area...

... and a cat on the hunt (but she had a bell or tag on her collar so her hunting success was limited). She came up to Carl when he said, "Meraow" to her.

Some more pictures of the deer...

... and yet more.

We have read that there are feral pigs at this campground too. There are some big holes dug in the ground -- a huge one under our power post -- I don't know whether they are from ground squirrels or pigs or something else.