Soledad Canyon RV Park

I had indicated in an earlier blog post that we moved to Soledad Canyon RV Park a week earlier than planned, arriving April 11, because of predicted high temperatures being in the upper 90s and low 100s in Palm Desert, CA, where we had originally planned to stay. We have been watching the weather there, and, sure enough, last week, the temperatures were in the high 90s and 100s... and... in addition to that, the power to the 50A side of the park (where we were parked) went out, leaving folks with the choice of either running their generators (can't imagine the drone of all those generators!) or everyone trying to get into a 30A site, where they probably could only run one of multiple air conditioning units. From what we've read, the power went out last Thursday and finally came back on Tuesday night. We are SO thankful we elected to move when we did!

Where we are at Soledad Canyon, we are also in a 30A site -- we chose it because this section is higher up in the campground and, since we are in a canyon, it gets better cell service than other parts of the campground. Cell service is how we get our wifi / internet service.

Now, you may think that there would not be that much difference between the amount of power you have delivered if you are plugged in to a 30A hookup or a 50A hookup (simple math, 20A, right?), but... I don't really understand it, but 50A delivers 2 legs of 50A service, for a total of 100A of service, while 30A provides just 30A. On Gracie, just normal loads (refrigerator, various electric things running) take somewhere around 15A. Any additional large load (air conditioner, electric stove top, 1 or 2 electric burners for water heater, dryer) will take about 10A, which means we can only run one of those at a time. With the temperatures here staying in mid 80s for the high last week, we were okay with one air conditioner, but, if we wanted to cook something on the stove, we'd need to turn off the air conditioner until we were done cooking. It just requires thinking! I told a friend that this is how we keep our minds sharp! Unfortunately, as evidenced by the 2-3 times we've tripped the circuit breaker at the pole, our minds are not quite razor sharp at all times! It is just a matter of budgeting - figuring out how much of a limited resource you have, and using it effectively.

I had laundry to do, and I thought I would be able to run the washer without a problem, but, I knew I would not be able to run the dryer, so, I waited until this week when the temperatures came down into the 60s and 70s and we didn't need the air conditioner. I still needed to consider whether we were getting ready to cook something on the stovetop, and we needed to consider whether we needed to have both burners for the water heater. More thinking!

We walked about a couple of the sections of the campground that are a little lower level than where we are parked -- we liked a few sites in each of them, and checking our phone's signal seemed to indicate those sites would also get pretty good cellular signal.

After climbing the hill back up - these are some of the sites at the far side of the section where we're parked.

Gracie in her site with the Jeep in front. These sites are pretty close to each other - we call them "buddy" sites as two rigs pull through in opposite directions to each other and share the utility space between the two rigs -- so the RV on our driver's side is just a few feet away. In our case, the public/patio space is shared pretty closely with the RV on our passenger side too - but part of that is because our neighbor moved her picnic table way out from her rig.

One thing that is interesting about living in an RV is that your neighborhood and your neighbors are constantly changing. It can be nice when the neighborhood isn't so great that you can change and possibly improve it; it isn't so nice when you've found a great spot or have great neighbors and then have to move on... but... you can possibly return to the great spot or meet the great neighbors again down the road!