Author: elranchoretro

No end in sight

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A long absence from posting may have lead you to believe we were done traveling with Gidget – not so!
There is no end in sight for our adventures,
much like this road headed to
Bodie State Park in Bridgeport, CA.

You know how you really need to clean out your closet (or, insert any tedious overdue project around the house here)? And you tell yourself you will do it when you have some time, you know, like 2020. Well, as it turns out, I didn’t clean out my closet (or many of the other tedious overdue projects around the house), not because I didn’t have time last year, but because I didn’t WANT to do those things. I also had the best of intentions of doing – but didn’t – losing weight, getting in shape, reading more and posting to “Travels with Gidget.” A veritable hit parade of New Year’s resolutions that I held over my own head for most of 2020. I found during the surreal and unprecedented world of 2020 that it was really hard for me to care about doing much of anything. Maybe it was that we lived in a solitary state of limbo for so long while the world flailed around trying to navigate shortages (because of hoarding!) in the supermarkets, social distancing and a new addition to our wardrobe – the face mask, while hyperbolic political theater played in the background. One uncertain day followed another and apathy came to visit – and overstayed its visit. I can’t possibly be the only one, can I???

But I am back and ready to recount our adventures over the last year as RV travelers.

We have continued to travel with Gidget around California since our return from the El Racho Retro Virgin Voyage – Heartland 2020, and I have many stories to share.

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Two Weeks Out

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“Goodie Review” this morning. As you can see, I am a collector of patches (what am I going to do with them? No clue …) and smashed pennies (what am I going to do with them? The same thing you do with yours – duh!)

August 1, 2020

Today marks two weeks since we have been home from our travels. Not going to lie, I still have not completely unpacked Gidget and there may have been a time or two that I had to go out to the camper to get dressed . . .

I tell myself that I really haven’t had time to unpack the trailer because I went back to work two weeks ago. Okay, so a week ago – Thursday. Seeing as I actually get to work in my office and haven’t been working from home, I just haven’t had the time . . . Are you buying that? (Hint, I wouldn’t!)

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Day One

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June 27, 2020

Day one dawned in the Boomtown KOA.  An odd but serviceable overnight stop after the Getaway Day’s adventures.  Odd I think because KOA’s aren’t exactly how I remember them from when my cousin, brother and I used to go on camping trips with our grandparents.  I have many memories of the pools and playgrounds at KOA parks – mostly good ones.  But KOA’s have changed in the intervening 40 years.  They have been both gentrified in some ways (“Kamping Kabins”, stores, cafes and other services I don’t remember) but they also seem to have become semi-permanent residences for what I am beginning to understand to be a significant population of full time RV’ers.  Many of which, it seems, are full time not because that was their choice of lifestyles, but full time because it may have been the only option they had left. 

On this morning, the long term neighbor next to Gidget had some sort of machinists operation going.  I couldn’t see what was being built, but seriously, how long can one grind a pvc pipe and more importantly why would you?

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Getaway day. On the road. And on the road – again.

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Friday, June 26, 2020. Getaway day was uncharacteristically humid and ferociously hot in only the most miserably sticky and sweaty of ways. Last minute deliberations (in my head) over all of the WHAT IF’s that had even the slightest actuality of happening while we were on the road and the [over]packing of the acoutremon that it would take to handle them took up the morning. By the time Dan got home from his half-day at work, I was exhausted and dripping and not at all a happy camper.

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Getting Ready and the WHAT IFs?

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The week leading up to us FINALLY getting on the road for the El Rancho Retro Virgin Voyage – Heartland 2020 trip was a rough one. Among our struggles were broken appliances, ridiculous heat – making packing/prepping Gidget all but impossible at any hour after 10 a.m. and my Father-in-law landing in the hospital (NOT for Covid). We were starting to feel like 2020 was saying to us yet again, “Eh, maybe not so much this year.”

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