Bakersfield, CA

October 5 – 24, 2020

River Run RV Park
3715 Burr Street
Bakersfield, CA 93308

This was the best alternative to Shady Haven we could find. Would not want to stay there again.

River Run was a decent home for us for almost 3 weeks. And we were happy to get away from it. I have mixed feelings about this place. The park itself is well maintained. They put a lot of effort in to the landscaping and maintaining the grass, which also means there is no shortage of noise during the day from lawn mowers, trimmers, and leave blowers. The sprinklers come on often. You can sit on the grass, just be prepared for frequent showers. The noise from the trains pales in comparison to our first park – Shady Haven. It’s almost pleasant. The highway noise, on the other hand, is permanent and not something we want to get used to. This city never sleeps. We were lucky in a way. Our spot was in the quieter part of the park. Could have been much worse.

We did not get the impression that the people managing the park were particularly interested in providing a good experience for their customers. Why would the “new girl” at the front desk reject an incoming package when we successfully received several before? We’ve experienced much better. I guess we got spoiled in St. Regis, MT.

What else happened in Bakersfield? We went to San Francisco the first weekend with a Uhaul trailer and picked up the motorcycle. While on Treasure Island, we met with Sandra and Adrian and had a few very nice hours over lunch, sitting outside on the patio of a small cafe.
We realized that JJ may not get into Germany and questioned wether we should cancel our trip or not. The situation with Covid and all the restrictions were getting worse, so we did make the difficult decision to cancel our trip.

On Route to Desert Hot Springs

10/23/2020 by Joerg

We had visited the area around Palm Desert last weekend, visiting 4 different RV Parks North and West of Joshua Tree National Park. Our decision was to move to Catalina Spa and RV Resort next.

We loaded the motorcycle on to the truck on Thursday night, using our brand new ramps. It was a little nerve-wrecking and took two attempts. Securing it once it was on the truck was relatively easy. Friday afternoon I spent time tuning the setup. We took off the backflip cover so that we can see the motorcycle through the rear window (just for peace of mind). I also modified the wheel chock we brought along and made it fit in to the corner of the truck bed. The wheel chock holds the bike upright, so strapping it down becomes a much easier and simpler task. Then we went to the CAT scale to find out if we even have a chance transporting the motorcycle along with the trailer. The results came in close. Too close to tell for sure. We thought we might have a chance if we kept the tongue weight of the trailer on the low side and tuned the load distributing hitch well. Our fallback solution was to leave the motorcycle in storage at Shady Haven. So we packed the trailer and put as much weight as possible in the back.

The first stop after leaving the park on Saturday morning was the CAT scale again. This time with the whole rig and the load bars attached. The truck was too heavy in the rear, but had some reserve in the front. So we dialed up the load distribution, which puts more load on the front of the truck and the trailer, while reducing the load on the rear of the truck. Back on the scale, and …. it worked!!! We were (barely) within the limits. Loaded to the max but not overloaded. Well, the truck overall had a bit too much weight, but none of the axles were overloaded. The tongue weight was on the low side. We knew we could manage all that by driving slowly and carefully.

The next stop was our storage place at Shady Haven, where we grabbed the motorcycle side cases and a few small things we had left there. Now we could cancel the contract for the garage! Not needed anymore. Excited that we could bring EVERYTHING along with us to our next destination.

We met Hannah and Leah (the owner) again on our way out. We learned that Leah will be selling the park, looking for a new venture in some nicer place. Possibly Idaho or Montana. While the park was not right for us, the people working there were very caring and kind. Maybe we will run into them again in their new place.

The drive to Desert Hot Springs was mostly uneventful. Traffic around LA was slow and frustrating. Well, we kind of knew that. The last miles of highway were under construction and a mess. We had to slow down a lot. Many dirt roads are in better shape than that highway! And in hindsight, we probably should have taken a break instead of driving all the way through. On the other hand, we arrived just before the office closing and could work with Christina and Teri to switch our site from 366 to 370, JJ’s favorite :).

Setting up was painful and our worst performance yet. We had everything positioned and hooked up when extending the slides and realizing that the back slide did not clear the water faucet. A long process of trying to fix it (in the dark) followed. What a nightmare! JJ was against fixing it in the night and wanted to pick it up in the morning again, but I pushed us through. We were done late, but we were done! Then the storm started …