Well I have gotten behind on my posts of late, but I am going to attempt to catch up the next couple of days while we have a little breather. Right now we are in Porterville, CA visiting Jason's Mom, and we are so glad to be here. It has been quite an adventure thus far! The first part of our trip was a soggy one complete with huge storms along the Washington and Oregon Coast as well as more typical PNW drizzle while we were in Portland. We were so excited to hit some California sun and dry out a bit.

We started at the coast with the intention of driving down 101 along the coast until we hit the Bay area at which point we planned to turn inland and head toward Porterville. The Pacific Coast Highway is such a beautiful drive if you have the chance to take it. We picked up the 101 at Florence OR (more on that later) and headed south. Our first overnight stop in California was in Klamath at a little RV Resort called Chinook RV Resort located at 17465 Hwy 101. It is a Passport America park so we were able to stay for half off the posted rate. If you are not familiar with Passport America it is a travel club that you can join for $44 a year which allows its members to receive 50% off at participating camp/RV sites. Each site has its own rules as far as duration of stay, blackout periods, etc. All in all it is a great deal if you are looking for an inexpensive place to park your RV for a night or two. In our experience so far the majority of the sights have been basically a parking lot, not much to look at, but with full hookups and clean restrooms. Some offer other amenities as well such as laundry, cable, or internet. Chinook was one of the nicer ones we had stopped at. It is located right on the Klamath River. The spaces were larger and, though it was still very much a parking lot, the spaces were a bit roomier than some. We decided to stay only one night there as the internet connection did not work and we were hoping to get a bit of work done. The next morning we woke up and explored the area a bit before we left which was fun because it is surrounded by natural beauty from the river to the redwoods.


 We Left Klamath and continued down 101 enjoying the scenery along the way, for a bit that is until we began to notice that things were heading south. Our brand new bike rack that was designed to hold 4 bikes and had excellent reviews regarding its durability decided to crap out.We also noticed that our tail lights were not working on the trailer so we decided that we had better just get to Jason's moms where we can fix them. So we loaded all four bikes into the camper and headed out. I was supposed to be navigating and as anyone who knows me knows, I have ZERO sense of direction so I read the map wrong and we ended up going the wrong way. Like I mentioned earlier we had intended to continue down the coast until we hit the Bay area and then head inland, but my mistake meant that we were heading inland a bit earlier than we planned. We ended up on 36 which is a little mountain pass and quite beautiful were it not for the 10%grade, constant switchback turns, giant redwood trees lining the narrow lanes which gave way to dramatic cliff side drops and pea soup like fog! All in all we were only able to drive about 30 miles an hour which meant that our 200 mile drive took the entire day. By the end of it we were exhausted so we headed for the Walmart in Red Bluff where we could "camp" for free. So we scrambled over our bikes which took up all of the camper floor space and went to sleep at 7pm!
The next morning we got an early start as we were determined to make better time than the previous day. When low and behold we had a tire break apart so we found ourselves taking an unexpected detour to change out the tire in a nearby parking lot.

Well we finally got back on the road and made it to Porterville without further incident. We found a little RV resort here that is a bit rough around the edges but the people here seem nice and we are mostly going to be with Jason's mom anyway. It is nice to be catching up with our work after such an exciting trip! We are looking forward to visiting family, and will hopefully make a couple of sales as well.
I plan on adding some back posts over the week as well so come back and check in we had some fun experiences while on the coast that I am looking forward to sharing.