Wrights Beach (9)

It’s still a favorite place, even in a non premium site. This was our first time back since January 2020, which was a whole different universe. In the interim, I had lost a couple of premium site reservations, but given the state of the world, it felt inappropriate to complain about that. I do keep trying for them, right at the exact second they open up. But it’s almost always the same: all logged in at 7:59 with the page cued up…. beads of sweat begin to form… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, CLICK CLICK CLICK!!!! … and it’s taken. Sigh. But I was able to grab 11 six months ago, and it was still nice.

I will give a win to the BFW here, with the exception that it does get quite dirty en route. With a view of the ocean, over the top of our premium T@B neighbors, I had no choice but to go out and clean it off upon arrival. But then it was definitely nice. Maybe we use Lola any time we get site 11.

We had fun meeting up with two other groups of Altoistes who just happened to be on the Sonoma coast at the same time. That is always fun! One of the groups was the extremely nice couple who had offered to let us use their 1713 this winter. The other was a couple whose Alto is older than Dory, and have been Altoistes for a long time, so it was fun catching up while they were out visiting California.

Saturday we got the first rain we’ve had in a while, and that was super pleasant. Hearing rain on the roof is still one of my favorite things. We managed to get in a little walk along the Kortum Trail during the day and the wildflowers were putting on a springtime show.

Sunday we got to really be lazy getting out. I had reserved the site for Sunday night as well, thinking (as I often do) that it would be lovely to take a day off. I had it on my calendar to take the day off even. But almost every time I do that, there is some reason that comes up to make it a really bad idea. But the consolation prize was that we did not need to evacuate our site by noon, so we could have a leisurely morning and just sit and watch the rain without having to pack up. Somewhere around midday, the skies began to clear and we enjoyed a rain free departure at about 2pm. We might have pushed it later, but we lost our view when a big rig pulled in.

For a little lunch time entertainment, we used the 12v TV for the very first time and that was really fun. It’s a lot easier to make that happen, than to set up the projector and projector screen. Plus, we could watch an episode of “Dark” without having to make the Alto all dark. Entertainment with an ocean view scores a lot of points on the Fun Time Scale.

Another high scoring activity for me is storage and organization. I am rapidly closing in on the perfect refrigerator set up and it is satisfying. I’ve also got labeled bottles with little pour spouts that fit so perfectly under the sink, I was able to add a couple items to the pantry list. Like maple syrup, which means we can have pancakes for dinner this summer. The excitement is getting real.

The only glitch to the weekend was that when we got home and got into our usual reentry routine, the Caravan Movers started to slip on the wet wheels. It was so bad that we really could not get her wheels past the bottom of the driveway. We tried a lot of different things, including pushing really hard. Ultimately we were able to line her up on the street, pointing straight toward the garage. We put two ramps under her wheels and used the winch to pull her up. That worked, but boy, the bumper was close to scraping the street the whole time. Normally, we come at the approach at an angle and only use one ramp. At least now we know we can do this and it will work. Thank god we have a winch! And two ramps. Thumbs up for overkill.

Total miles: 87.8, 14.5 mpg, 2 hours 36 min. Site 11 no hookups. Pretty good solar despite tree cover and clouds. NO cell service in campground, but 1 bar LTE for Verizon when standing on the high point of the dunes by the day use parking area. No dump. Dump in Bodega Dunes still closed. Dumped at Westside and left check for $7.