Coloma RV (7)

We’ve been serial camping for nearly seven years now. We’ve gone to most of the places relatively near to us multiple times. Most of the bike rides for Richard are repeats now. I’ve pretty much figured out all the organization that can be done in <100 sq. ft. of space. We’ve got it down. You’d think we would get bored. You’d think we would run out of things to do or talk about. But this just never gets old. At least, not so far.

One way to keep the weekends interesting is to keep playing with routes. I am emphatically enjoying avoiding highways, at least the dreaded “triangle,” made up of highways 680, 242, and 4. Besides the obvious PTSD from Dory1’s crash, it is just an awful stretch of driving, with too much traffic, too many merges, and too many lane changes. We’ve been taking back roads to get us to the 680/780 bridge, and from then on, it’s not as bad. This time we tried also avoiding Highway 80 by taking a long back way via Highway 12 to 160 to Rio Vista. And from there you can stay on back roads through El Dorado Hills all the way to Coloma. It probably takes twice as long, but I had the day off on Friday and the weather was beautiful for a drive along the Delta.

On Saturday, Richard did a repeat bike ride up Prospector to Cool. He wants to note that the left turn onto Georgetown road to Cool is no fun. When he got back, we walked over the old bridge to the historic state park, with the aim of getting something yummy from The Argonaut restaurant. Along the way, we spotted neighboring campers, conspicuously committed to their crazy cult. And that (thankfully) is not something you see every day. So that gave us something to puzzle over while we enjoyed a couple of scrumptious hand pies. Mine was mixed berry and it was perfect.

There is always a new hike somewhere, and Sunday we tried the “Down and Up Trail” just up the road, off of Highway 49. Its name is a good descriptor. The down part of is it intimidatingly steep. You can take that trail down to the river, and then go back up a gentler climb to do a loop, which is what our casual research had told us to do. I became quickly skeptical about whether the return to the top would be that much better than the descent, and pre-imagined being annoyed. I pre-complained as well, declaring that Richard was going to be making dinner if I was going to be near death from the climb back. As it turned out, we took the upper return trail back and it was not even a problem. Can I help it if I have really good executive functioning and can predict all potential future problems extremely well?

We watched a couple of good movies, and one horrible one. But I will say, the plot was definitely new. It involved the Earth becoming threatened by an expanding Sun. Fair enough, I’m with you. The plan that all of Earth had come together to figure out was to put a whole bunch of volcano-like, rocket fueled, towers on one side, thus pushing the Earth away from the Sun and then out of the solar system to go join another solar system. I’d had a margarita before watching, and it did not help. But? It was definitely a movie scenario I’d never seen before.

We had all of Monday to get home, because it was Presidents’ Day weekend. Richard remains steadfastly unimpressed with the dump at Coloma RV. It’s got one of those curbs surrounding the inlet and Dory’s plumbing is not high enough above to be able to perform a smooth operation. So we agreed to go back the way we’d come and stop at Brannan Island, where we know the dump is good. After a three night stay, our waste tanks were pretty full. I tried plugging up the shower drain to prevent any shower water back spill, but that proved unsuccessful. When we arrived, some grey water had escaped and made its way onto the floor, and under the Chilewich rugs. Lesson learned (maybe). We really can’t expect to tow to another dump station with a full grey tank and not have something spill. Or someone who knows a trick can enlighten me.

See? Always something new to learn.

Total miles: 136.1 (taking 12 to 160 on the way up) 117.5 (taking Kirker Pass on the way back), 16.5 mpg, 4 hours 9 min. Site 63, hookups. Excellent wifi. Excellent cell for both. Terrible dump.