Our Longest RV Trip Yet - Part 1

Our visit to Yellowstone National Park was a bit by accident. We decided to go visit my Father In Law in Coeur D Alene, Idaho. Just before we left we talked to a few people who suggested since we were so close to Montana why not go check out Yellowstone National Park.

So we did it. Making this our longest RV trip we have taken yet.

Here is the Outline of our route. Thanks to iPhoto

We have had our rig for 2 years now. Most of our camping has been in our home state of California. Traveling around 300 miles max. We did take a run last year to Grants Pass, Or spent a week on the Rouge River.

Heading to Yellowstone and back was a 2600 mile 2 week adventure and I Mean adventure! More on that later.

 Day 1 : Weed, Ca

So on the road we left our home from Manteca, Ca and decided on our first stop was going to be Weed, Ca. I mean with a town named "Weed" we had to say we stayed the night in Weed. We picked this stop because we like to only drive about 6 to 8 hours a day. It is so nice to get to the RV Park we plan on staying for the night before 5pm. Give you plenty of time to set up a bit, have a nice Dinner out somewhere in a new town, then get relaxed and a good nights sleep before the next days drive.

We are generally on the road the next day by 9am refreshed and ready to go.

More on the Weed, CA RV Park. We spent quite a bit of time mapping out our stays along the way. This is time well spent. We looked at both Good Sam and Trip Advisor. Trip Adviser is a great resource for RVers.

We decided on "Friendly RV Park" Why? Well we look at several things when we are looking for a simple overnighter. #1 is "Pull Thru Sites" also high on our list is level sites. We generally will not disconnect from our truck, unless it real un level. One key to picking the overnight spot is location to the FWY or at least not to far from our path to where were heading. under 10 miles is nice. Under 3 miles is great! Friendly RV met all of the above.

Of course we will complete a complete park review in a later Blog Post. But in a nut shell this park was OK...First of will start with the Parks Website http://friendlyrvpark.com/ The site is not quite as nice as the photo gallery leads you to believe. We found it to be very dry, a lot of weeds and generally in poor to fair condition. We noticed the RV park was for sale so I am sure that had something to do with the overall condition.

With that said it more than met our requirements for the night. Easy pull thru sites, very level, 50amp full hook ups and clean rest rooms. We did had a great view of Mt. Shasta. However to get a good picture of the Mountain we had to walk to the end of the property. Not an issue until later that night when 2 police cars came in to the Park to arrest a permeant resident which just so happen to be right where you had the best view of Shasta. The police activity was a bit unsettling. However grown up in the Bay Area it was rely no big deal. We found people in the park to be friendly.

Here is that Pic of Mt Shasta (Nikon DSLR 200mm Lens)

That was our 1st stop on our 15 day journey.

• Road Reports: If your not familiar with the roads I will include a brief "what to expect on the road" segment son. This was a simply run from Central Ca to Weed was all on HWY 5 very long easy road for any vehicle. 

We were on the road by our 9am deadline with ease. Were were thinking we could make it the rest of the way to Coeur D' Alene...However we reconsidered after taking a detour through a cool small town Dunsmuir, CA. We do this often and i highly recommend it. If your cruising down the highway and see something interesting take the time to stop and check it out. WOW, what a difference its made in my RVing experience. I was a commuter in the Bay Area for nearly 30 years and had come to hate driving!

My new attitude towards getting to our destination has taken the driving from a Point A to Point B experience to a relaxed wonderful way to discover America.

 Day 2 : Kennewick, WA 

So these couple delays allowed us to spend the night in Kennewick, WA http://www.columbiasunrvresort.com This was a beautiful Park. It was less than a year old and they did it right. We arrived after the office had closed. We were still greeted by one the Camp Hosts who so us to our site and made sure we had everything we needed. We talked quite a bit about the Park and their future plans. They did many of the little things we RVers love to see in RV parks. They had very wide spaces. Plenty of room for our 4 slide outs. Each site had is own grass patch great for your traveling dog.

Very nice park layout. Plenty of room to get around the Park and well as very large site. The store, club house, swimming pool are all brand new and very well designed.

Denise and I would highly recommend staying here. Its was to bad that we did not have time to explore the area. Although we will be back soon. So we were on the road before 9am the next day with an easy drive to Coeur D Alene. Again We could have easily made it in 1 stop we were better rested and made the drive much more enjoyable.

More on our 5 days in Idaho next time.

Thanks Dennis