Our last full day in Grass Valley was beautifully sunny, though chilly. Here’s our set up, with the fabulous little Weber grill, and the Bolt parked behind, plugged into 110V so it could charge ready for our departure the next day.
I spent some of the day happily figuring out how to make masks, now the government is officially recommending them. It would have been so easy to do before we decluttered. As it is, I don’t have the “you’re bound to have these lying around the house” items that the DIY instructions often suggest: paperclips, scraps of fabric, hair ties, an iron, coffee filters, etc. I did find hair ties at the grocery store. So the recipe ended up being: shop towel + hair ties + duct tape = face mask.
It was a tricky decision to head north. 75% of our remaining possessions are sitting in our son’s garage, and we either have to go get them or we have to go shopping locally to get things we need. We decided we are lower impact doing the former, especially because our contact with the outside world is nicely limited by being in a self-contained RV.
So yesterday, Dave dismantled his work setup. He laid all the monitors face down on the bed and secured the chair on its back in the garage, tethered to the handy tie downs. We put various things in the under-RV storage. I wrapped all the glassware in sticky shelf liner, and padded the cutlery etc so it wouldn’t rattle. It probably took us an hour or so to get the coach ready for the road. Then Dave set off in the RV, with me in the Bolt behind. We had a hands-free phone call going for the entire journey.
Grass Valley to Red Bluff is supposed to take a little over 2 hours. But RVs are slow, and we were taking it cautiously as our first outing, so it actually took 3 hours. It was foul weather–driving rain and lots of spray, though not much traffic of course. We both found it very wearying….Dave was handling the big bus, and I was staring at the back of it for hours. Very soporific! I couldn’t have done much more without a break. The Bolt did great, though. At one point, it said the max range was 261! When we set out, it was 210 but it’s a steady descent from Grass Valley, I was slipstreaming behind the RV, and going slowly. It wasn’t until we were on the valley floor that the range started going down again.
We are staying at Durango RV Resort in Red Bluff. It has great reviews and amazing amenities, but of course all those amenities are closed. Arriving was a remarkably no-contact experience. You have to book and pay in advance. The office is closed, but when you pull up outside, they appear and hand you a map\brochure (surely they could put that online?) and then a man in a golf cart guides you to your spot. Far less touching stuff than checking into a hotel.
Our view is much improved compared to Grass Valley:
Lashings of rain and wind yesterday evening and overnight, which shake the coach rather unnervingly. Also some close-by thunder. I-5 is very close and a bit loud, but I slept fine anyway. We have neighbors either side, so that’s a bit of a contrast to our isolation in Grass Valley, but overall this seems like a reasonable spot for now.
This entry was posted in RV 2020