On Wednesday morning, our last full day in San Diego, Donna joined her friend Johanna for a bike ride up to the Torrey Pines Glider Port. While she was out, I cleaned our site, packed the awning mat and folded the chairs. I cleaned the Traeger wood pellet fired grill. I checked our tire pressures – something I always do before we travel. When Donna came home from her ride, I took her bike to the trailer and hung it up.
Our friends Tom and Kris Downey (Open Road 365) generously offered the use of their Chevy Equinox to haul things out to the trailer. But before I started hauling stuff to the trailer, I had to scooter to Pacific Beach to CVS Pharmacy. During my last check-up before Christmas, Dr. Ryan put me on a new prescription. It’s a daily medication. I picked up the initial 30-day supply at CVS, then added the medication to my CVS-Caremark mail-order plan. I received an e-mail Tuesday from CVS-Caremark telling me they would fill the mail-order prescription with a 90-day supply in three to five days.
We’ll be bouncing around for a few weeks and I don’t think I’ll have mail forwarded until the middle of February. I’ll run out of my meds before then. I told the woman at the pharmacy about my dilemma. I was certain the insurance wouldn’t cover another 30-day supply when they just approved a 90-day supply. She looked up the out-of-pocket price for 30 capsules. It was $142. She had my contact info and said she would talk to my insurance company and call me later. She called me about half an hour later and said she had it worked out. She asked the insurance company for a vacation waiver to refill the prescription as my meds wouldn’t catch up with me in time. They approved it! When I went back to CVS and picked up the prescription there was no co-pay – it cost me zero instead of $142.
With the dilemma solved, I went to Tom and Kris’ site to borrow their car. I made two trips to the trailer and had everything except for the Traeger packed – it’s too bulky to put into the car. I returned the car, then I walked the Traeger out to the trailer and it was job done.
Just before sundown, our friend Hans Kohls (Metamorphosis Road) stopped by. He told us Lisa had a cold and didn’t want to infect anybody so she stayed home while he came by to bid us farewell. Hans brought a cold bottle of IPA from Green Flash Brewing. It was billed as a tropical fruit style. It tasted more citrus to me than anything tropical. The hops were typical IPA – I think it was Cascade, Centennial and Simcoe hops. I opened a bomber bottle of a limited release ale from Lagunitas called Hairy Eyeball. This was a malty, almost sweet beer with 9.1% ABV and 56 IBUs. It was tasty – Donna even liked it, but I think one is my limit on this beer.
Lagunitas Hairy Eyeball
With the gear already stowed in the cargo trailer, I had a leisurely morning on Thursday prepping to leave. I hooked the water hose I use for flushing to the flushing valve for the black water tank and dumped it. While it was flushing, Ray stopped by and started talking to me. I shut the dump valve on the black tank and opened the gray water tank as Tom arrived and joined the conversation. The gray tank took about six minutes to empty – then I realized I hadn’t shut off the water supply to the black tank flushing valve. I was filling the black tank with water while we talked! I ran over to the spigot and shut it off. We have a large black tank – 89 gallons, so there’s no way I could overfill it in six minutes. But I was a little flustered none the less. Getting distracted while performing a chore like that can have disastrous results.
We fired up the Cummins ISL diesel at 11:15am. When we were lining up to hook up the trailer, I couldn’t hear anything Donna was saying over the handheld Cobra CB radio. I checked the radio and it indicated low battery. Donna could hear me – there was enough battery power to receive a signal but it takes more power to transmit. There wasn’t enough current to transmit so I couldn’t hear her. The radio takes seven AA batteries and they lasted for about two years. Not bad.
We drove north on I-15 to Temecula and on to the Jojoba Hills SKP park near Aguanga (map). I told Tom it takes about an hour to get to Temecula. I was right – we got to Temecula in about an hour, but I didn’t account for the stoplight-to-stoplight drive through Temecula and the 13-mile drive down CA79 to get to the RV park. It was about an hour and half total time.
We checked in to the boondocking area – no hook-ups for five dollars a night. We’ll spend two nights here before we move on to the Golden Palms RV Resort in Hemet, about 30 miles from here.
Setting up in a dry camping area is quick and easy. I pushed a button to extend the jacks and level the coach. Then I worked three switches to extend the slide-outs. Job done. Donna loves this place. It’s one of the cleanest and well laid out parks in a beautiful setting. The amenities are great. I gave a little background on this park in this post.
It was cold Friday morning. The temperature was in the 40s. We’re a little more than 2,000 feet above sea level here. Around 9am, we braved the cold and went to the outdoor pickleball courts. We had fun and played for two hours before retreating to the coach. From the boondocking area, it’s a bit of a hike to the pickleball courts – uphill all the way. The trail is nice though and a new waterfall was added since our last stay here.
The trail heading back to our coach
Our boondocking site hidden among the trees
The new waterfall
Another view of the upper part of the ‘falls
We spent the rest of the afternoon with the generator running and the heat pumps on. The skies are overcast and the temperature stayed in the mid-50s. Tomorrow we’ll move on and hopefully find warmer weather.
*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!