Our original travel plan for this year was to do at least one international trip, possibly two, and by the end of the year we were going to look for a travel trailer and purchase one if we found a good enough deal. Then came COVID and the quarantine. So the international travel is out for now. So instead, we went out and bought ourselves a new Winnebago Micro Minnie Trailer, Model 2106DS to be exact. Here is a picture of the layout.
Cindy named the trailer Lil Pal, as in Big Red’s (our bright red truck) little pal. We have been chomping at the bit to take Lil Pal out and finally got the chance to visit a Thousand Trails park named Pio Pico in Jamul, just outside of San Diego. Our plan was to spend four days and three nights camping to give the trailer a “shake down” and see what we needed to add and delete from our first attempt at loading it.
Day 1
We drove down to Jamul and this was my first experience not only towing our new trailer, but towing any trailer for this long of a distance. Fortunately, all went well and we arrived at our destination without incident. We got checked in and ended up in a water and electric only site. We were told it was because they had to go to half capacity because of COVID and all of the full hook up sites (the ones that have water, electricity, and sewer at your site) were occupied, but this campground is known for always being full, COVID or not.
We got set up and it felt great to be somewhere other than in our house. Here are a few pictures of our camp site.
Here is the view from our camp site.
And here is the view of our picnic table and Big Red relaxing beneath a tree.
We spend day one just relaxing and taking walks around the campground.
Day 2
We started the day with another walk around the campground. Here are a few pictures from our “nature” walk.
After our walk, we headed into town to pick up some lunch. There was one Mexican restaurant and they were open for seated service! This was our first dine in experience in over two months. The food was average, but tasted great since we were eating it IN the restaurant. After lunch, we drove around Jamul and the surrounding area, returned to our campsite for some more relaxing, watched the movie RV (to make sure the DVD player and TV worked, of course), had a great bbq chicken dinner, and went to bed early.
Day 3
After our morning walk, we took a short drive to Otay Lake. According to a sign, Otay Lake was named by Buckwheat of the Little Rascals when they were filming there in 1955. And if you believe that, I am a Nigerian prince and I need you to send me your money.
Anyway, here are some pictures from Otay Lake.
We returned to our campsite and had a delicious bbq steak dinner with fixings. I don’t know what it is, but food always seems better when it is cooked and eaten outdoors.
During our dinner, we saw several park employees going to the campsite across from us and many seemed upset. We thought it was because of a meeting they had that day and maybe they we expected to do more work (let’s just say the park had a lot of employees, yet still needed a lot of work). After dinner, the woman from the campsite across from us came to our site and told us she had to let us know what was going on. It turned out one of the employees had tested positive for COVID, the park was being closed to new visitors, and it was possible the Health Department was going to quarantine the whole park for two weeks.
That caused an immediate change of plans for us. We were going to do a leisurely pack up the next morning and try and be on the road sometime after lunch. Now we packed up as much as we could that night, got up early, and were on the road by 8 AM. There is no way in heck we were going to be stuck in that park for two weeks, especially when we had not had any direct contact with any of the employees, or other guests for that matter.
And so ended Lil Pal’s first road trip. We got a few ideas on stuff we needed and a few things we did not. And in case you were wondering, neither of us came down with COVID and it has been more than two weeks since the trip.
The next episode will be Corrianne (our daughter) and my trip to Texas to help a friend move. And the entry after that will introduce a new friend and reintroduce an old friend on a camping trip to Campland on the Bay in San Diego.