Late Fall Trip to Southwest
We just returned from a 2 week road-trip from Washington to the Southwest in our 2010 Jayco Precept 24SDS motorhome. This was a late fall trip to get in a little bit of sunny weather before the long NW winter. We're not snowbirds but just like to take 2 to 3 week trips usually to the Southwest. We hadn't traveled that late in the year before and were careful to keep a close watch on the weather. We use a variable schedule of boondocking and also staying in RV parks now and then.
Every trip is different with its own unique experiences and challenges. It's all part of getting out of the comfort zone of daily life and broadening your horizons, refreshing your outlook, gaining new insights, and learning new things and meeting new people. It's always good when you finally get back home with a little more positive outlook than when you left.
Some of the most valuable things I learned during this trip was patience and flexibility. You can plan all you want, but invariably things will come up to change all that and you need to have the ability to change on a moments notice. One of the more vivid examples of this was when we stopped for the night near Stockton, California and was looking forward to a restful night before the next big push up towards the Siskiyou Mountains in the next day. While settling in for the night my wife said she just saw a report of snow in the Siskiyous and said we should check the Weather Band on the radio. As soon as I turned on the Weather Band I was surprised to hear a Wind Warning for the Sacramento Valley of winds up to 60 mph and a warning to high-profile vehicles. In addition to that the temperatures were plummeting in all higher elevations with even Reno going down into the 20's. Our motorhome was not winterized yet so that was another issue to take into account.
Well to make a long story short, we immediately left Stockton and headed to San Francisco with the intention of traveling up north via Hwy 101 which we figured would be milder and out of the path of the big wind. And we left none too soon either as the wind rapidly began to intensify as we headed West. But as soon as we got to the other side of the mountains and down into the Bay area, the wind stopped, and the rest of our trip north was safe all the way back home to Washington.
jerrym
2012 Jayco 24SDS
w/ Mercedes diesel engine
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