Back on the road with our Andiamo, our 2023 Airstream (Pottery Barn Edition) for our third rolling adventure of pulling our stateroom to destinations unknown. Welcome back or welcome as we embark on our first snowbird exploratory excursion. We hope you continue to enjoy our adventures.
First, we were very happy and fortunate that our dealership was able to store our Andiamo from June until pickup date of October 17th. Shout out to the folks at Traveland RV, especially, Jason. Also thanks for addressing all our breaking in little fixes, we are loving the new stairs. So, like clockwork we pulled into the dealer at our 10:30 pickup time with Jason pretty much waiting for us to hook up and take her away. Awesome.
We hit the 176 border crossing (the truck crossing) at about 11:30 and after a detailed agricultural inspection we entered the States at 12:30 - we may consider the Sumas crossing in the future. In March we went through the Sumas crossing in less than ten minutes, perhaps it has to do with all the semi trucks going through the 176 crossing, anyway food for thought. So we continue and along this journey down to Palm Desert we are utilizing our Thousand Trails (TT) Camping Pass as much as we are able which as it turns out to be almost a TT park which connects all the way down. This is the annual pass we purchased back in April and by the time we completed that trip the pass had already paid for itself. This means that every TT park we stay at on this journey is essentially free, pretty cool.
So on we went from the border crossing to Chehalis, just south of Olympia, which means going through Seattle and Tacoma on the I5, yikes. Crazy traffic, crazy merge patterns, talk about throwing ourselves right into the thick of having to get used to towing a trailer in difficult situations so quickly. We were very happy to pull into the Chahalis TT Park by about 5:30pm. This was a very nice, very large RV park with many sections for about 400 RV sites. Yes, some sections were closed for annual maintenance but many still open with good almost level full hookup sites. We stayed here for two nights which gave us a chance to reacquaint ourselves with Andiamo as well as stock up on supplies for our next little while. We knew not to do this until we crossed the line because there are many items that you are not allowed to transport over the country line, especially, fruit, vegetables and eggs.
After a few restful days we continued our journey south to a KOA in Sutherlin/Sequoia. This KOA is a converted drive in movie theatre which, at this time of year, shows movies on the weekends, pretty great idea. We found this KOA very organized with friendly staff with great size sites. Unfortunately, we were there on a Thursday so we did not experience the full movie offering. After our one night stop here it was off to another KOA Mt. Shasta, which was also very nicely run with spacious sites. Again, only a one night stop here to give us a little rest before heading to our next TT at Lake Minden.
The Thousand Trail parks are actually all pretty nice, at least that is what we have found. We receive emails prior to our visits where we are able preregister and when we arrive our welcome packages are always ready and always with friendly staff giving you all the information as it relates to the park. We have found all the parks to be unique, usually with good services and decent size sites. The Lake Minden park is very large as it surrounds the large lake. This gives the park a more intimate feel as the sections are quite far apart. We lucked out in our section as we invited to concert of sorts at a site not too far from ours. The woman here is very talented, she is autistic and is able to play all her music from memory. She can hear a song once and is able to not only play the music but also sing the lyrics. This was a real treat. We enjoyed the music for about an hour and a half before going back to our site for our usual late dinner. Before heading off the next day we were treated to some dog races also taking place at the Lake Minden Campground. We were now heading to one of our highlight destinations of this trip, Yosemite National Park. We had four nights there also at a Thousand Trails Campground, so yeah, free and with the National Park Pass we purchased back in June, the National Park was also free, double yeah! This will have a separate post.
A few pics of our journey to Yosemite National Park, hope you continue to enjoy…
Just the one pic of our spot at the TT Chehlis in Washington State.
The former Drive In Movie Theatre now the KOA Sutherlin/Umpqua, Oregon. Dressed for Halloween
The Movie Screen
Some RVers go all out.
Our spacious spot.
They also had a 50’s themed cafe with games room.
We like to stop at Rest Stops at about the 3 hour mark. This one was on a river.
Next up was the KOA Mt. Shasta, very nice.
Here we are now at the TT Minden Lake.
A real talent.
Any dogs allowed, yeah!
On the road to Yosemite… stay tuned.
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