We have mentioned a few times that we have been considering buying a Thousand Trails membership. When we bought Ollie, he came with a free one year trial membership to Thousand Trails so we took advantage of that to see what we thought of the parks.

So far we have been to several parks with mixed feelings about them. Most of them are okay, some are really nice, and there are some we hope never to go back to. After giving it some thought we decided that a membership might be a good thing and could certainly save us a lot of money going forward, but we didn’t think it was worth the full asking price of a membership.

Fortunately, there are ways to purchase existing memberships from current owners. We did a lot of research and decided on the minimum level of membership we would be happy with and what we felt it was worth to us. We then planned to wait and see if we could find a membership that fit, knowing we didn’t need to be in a hurry.

Luckily, we found a private party who was looking to sell a membership that exceeded the minimum we were looking for. We offered her the fair price we had decided we were willing to pay, and she accepted.

The entire process went really well and we are now Thousand Trails members! We were able to redo the rest of our plans for this summer at only Thousand Trails/Trails Collection parks. The amount that we saved just on the non-Thousand Trails parks we had previously booked paid for our first years dues!!

We have always loved the name Santa Cruz (it sounds cool, right?) so we were happy to include Santa Cruz Ranch RV Resort as one of our Thousand Trail parks. The park is very small and tight (most of the Trails Collection parks seem to be), but the location is good and it’s a nice, clean park.

Mallone’s is a nice, casual bar and restaurant about a half mile from the RV Park we stayed at. We walked there a couple of times for dinner and the food was really good! They also have live entertainment on weekends. We were surprised to find a blues/classic rock band that we really liked (we even got to dance some).

Speaking of classic rock, you may know we are huge Doobie Brothers fans, so we had to pay tribute to their song Neal’s Fandango and take a drive through ‘the hills above Santa Cruz.’ Glad we did, we found Regale, a beautiful winery to have lunch at. The setting was incredible, the pizza was great, and the wine was very good!

Santa Cruz’s waterfront has a boardwalk, but the entire length is an amusement park, not shops, restaurants, and hotels like we’re used to. There is also a wharf that has several restaurants. We stopped at Makai for lunch and had a great chat with the bartender. He suggested a drive from the wharf area up to the Natural Bridges State Beach, so we did that the next day.

We also took a day trip to Monterey.

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And another one to Capitola. Capitola is a really small, really cute beach town. We had a great dinner there at Margaritaville, which we were happy to learn is NOT part of the famed Jimmy Buffet chain and existed long before the Margaritaville-Buffet restaurants. Nothing against Jimmy Buffet but we like to eat local when we can. They had a beautiful view and great authentic Mexican food!

Another cute seaside town on our way up the California coast. We stayed at the Santa Barbara Sunrise RV Park, a nice, very small, family owned park. It is right off of Route 1 so there is a fair amount of noise from the highway but not enough to bother us inside our rig.

Santa Barbara has a really nice beach area and a wharf with a few restaurants all within walking distance of the RV park. Sadly, it was too cold to spend any real time on the beach. But we did have dinner one night at Longboard’s Grill on Stearns Wharf. The food was good and the view was great.

Most of the restaurants and shops are in the middle of town, which isn’t near the ocean. We spent a couple of evenings there and got a great pasta dinner at Pascucci’s, an Italian restaurant (well, Candi’s was great! Mike’s was just okay😒). We did get a REALLY good pizza at another Italian restaurant, Olio Pizzeria, It had the cutest little ‘back alley’ outside seating area! After eating at two Italian restaurants, we are humming Billy Joel – bottle of red, bottle of white. Although for us, both bottles were white!

We also took a day trip to Solvang, a town known for its Danish style architecture. A friend of ours said if we went up there we had to try Paula’s Pancake House, thanks Lucinda, good advice! After that huge breakfast it was nice to spend some time exploring the town.

Santa Barbara gave us a lot to hum about, everywhere we looked we found music references! From Billy Joel to the Beatles to the Eagles!

On the way from Acton to Santa Barbara we stopped in a little town called Fillmore. Luckily they have a tiny but very nice regional park called Kenney Grove. It was a really nice, peaceful place to stop for a long weekend.

In town there is a cute little winery by the name of Giessinger Winery. They are members of Harvest Hosts and even though we didn’t stay the night, we wanted to show them some love by stopping by and sampling! It was a really cute little winery with some nice wines, and a small folk group playing in the background.

Interestingly, Fillmore is known in the film industry for the Fillmore and Western Railway Company. They provide a variety of locomotive and train equipment to the TV and Film Industry. The railyard has been used to film over 400 Movies, TV shows, and Commercials. Some familiar works are Three Amigos, Seabiscuit, Get Smart, CSI, NCIS, and Criminal Minds. They were filming something while we were there but we have no idea what. Unfortunately they no longer do tours or train rides. So all we could do is drive by 😢

So, as we were planning our trip through California we are trying to stay in as many Thousand Trails parks as we can, which is how we wound up in Acton. It is a very small town, not even one stoplight!! Just a few stop signs!

The park, Soledad Canyon, was okay and we managed to get a pretty good site, but it is right next to a train track. We lived next to a train track in Baltimore, so we didn’t think it would bother us, but there is a road crossing at the entrance and EVERY time a train crosses it, they have to blow their horn – apparently loudly and several times – AND EVEN AT 4:30 IN THE MORNING!!

There was one restaurant in town we did really like, the ’49er Saloon. Believe it or not, some of the best onion rings we’ve ever had. All their food was delicious and homemade!

We were also lucky to find a nice local winery, the Antelope Valley Winery. They have a farmers market there on Saturday so of course we HAD to go to that, and while there OF COURSE we had to do a wine tasting. We found a really nice wine we liked and bought a bottle for later!

Acton is about 10 miles from Palmdale, which is home to a large, and famous, Lockheed Martin plant called the Skunk Works. So of course Mike had to drive by (he retired from Lockheed Martin in Baltimore).

There are two small aircraft museums in town, right next to each other. One is the Joe Davies Heritage Airpark, which includes a variety of aircraft including a B-52 and a one of the 747 Space Shuttle transport planes. Right next door is probably one of the smallest Air Force Museums called the Blackbird Airpark that has three variants of retired US spy planes, two versions of the SR-71 and a U2.

It was nice to have a couple of weeks to relax after running like mad in LA, but we were glad when it was time to move on.

Santa Monica was about 30 miles from where we were staying in Long Beach so we took a day trip to see the famous pier! All we can say is … it was nice, but it ain’t Ocean City, MD! … and they have the most annoying looking sidewalks!

A few weeks ago we had a very helpful sales rep at Best Buy – who just happened to be from Baltimore (another Bawlamoron as we like to say). While we were talking to him we mentioned that we would be in Los Angeles soon and he told us if we made it to Santa Monica we had to get chicken and waffles from Bruxie’s and that it would be easy to find because it was across from, of all things, the Apple store. Honestly, we have never really understood the hype about chicken and waffles, we’d tried it a couple of times but weren’t all that excited by it. But, the sales rep told us it was one of the best things he’s eaten, so we decided to try it – so glad we did!!

Everyone knows that if you visit LA you HAVE to get a picture of the Hollywood Sign, but what about hiking up to it?!? We decided to do a group hike with Bikes and Hikes LA to visit the famous sign. We met at the Innsdale Trailhead and hiked about 2 miles each way. Sure, 2 miles isn’t far – but it was all uphill!!! The view was amazing, and we’re really glad we did it, but we probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you really like to hike!

We mentioned earlier that we’re fans of the TV show Bosch. On the way home from the Hollywood Sign we stayed up in the hills above LA and found the house used for Harry Bosch’s home. It really is perched on the edge of a hill with an awesome view of downtown LA!

We are making our way up the California coast! We stayed in Long Beach, which is about 20 miles from downtown LA. 20 miles doesn’t seem like far until you take Los Angeles traffic into account! Yes, it really is as bad as they say it is!

We were only there for four days and we packed every day with as many sights as we could. First we went to ride Angels Flight. We are huge fans of the tv show “Bosch” and the books that it is based on. If you read or watch, you know that one of the seasons/books was based on a fictional murder on Angels Flight. The ride was short but a lot of fun. We managed to ride with a great group of people. For some reason the doors wouldn’t open so we couldn’t get on, then the first person in the group (not us!) got stuck on the other side of the door and it locked again! Then we finally all got on it and it didn’t move! For a really long time! Fortunately, we were all joking and laughing it up. But we eventually were able to make it to the top and back down again all 315 feet of it :-).

Right across the street is a neat food mall called the Grand Central Market where we got beers and a decent pizza for dinner.

The next day we were up and drove to LA again! This time we took a Big Bus Tour from Hollywood Boulevard. The Big Bus was a pretty expensive way to get around for the day (even with the Groupon discount), but their hop on/hop off tour allowed us to get around the city easily and get off when we wanted to do a little walking. The first stop we got off at was Beverly Hills Garden which is close to Rodeo Drive. We really weren’t interested in shopping, but felt it was something we needed to see! And who says you can’t get a good deal on Rodeo Drive, for only $2980 (marked down from $3980) – you too can own an original Salvador Dali painting!

After walking around there for a little while (and getting lunch) we got back on the bus and headed to The Original Farmers Market. We always love food related markets! This isn’t what we’d really call a ‘farmers’ market, since it was mostly prepared food, but they did have a nice gourmet market, plenty of eateries, and a few butchers. We decided to come back here for dinner another day and took the bus to its last stop at the beginning of The Walk of Fame. It was fun to see the stars in real life, and The Kinks were right, there are a lot we’ve hardly even heard of!

A short walk down Hollywood Blvd. from there is the TLC Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the historically iconic theater famous for holding Hollywood’s most famous movie openings. There are footprints and handprints in the cement sidewalk from the early days of Hollywood all the way up to today’s modern stars. BTW, yes – Mike does have big feet, especially compared to Mary Pickford’s!

A wine flight, a margarita flight, a cheese ‘flight’!

We actually stayed in Menifee at our second Thousand Trails park, Wilderness Lakes. It’s a nice park with small canals running through it (didn’t see any lakes!). Similar to most Thousand Trails parks, the sites in this one are first come, first serve. We again got really lucky and found a nice site with full hookups and 50 amp electric (which is good since it got really hot!). We weren’t near any of the canals but didn’t really want to be since the water draws bugs. Plus, the park is home to a huge flock of geese that like to hang out near the water. They’re kinda cool but you gotta watch out for the little land mines they leave behind!

Menifee is a nice little city with a couple of major grocery stores and a lot of restaurants, mostly chains. It was nice to be able to easily get to a grocery store or go out to eat.

The highlight of these two weeks was definitely being so close to Temecula, which is home to almost 50 wineries! We visited several of them over a few days! Our favorite was Wilson Creek and we actually joined their wine club. Now we have to figure out how to get back to pick up wine twice a year – oh, yeah, our home IS on wheels!

We also went in to Old Town Temecula a few times, including a Saturday night visit to the Old Town Blues Club. This is the first time we’ve been out to listen to a live band since Covid! It felt so great to be out again!

Speaking of getting out again after Covid, we also went to see two movies while we were there. The Reading Cinema’s at Cal Oaks is a super nice movie theater that’s been remodeled recently. The chairs are all huge leather electric recliners with a ton of leg room! First we saw In the Heights, which we had been looking forward to for a while – it did not disappoint! Then we went back to see A Quiet Place, Part II, which was also really good.

To cap our stay off we were fortunate to see a really cool Super Moon!

We started slowly making our way up the California Coast and made it as far as Huntington Beach, which is just south of Los Angeles.

We stayed at the Waterfront RV Park, which is basically a large black topped parking lot with hookups and lines for spaces, and we loved it! All we had to do was walk across Route 1 to get to Huntington Beach State Park. From there it’s a easy short walk to the fun part of town with restaurants and shopping. Our favorite meal there was chicken tikka masala at Indarra.

Huntington Beach’s nickname is Surf City, we could see why from all the surfers that we saw! They even had a surfing contest going on one day!

We took a drive one day down to Balboa Island. They have a very small shopping area with some cute stores – but who knew … this is the original home of the Chocolate Covered Frozen Banana?!?! So of course, we had to stop and get one – in full disclosure though … ours was covered with peanut butter – YUM!!

Huntington Beach is not far from Anaheim CA, which is where Disneyland is located and hey, ya gotta go see the original don’t ya? So we spent a nice day visiting the park and checking out the newest Star Wars addition. To be honest, it was fun to see the original but one has to admit that Disney World in Orlando is a far better park with much more to offer.