Today was a travel day. Before we left our site at Indian Flat RV Park outside Yosemite, we spent way too much time doing a sewer dump. The campground doesn’t have a proper dump (unless your trailer is about 5′ long), so we had to wait until someone left a full-hookup site. Once one of those was empty, we moved the trailer to that site and used the dump there.
Our next destination is Lake Tahoe. For the drive from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe, you have several choices of windy mountain roads. We chose what looked like the most non-mountainous route by heading away from Yosemite on 140 to Mariposa then up 49 to Placerville to US-50. The drive was only 209 miles, but it took about 7 hours…that’s an average speed of 29mph. Blazing! It would have been really fun in a sports car, but it was slow going dragging a travel trailer through all those steep and twisty mountain roads. Still, we made it safely and got to see lots of beautiful scenery along the way.
A little before sunset, we made it to our Road Trip Spot #8: Camp Richardson in South Lake Tahoe, CA. Not to be complainypants, but we are really frustrated with the campground already. I’ll call it like I see it…First, all the water/electric hookups are by the road, which is the opposite end of where all they are on EVERYONE’S RV. On top of that, our site’s hookups were on the wrong side of the RV. For us, this meant that we had to use every water hose we have (about 50′) and our 220V/50A electrical connection wouldn’t reach. Instead, we strung our 110V extension cords to reach the 20A house-style electrical outlet. I’m sure Camp Richardson saved some money putting in all the connections by the road, but the extra pain and a 5x reduction in the electrical wattage we paid for was really frustrating. Upside-down and backwards. Yay. Another frustrating part was that this wasn’t clear until it was too late. They sent an email after we made our reservation explaining this…which also included the first mention of their cancellation policy. Yet another frustrating thing was that their email was extremely directive in how to check in (where to go, where to park, etc.), but the day-of reality was completely different and not clear at all. Of course we’ll deal with it and be fine, but starting our stay with “I hate this campground” shouldn’t be the way you want your customers to feel.
Here’s the road trip so far. If you just count the mileage between all of our camp sites, we’re up to 976 miles. Tomorrow, we’ll love on Lake Tahoe!