Well, we’re wrapping up a short stay here in Sacramento. Lot’s of lightning and thunder tonight, which is a bit different than what we see down in Southern California.

Diane and Molly have had a good time with at the Home-school Conference, and I’ve been able to get some work done, as well has a whole day and a couple evenings worth of work on websites and web hosting stuff. Lot’s of fun. Most of the effort was in getting our site moved to a new host, and then also setting up a new site for my sister’s office. Check out the work I’ve done at www.chelliegardner.com. This is the updated version that is currently at www.chellie-gardner.com. We’ve moved it from Joomla to WordPress.

Anyway, nothing major here. We’re at a KOA. The West Sacramento/Old Town KOA to be exact. It’s a pretty nice facility. A bit of an odd configuration for our site, and a couple others, where there are trees and/or hookups in odd places. I flipped a coin. Sewer hookup or awning, and went with the awning. Since the girls are gone all day, I’ve kept the dishes used to a minimum, and showered at the parks showers. We’re good to go, and will dump tomorrow on the way out.

There’s a couple RV parks that are IN Sacramento. This one is a pretty nice facility. Last year, we stayed at Cal Expo, which is just a big paved lot, with a bit too much slope for my tastes. The price is right there, but that’s about it. Diane is getting more involved with this Homeschool group, so I suspect we’ll be up here again next year.

Heading to Morgan Hill, CA next.

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Wilderness Lakes has been a pretty good “Home” base for our California adventures. It’s close to our old Orange County home, it’s free, full hook-ups at every site, and the amenities are good. It’s a nice place to bike, hang at the pool, allows campfires when burning is OK, and they let you wash your RV/car at your site. You can even do some work on the rig if needed, like my painting of some of the stickers.

Molly also went to Seaworld camp during the beginning of this visit. She had a GREAT time. I’m hoping she’ll put some blog posts together and tell everyone what all she learned and did while there. Fingers crossed! I took the day off from work in order to go pick her up on the last day. Diane’s back had been out for a couple days. Molly and I had a nice time touring many of the shows at the park and I enjoyed hearing all about her camp and what all she learned. The Clyde and Seymour show was awesome! We fed some Sea Lions too.

During this trip, Diane and Molly got to hang out with Diane’s Aunt who was visiting from Florida, as well as to attend the Home-school conference in Ontario. Lot’s of visiting with friends, Ed and Victoria, etc. I was also able to get some customer visits in, and plenty of work done. The red stickers are now 75% done. Most of the ugliness is gone. It also looks like the other stickers just need the old clear stuff off and they’ll be fine. The sun and some high pressure water seem to keep the peeling process moving along just fine.

Our next trip is up north for another Home-school conference in Sacramento, with some other stops on the way up and back.

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While here in Menifee, we got to witness the recent solar eclipse.  I remember using a couple index cards to view it many years ago in grade school, but we made a bigger viewer this time.  A recent antennae purchase provided us with a cardboard tube that was about 5 feet long.  We put aluminum foil on one end, and white tissue paper on the other, poked a small hole in the foil, and we had our viewer.  It is a little tough to aim and hold steady, but we made use of some of the tree’s to get it done.  Here’s a few pictures.

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On New Years Eve, we pulled in the lines, slides and awning, and headed from Pio Pico in Jamul, CA, to the Orangeland RV Park in Orange, CA.  Orangeland RV boasts a couple of wins for RV Park of the year, and it’s easy to see why.  The staff is very friendly, everything is super clean, functional, and appealing.  Laundry, bathrooms, pool, store, and even the sites themselves.  It’s not cheap, but still very nice.  Rates are high, so make sure to take advantage of Good Sam and AAA discounts to get 10% off.  Orange and Lemon trees are everywhere, and you’re free to pick from your site, or an empty site.  Or, just pick some up in the boxes outside the store.

We went to the Irvine Great Park for a New Years Eve celebration with some friends from Homeschooling activities.  The Anderson’s, Jones’s, and De Los Santos’s were there as well.  It was a very foggy evening, but the mood was not hampered by it.  There was a DJ with dancing and games in one building, and then a live band outside on a stage with the big orange balloon as a backdrop.  They had a countdown at 9pm to celebrate with those on the east coast, and for the kids.  Fireworks went off, and since it was a ground show, the fog didn’t hurt it at all.  Only issue of the night was the long lines for the food trucks, but the ladies took off and got some fast food from Carls Jr to solve that.

We’ll be here at Orangeland till Saturday, then out to Menifee for three weeks with Thousand Trails.

For those that registered for the RSS and e-mail updates, they should start rolling in now.  I think we have it all fixed up.  🙂

For our attendance at the Homeschool Association of California conference this year, we had first planned to stay at the hotel, and just park the RV in their parking lot.  But, further research found the Cal Expo RV Park that has laundry and showers, is $35 a night, and is only about 3 miles from the conference hotel.  Compared to the $120+ per night for the hotel, and where to stay was a no-brainer.

We pulled in and found the staff to be very friendly.  We knew it is just a parking lot, with some trees and hookups, but it is a well kept parking lot.  The spaces vary in size, but we got a large one with plenty of room to spread out, pop open the awning, and hang out on the front “lawn”.

While here, we’re going to visit the capital, and attend the conference.

On our way from San Francisco, we stopped off in Fairfield, CA, for a tour of the world famous Jelly Belly factory.  RV parking here was excellent, with plenty of large spaces.  We got inside and found a pretty long line waiting for the tour.  We probably stood in line for close to an hour, but the tour itself was over 30 minutes, so all in all, well worth the time and effort, and price (free!).  I didn’t see any familiar HMI software running, but plenty of box makers, conveyor belts, and control’s of all kinds.  The process they take is pretty involved, but yet they are producing massive quantities day after day.  Getting all of the historical information was cool as well.  The artwork made from jelly bellies was fascinating.  The one piece of info that still kinda haunts me is when they said it took 9 months for one of the Jelly Belly portraits to be made.  Why???  Maybe waiting for just the right shade of bean?

While we didn’t eat at the cafeteria, we did get to see how they had bean shaped burgers, and bean shaped pizza’s.  Very much into the bean.  We made it out of there with a couple of chocolate things (it is a candy making place, so not just jelly beans), some gummy worms, and a bag of “Belly Flops”, which are the beans that don’t make the cut to be real Jelly Belly’s.  These are the ones that are two or three beans stuck together, or other abnormalities.  Hopefully none of them are the rotten egg or dog poop flavor.  (Yeah, they have those there too).