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.  🙂

We made it!  The drive from AZ to OC CA was pretty uneventful.  I started out just after 6 in the morning, and Diane made it to the front of the RV a little ways before we crossed into California.  Got a little bit of rain which made a significant mess on the CRV, but no real trouble for the drive.

The plan had been to say at a recently started RV park / campground that is on a retreat center back in Black Star Canyon.  Well, we got there, though it seemed we were offroading to do it, but then found that the cell reception, and therefore Internet connections, did not exist there.  It was good we found this out before we went through the even bigger efforts of getting the RV to the site.

So, quick couple phone calls, and we drove over to our local favorite, Canyon RV Park in Yorba Linda.  This is where we started from way back in late October.  We’ll be here till after Christmas, but not sure where we’ll be for the week between Christmas and New Years.  Could be here, or Thousand Trails in Menifee, or could be in Anaheim.  We will be moving to Anaheim for New Years and the week after.  I’m now signed up for a VMWare class in the area that week.

But for now, Diane got to see her girls for her birthday, Molly is back “home” in the RV, and we’re settled in for work and activities.  We’ll be working on our storage situation this week, and picking up a couple things that we stored, and dropping off some things that we can now store.  Hoping to get the bikes with us from now on, and a ladder.  Oh, and the bread machine.  Yummmm.

We’ll call this the last post for the “First Big Trip” series.  From this point on, we’ll be in regular fulltime mode, moving from one Thousand Trails park to the other, with some “vacation” spots mixed in with the Komfort Kruisers or family.

Merry Christmas everyone!