Corning, California: After spending Monday morning with Dave's Mom, we hitched-up and drove two hours north, arriving late afternoon to the big rig/tour bus parking area at Thunder Mountain Casino in Lincoln (east of Sacramento on I-80). DT spent the rest of Monday afternoon on conference calls and, much later, we met Brother Steve and Gina in pretty downtown Auburn for a nice meal at tre Pazzi Trattoria. Witty conversation, good wine and time with family.
Brother Steve drove from their home in Lincoln to said parking lot this morning to deliver just-picked greens from their garden and a huge box of lemons so I will able to replace my frozen lemon juice stash lost when our fridge died in March.
Lemons
Baby Arugula (left), and a bag of assorted baby greens & edible flowers - and a handful of Italian parsley.Everything in Gina & Steve's huge garden is organic. Gina sells greens throughout the area, delivers boxes of veggies to customers weekly, boxes of fresh foods to the local food bank and trades her goods for wine, lamb, olive oil and other food stuffs produced from neighboring farms. It's the famed American barter system. Alive and well.
Dave, Steve and I went over to the Thunder Mountain Casino for breakfast. We did not gamble, but felt we should contribute something to The Tribe since they had let us park on their property overnight at no cost. Beautiful casino, by the way.
We had overnighted Monday in a huge (mostly empty) lot across the street from the casino. Most of the other occupants were tour buses, waiting for their riders inside the casino. There were less than ten RVs in the lot and a handful of long-haul truckers. Quiet. Security guards regularly patrol and occasionally a shuttle from the casino would come by to see if anyone needed a ride across the street.It had been quite a while since we had dry-camped and I am so very happy to report all systems worked perfectly and, due to the blue skies and our roof-top solar panels, using the generator was never required.
So... if you are counting... the last time we purchased fuel was last year. 20th of November 2015, in Victorville, California - just a few hours before arriving to the Motorcoach Country Club for the winter. We have now driven from Indio to Bakersfield, to Merced, to Sacramento and today to Corning, where we must have been down to the sludgy bottom of our fuel tank as we needed over 120 gallons to refill.
Ouch.
Fill 'er up!
We choose a site (it's free-choice at this campground; no assigned spaces), put out the slides and My Driver sat down to FOUR solid hours of conference calls.Your US Olympic track and field team will be chosen under the best of all circumstances.
I decided to keep myself busy by going for a walk with my camera. The casino is surrounded by fields and farm land and hundreds of birds live in the area. The birds did not cooperate with my camera, but I still found pretty things to photograph on my walk:
Dinner was very easy this evening. I had frozen a bit of Italian Shortrib sauce from a few weeks ago, so made it into a little lasagna for two... along with a salad using the greens harvested by Gina this morning.
Negroni Cocktail: equal parts gin, Campari & sweet red vermouth with an orange twist
Several different baby greens and edible flowers, topped with edible greens and a little crumbled blue cheese - tossed in Oregon olive oil and Oregon sea salt. Thank you, Gina and Steve for the beautiful food!We have a little vacation planned for the next few days - tune in.
Until my next update, I remain, your California correspondent.
RV PARK: Rolling Hills Casino RV Park - Pull-through gravel sites with water, 50/30 amp and sewer. No cable. Bathhouse is a hike and shared with truckers. Wifi. Casino, restaurants, limited groceries on site. All sites $28.