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May 11th – The Journey to Southern California

We left our campsite in Lodi, California on the morning of May 10th with the plans to stay at Tule, Success Lake but as with everything, travel has been effected so much by this pandemic. We stopped at the campsite that we stayed at 2 years ago and there was only 3 other people camping there and it was completely booked. We talked to the front office and she said this year they were booked more than they ever have been. As we have already experienced so far this trip, things get booked up fast and there is pretty much no weekends available unless we plan for it. Of course that meant we needed to drive farther then expected to get to a campground that had availability.

We searched online to find something along the way and not too far of a drive and we came across Pyramid Lake RV Park. We normally travel on Mondays as it makes it easier to find available campsites and we can get the weekly rate. With that being said we decided we would just stay at Pyramid Lake for a week. It was kind of in the middle of nothing but also right off the highway. At this point it was a long day and everyone was ready to setup and get settled for the night. We were disappointed because this campsite didn’t allow fires, and the pool and washrooms weren’t open. I would say for the price we paid at this campground we didn’t get the value. When we pulled in we talked about just staying the night and then leaving, but after we pulled in, Kevin noticed some sort of oil all over the front of the camper and the entire undercarriage of the truck.

Kevin and I woke up early the next morning to call the closest Chevy dealer. We called Auto Nation Chevrolet Valencia at 7:30am and they said they could fit us in at 8:30, at that point we rushed out the door to get there in time since we were almost an hour away from there. We got there and it was one of the best dealerships experiences we have had. When making the appointment they assigned us to a service advisor, then when we got there he took care of us from the beginning to the end. There was only one diesel technician in, but they got us fit and set us up with a rental car until our truck was fixed. It ended up just being that the last place overfilled the transmission fluid and it was leaking out the top. I can say though the communication and the fact that the technician even came in the next day to be sure everything was good for us so we weren’t held up on our travels meant a lot to us.

At this point, the day was pretty much shot for doing much of anything, so we decided to take the kids for a little exploration drive with our mini van rental. It was pretty hot and we all wanted to take a dip, Pyramid Lake was right across the highway, we paid the $12 and went for a swim. It was technically not an open swim area as it was all closed for the year still, although that didn’t stop us! Everyone was excited to get a dip in the lake, this was our first lake swim of the year. I can say it was a lot warmer then the lakes in Hinton, Alberta. It is only May 11th and we are swimming in the lake and enjoying it.

After going for a swim and cooling off, we decided to go looking for another lake that Kevin found on the map. We weren’t thinking of going far when we grabbed the van so we didn’t put much fuel in thinking it would last quite a while. Being cheap we put e85 in it since its half price in California, however, it burns more fuel. We drove about 50 miles ending up on what would be considered a prairie trail road in the Canadian prairies before realizing we should probably turn around not knowing how far the next gas station was. The road we were on had some amazing views where we turned around to grab a few pictures. On the way out we realized we wouldn’t have made it to the lake since we were on the wrong road anyways so we headed back to the campsite (with the worst/cell service and worst WIFI ever) to make supper before it got too late.