Moving Toward the Central Coast

When taking advantage of the low weekly rate at Escapee's Park of the Sierra, campers pay for the electricity they use at their site. So we played the game of seeing how little electricity we could get by with for that week. Before we left, we took a picture of our electric meter read-out. We used only 38.4 kilowatts in the last seven days. Even with California's inflated electricity rates, we paid our weekly electrical bill of only $7.59 when we left the park.

We are heading west, as we want to spend some time near the central coast. In the motor home, we traveled through many miles of orchards. It looks like the almond market is good, as we saw miles of new trees being planted. We also passed two almond cracking facilities, with tall piles of almonds still in their shells.

We drove through the town of Las Banos. Our Spanish language skills are very limited, but we recognize this as the word for "bathroom." Does this mean that 34,000 people live in the bathroom?

We have been in the central valley for the last week, which means we were in the bowl of land surrounded by mountains. So we had to cross through another mountain pass to get to the coastal area. We have an elevation function on our GPS, and we watched as we climbed from 300 feet up to 3,000 feet. The hills with their steep sides were beautifully green after the heavy rains of 2017. We drove quickly back down in elevation as we crossed over Pacheco Pass. We love having the diesel engine to carry us up the mountains, and the engine brake when heading down these steep grades.

We drove to the Hollister, California area where we are camping at CASA de Fruta RV Orchard Resort. We are using our Passport America card again to enjoy the half-price rate that is good Sunday through Thursday. The campground is basically an asphalt parking lot with a few trees. But we are surrounded by all things "CASA de." For example, the picture below is of the CASA de Wine and Deli. We ate dinner at the CASA de Restaurant and Bakery, but we might also try the CASA de Burrito before we leave.

On a Sunday afternoon, the parking lot was full of cars. Families were enjoying the CASA de Playground, but we thought the CASA de Carousel was especially unique.

We don't remember ever seeing a two-story carousel. But for children that aren't afraid of heights, there were ponies to ride on the second floor of the CASA de Carousel.

Children could also ride on the CASA de Choo-Choo, for a 15-minute tour of the entire park. Meanwhile, adult customers were shopping at the CASA de Fruit Stand. They had great quality fresh produce, even though we thought the prices were CASA de Expensive.

They also had rows and rows of dried fruit, in salad-bar-type displays where customers could scoop out their choices and pay for them by the pound. They had similar displays for all kinds of nuts, flavored in spicy, or salty, or guacamole, or cajun, or jalapeno . . . Again, their goods were expensive, and the "do not sample" signs were everywhere.

There is a CASA de Diesel that looked a lot like a gas station and convenience store. But our favorite shop was the CASA de Sweets and Coffee. It houses a bakery and ice cream shop, and we made purchases here on almost a daily basis.

Our first purchases included a cherry danish, an almond cinnamon roll, and an apricot fruit pie. That held us over for the first day, and we're a little worried about how many calories we will consume during our five day stay at CASA de Fruita as we explore a new part of California!