We left Larkspur and headed for Sacramento, the capital of California. This was an interesting jump for us, because after our minute planning for the San Francisco stop, we were heading for Sacramento with no idea where we were going from there. Our original plan - and I mean original, like from when we started thinking about this adventure - was to head north through California and into Oregon, then through Washington, and then up the coast through Canada to get to Alaska this summer. The planning, according to the calendar, was going perfectly. But - and this is a very big but - this year’s record snowpack in the mountains of California have caused our ability to exit California through the north, or even the northeast, to be very limited since even the major interstates, I-5 and I-80, are still requiring chains through the passes. Hugging the coast was a possibility, but we would have to bypass a lot of the parks we wanted to see. And, we have been regularly chatting with friends we are planning to visit in Portland, and they have been saying wait, wait, wait, because even in April, Portland is still experiencing winter weather which we just aren’t equipped for either physically or mentally. So, as we pulled into Sacramento, we were convincing ourselves that our best course of action was to head south as far as we had to go to start heading back east, with the revised plan to get to Alaska on a more eastern route, which would also give us the chance to pick up a few of the Mid Atlantic states we’d missed as we scurried south trying to stay ahead of the cold through last fall.
Our unsettled mental state must have given us some bad juju, because as a capitol, Sacrament was a bust. It looks, from the windshield, like a beautiful capital district, with an imposing building and an expansive park. However, we’re not quite sure, because we drove every street within a mile of the capitol, and couldn’t find any parking for our oversized rig. The metered parking spaces lining the streets were all too narrow, so even though we would have happily paid for two spaces to accommodate our length, we would have been hanging in the street. We found an open parking lot and squeezed ourselves into a space, only to find a big “No RV Parking” sign at the kiosk where we went to pay. We considered paying the $10 for an hour anyway and hoping for the best, but decided that if Sacramento was our last stop in California, we’d rather not ruin it. So, we contented ourselves with the drive by photo we’d taken on our way in, and prepared to head south.
Our unsettled mental state must have given us some bad juju, because as a capitol, Sacrament was a bust. It looks, from the windshield, like a beautiful capital district, with an imposing building and an expansive park. However, we’re not quite sure, because we drove every street within a mile of the capitol, and couldn’t find any parking for our oversized rig. The metered parking spaces lining the streets were all too narrow, so even though we would have happily paid for two spaces to accommodate our length, we would have been hanging in the street. We found an open parking lot and squeezed ourselves into a space, only to find a big “No RV Parking” sign at the kiosk where we went to pay. We considered paying the $10 for an hour anyway and hoping for the best, but decided that if Sacramento was our last stop in California, we’d rather not ruin it. So, we contented ourselves with the drive by photo we’d taken on our way in, and prepared to head south.
After a quick scan of maps and mid-range weather reports, we decided that our best escape route was to head south until we could pick up I-15, which runs out of California between Death Valley to the north and the Mojave Desert Preserve to the south, and into Nevada and Las Vegas. That was way more ground than we could cover in one day, so we found an Army Corp of Engineers park called Hidden View Campground at Helmsley Lake near Madera, California. It was a great place to spend a quiet night, which we really appreciated after the urban RV park.
Helmsley Lake was still more than a day’s drive to Las Vegas for us, so we spent one more night at Jawbone Canyon, which was only about 10 miles out of our way. We were hitting high winds and wanted to stop, and we knew we could take a paved road to easily accessible campsites, so it was only sensible. We were a little surprised when we got there on a Thursday and found it very busy, until we realized it was the end of the school vacation for lots of schools, and apparently it’s a thing to take the kids out to ride their motos and ATVs in the desert. We really enjoyed watching them race up and down the hills, but we were glad the wind had stopped in the morning so we could continue on to Las Vegas.