Freeway to LA!!! YIKES!!!

By 7:00 am I was packed and ready to hit the road on my next great adventure, beginning with a Golden Spikes Rally in Fullerton California, just down the street from Disneyland.  I have friends that want to hitch a ride to Mickey's house, making this the perfect opportunity for me to check out the roads with the RV.  I'm sorry friends, but that's NOT going to happen.  After traveling over 8,000 miles on an Alaskan trip, I thought this would be a piece of cake.  It tasted like one I had buried in my back yard!!!

Hwy 99 South had more construction than Hwy 99 North.  Seems we are so rich that we can replace hundreds of miles of freeway!!  Of course I forgot to get my small camera out, so these not-so-good pictures are from my phone.

I made arrangements with the Westerfields to catch them from just outside of Fresno.  Amazingly, we were minutes apart.  The Rest Stop meet up area was closed, so we went on to Hoddels in Bakersfield for a quick salad lunch.  Back on the road with very little traffic, we headed up the Grapevine over Tejon Pass.  Easy peasy ... my rig just purred along!!!

Once at the top, MORE construction.  The two lanes designated for trucks soon became a parking lot only one lane wide.  I thought this was a traffic jam ... but we weren't in it yet!!!

Castaic Lake was beautiful as always.  About here is where the wind started.  Apparently the Santa Anas decided to welcome us to the LA Basin ... and we fought with them all the way down the hill.  Even going slow from all the road construction, the winds pushed me from side to side since I'm pretty light weight.  I white-knuckled it for the next couple hours, not only from the wind, but the VERY narrow lanes.

Then we hit the second parking lot!!!  This one lasted almost to Anaheim, where the freeway finally opens up into a REAL freeway.  The good thing about this is the slow speed ... the wind, trucks and narrow lanes aren't a problem any more!!

It was a breeze from Fullerton to our destination, Orangeland RV Park in Anaheim ... all of 4 miles.  This is a nice park, wide spaces with lots of trees, a pool, laundry and over 200 spaces, most of which appear to be permanent residence sites.  NOT "inexpensive", my 5 night stay is $325.  They are actually located a few miles from Disneyland, it's easily drivable without hitting the freeway, but I seriously doubt I'll ever drive my RV here again.  I'm adventuresome, but not crazy!!!

Several of the Golden Spike Group have already arrived, so we carpooled over to Knotts Berry Farm to the Chicken Dinner Restaurant.  I haven't been here in ages ... and it's changed dramatically!!!  The old wooden Roller Coaster still stands however, and was going strong when we arrived at the parking lot.  Thanks to Kurt and Betty Simon for giving me a ride!!

Things really have changed ... you can go to the Chicken Dinner Restaurant up front, or you can head to the back to a large room for the SENIOR Chicken Dinner Buffet.  I guess we all qualified, because 25 of us had the $10.75 all-you-can-eat buffet plus a big piece of berry pie.  

Stuffed to the gills we slowly waddled back to the car and headed for the RV park.  It was a pretty quiet night ... I can say that because I was awake for all but two hours!!  The winds started to come up flapping my slide-out covers, along with a small screeching from a branch rubbing.  Today the ladder comes out for a little trim job ... that is if I can get it to stand up long enough in the wind.  It's back to Hawaii weather here ... HOT, windy and dry!!!  Today is a "nothing to do" day, so I'm hitting the store to pick up all the things I forgot to bring!!