Lake Siskiyou, Mt. Shasta CA & Rally stuff

Lake Siskiyou with Mt. Shasta in the background

Our site

Today we moved down I-5 to a park recommended to us by a friend Becky, who has camped lots of places in this area. We are at the Lake Siskiyou Camp-Resort. This a big summer resort, 110 RV sites, 250 tent sites and various cabins and even a couple houses for rent. There is a little store and restaurant but of course the store is on limited hours and the grill is closed for the season. The good part of being off season is there aren’t very many people here so it is very quiet.  Our site is huge and has a nice forest view. We are only here 2 nights but it will be a great place to just relax.

 As we were setting up we were visited by a doe, a young buck and two fawns that still had their spots. They seem to be use to humans, we almost wondered if campers had been feeding them since later they came back to our site. Feeding wildlife is something I really have a problem with, I think we are doing a disservice to our animal friends, so they won’t be getting anything from us. It is fun to see them. I also got a good shot of one of the many chatting squirrels and a steller’s jay. The steller’s jay is a noisy fella but they sure are pretty. I think we will enjoy these couple days.

Stellar's Jay

Evelyn asked about the rally and what we learned. Now that I am a little more rested I thought I’d share a little. Many RVers know about the RV-Dreams website and about its authors Howard and Linda Payne. They began full timing 7 years ago with no previous experience. They decided that part of this journey was to share it with others and they share most everything including financials. If you are considering joining this full time journey their website and these rallies are a valuable resource. They cover lots of areas, for us the ones that we really learned a lot at were the ones on insurance, tire safety and weight consideration, and John got to talk with the guys from AM Solar about a solar set up for our rig. We are looking at adding solar in the spring. We got weighed again and found out we are fine in all areas. We did this a couple years ago but had trouble finding all the numbers they needed and so our numbers weren’t quite right. That sure made John feel better.

Our first visitors

The other two things that I really enjoyed was an open house through the attendees rigs. It was great to see how each of us had personalized our space and everyone shared modifications they had made to make things work better. We found some great ways to add shelves and other storage helpers. The other activity was a day at Guaranty RV in Junction City. They are a large RV dealer that was one of the sponsors for the rally. They had a very interesting seminar for us where they went through a lot of maintenance issues with RVs, discussed batteries and the thing that I learned is what a black tank looks like that makes you understand how important keeping water in the tank is. We knew to do this but now I understand why.

In the afternoon we had a chance to look at their extensive stock of RVs. They have a lot just for 5th Wheels, one for trailers and one for drivables. We went to the 5th wheel lot and went through several new DRV Mobile Suites & Lifestyle (new line). They were all bigger than our rig. What I found is I am very happy with our rig. It may be small but I think it is better built than what we saw. The cabinetry is something I think Excel does better  and overall it just has a more solid feel. I am also happy with the size, we talked about going a little bigger but now I think I am content with our smaller size. 

Howard and Linda are great people and I think the best part of the rally is how they provide all this in such a fun environment. This was one of their smaller rallies, about 70 people, which I think was an advantage. This group became a community and that is a beautiful thing. If you ever have a chance to attend I think you’d enjoy it. I am not particularly a rally person but his one was a delight.