TRAVEL DAY
From: John L. Whitehead, Jr. Campground at Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, Earlimart, CA – Pixley National Wildlife Refuge & Kern National Wildlife Refuge.
To:Hidden View Army Corps of Engineers Campground at Henley Lake Recreation Area, Raymond, CA.
Day 141 – Our new destination was north of Allensworth Park, above Fresno and Madera, and west of the Sierra Mountain range. We’d never been to this area before, but figured that if it was an Army Corps of Engineers campground, we couldn’t go wrong. This turned out to be true.
We departed our campsite at 10 a.m. It was 60 degrees with no wind and hazy, smoggy sunshine. Because the water was turned off at our current campground, we were nearly out of drinking water and could not dump our tanks before we left. We were looking forward to filling up with water and dumping our tanks at our new location.
The first half of the drive was on a two-lane highway that wasn’t too busy with trucks. The scenery was exactly as if we’d never left the campground – flat farm lands with fruit and nut trees in rows in the fields, or many cows penned up in tight proximity at stinky dairy farms. Spring was obviously beginning here. Trees and bushes were flowering. Vegetables in fields were bright green. There was one major issue, though: WATER. We passed by fields where grapes and fruit trees had been left to dry up and nut trees were dead or pulled out of the ground. We’d read about this, but had not seen it in person yet. Many small farming towns had large signs posted beside the road saying, “DAM THE WATER. STOP SENDING OUR WATER TO THE OCEAN”. And other slogans. Pleas to Congress, pleas to Gavin Newsom – the Governor. We passed through Corcoran, a city that claimed to be “The World’s Biggest Farming Town”, (some other towns might beg to differ, LOL). Eventually, we left the two-lane highway just before Fresno, a very large sprawling city, and got on the much busier highway with all the trucks.
Beyond Fresno, which seemed to take forever to get out of, it was more rural again. We entered Madera and passed by miles and miles of pistachio nut trees and more different kinds of nut trees, plus various fruit trees. Past Madera the scenery changed dramatically. We could barely see distant mountains, some with snow on top of them. If it had been a clear day without the haze, it would’ve been beautiful. As we headed east towards the mountains, we left the flat farmlands behind. There were pretty, rolling, green hills dotted with free range cows and horses. Some of the hills had interesting rock formations; some of the hills were covered with wild flowers. It was very nice. We were getting closer to our new campground.
We arrived at Hidden Valley Army Corps of Engineers Campground, located in the Henley Lake Recreation Area, at 12:25 p.m. It was 72 degrees. We drove in past the ranger’s entrance booth – no one there – and turned right at the sign for camping. There were two group camping areas for big crowds. Nope, that’s not us. We hoped there was other camping! We turned around and went back to the narrow campground road. Still no one at all around. We drove further in, passing by the dump station. Well, we’re here – might as well dump tanks. That chore complete, we drove onward. Still no one there. A road led to the left that pointed to the boating, fishing, recreation areas. No camping. Uh oh. We drove on and took the next right and there was the campground, indeed hidden in the valley overlooking Henley Lake. Beautiful. Very few people were there camping, or otherwise. We drove around until we found the campsite we liked best, logged on the computer (luckily there was a signal), and reserved the campsite (#40) for five nights. Once we had a confirmation number, we relaxed – for a short period of time at least.
Before unpacking, we let the girls out and had lunch. We filled the RV with fresh water from one of spigots located throughout the campground. But we discovered we’d left the water pump on when we left the last campground. We had a full tank of water but the pump appeared to be burnt out. Sigh. Then when Rob went to go outside to look at the water pump, the stairs to the RV wouldn’t come out. It was a long drop from the RV to the ground without the stairs – a big problem for me in particular. Sigh. And the brake controller for the tow car was acting up and Rob had planned to solder some wires together to try to fix that. Sigh.
HOURS later, Rob had checked out the steps/stairs. He took them apart and put them back together again and they now worked. There was a broken bolt, a loose bolt, and a bad connection. Water pump – it was dry and had been running thru the entire trip. Rob had to prime it before it would start working again and a connector had overheated and had to be repaired. The brake controller for the tow car will be worked on before we leave here and tow again. Mr. Fix-It does it again. Phew!
He had put up the screened tent overlooking the lake, so before dinner we went outside and Rob got to relax. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place. We’ll see how the weekend goes. So far, so good.