RV Camping in Saratoga

An invitation to an anniversary/birthday party inspired our weekend trip to this underrated county park just an hour away from San Francisco (nope, not the Saratoga in New York that Amber says is famous for horse racing). Sanborn County Park is just a few miles from Castle Rock State Park, but much less crowded. It has some really nice walk in camp sites and some RV spots that are, well, kinda close together like a parking lot.


But fortunately the RV camping is not popular and we enjoyed a relatively secluded weekend in this park. There is only one hiking loop in the park, but it's an awesome climb, and it connects up with skyline trail so we were able to hike to Castle Rock (about 10 miles round trip)






In addition to lovely hiking and camping, Sanborn County Park has Shakespeare! Shady Shakespeare is the actual name and they were performing Much Ado About Nothing Saturday night. This was part of the anniversary/birthday party plan, and it was really well done: live band, much singing and silliness, very entertaining.


There were also plenty of deer in the park.


Oh and something we didn't find in the park: Dawn's allergies! We forgot to replenish the kleenex supply in the BRV, generally a disaster for Dawn. But this was a two tissue weekend. Saturday morning: "Is this what normal people feel like when they camp?" Wow. Maybe August is a good month for plant allergies. Gonna test this out further in Yosemite in a few weeks.

A number of enhancements were made to the BRV for this trip. First, there's the shower tent



This structure is not only functional but also provides entertainment to everyone in the park: "that looks a little small to sleep in", "did you take that rocket ship to the moon?" A pretty nice set up except that the shower hangs so low you have to sit down to let gravity deliver the water. This park also has really nice showers for 50 cents so we didn't need to use the shower tent, Amber just tried it out for fun.


We finally got around to getting the spare tire out of the inside of the van, and mounting it on the back.




A tablecloth really makes for a much nicer cooking and dining experience (as does a nice bottle of Calistoga wine).

We also got magnetic bug screens for the windows, which are a really great way to keep the bugs out without the mess of tape we used last time. This led Amber to experiment with magnets on everything else in the van. Now we have ceiling lights attached with magnets, magnets on our clock, magnets on the flashlights, magnets on the window covers.... some of these work ok, some not so well. I'm still waiting to be hit in the head by a falling light.

And speaking of lights, Amber also got a mood light for the BRV: red, green, blue changing colored lights on the ceiling and walls - think party/disco lights.

Back on the topic of windows, there was a little problem with the driver's side window: it fell into the door and wouldn't come out. Dawn tried valiantly to fix it with a spatula (the only tool we had that was small enough to fit inside the window hole), but to no avail.

Fortunately Amber had installed lockboxes in the BRV so everything of value was safe.

On Sunday on our way home we stopped to visit some friends and Paul taught us how to take our door panel off to put the window back up. It still needs a new part to make it go up and down properly but at least it's not sitting on the streets of SF with an open window just asking people to come inside and help themselves to our stuff and/or have a little nap on the bed.

A less successful purchase was the shade canopy, which has instructions (inside the packaging) explaining that you need 3 adults to set it up. Fortunately 2 really smart adults can set it up....but one really small wind can blow it down. Poor design even when lashed to the BRV. Returning that.



In addition to the window assist, Paul and Mira came to the rescue and provided a much sturdier shade structure for Amber's use at Burning Man.


Thanks and a happy anniversary and happy birthdays go out to Lis and Miko, friends from college who are still just as much fun as they were 20 years ago [eek].


-Dawn