The Last RV Trip

January 28, 2019 – I had a very good friend in 1992 come to me with a cash problem. He needed some fast cash and offered me a chance to buy a brand new Fleetwood Searcher 25 foot motorhome for half price. At the time, it seemed like a dumb idea with two toddlers at home and a brand new mortgage but I figured it would be the only way that Gina would camp with toddlers. The day I brought it home and parked it in the driveway, the kids in the neighborhood christened it the new after school club house. Our first Trip in it was to Mount Madonna and it soon became our second home. We kept a diary of our travels and in the last 24 years we took 50 vacations with the kids in it. With the help of my high school friend who owns Almaden RV we managed to keep it in near perfect condition and I really believe its the best 25 year old RV in San Jose with only 35000 miles on it. With the kids gone, and just the two of us, its more than we need and we decided to camp out at Half Moon Bay one more time before selling it and upgrading to a small trailer instead for the next 25 years.

Half moon bay was awesome this last weekend with the warm afternoon temps reaching the 70s, great fishing tides and no wind. Making reservations there for the prime beachfront sites is no easy feat. Much like Yosemite camp sites, you have to have some computer skills to book them 6 months in advance. Gina is getting good at it after 25 years of speed dialing and internet hacking to get us prime sites at Seacliff and Sunset Beach. I really like Half Moon Bay State Beach Campsites.

Half Moon Bay State Beach has full electric hook ups on most of the sites and offers free internet access. You can get most of the major TV stations over the air from San Francisco so its perfect for watching football. In addition, the beach has some great surfing waves and the perch fishing and crabbing from the beach can be excellent. Also, its a short bicycle ride from the harbor where you can buy fresh fish and and crabs right off the boat. There is a cool local foods farmer’s market and a driving range two blocks away and its only a 50 minute ride from home. There are pay hot showers where you can wash off the beach after surfing. Its the perfect quick getaway. I love cooking fresh caught fish and crabs from the ocean 50 feet from the motorhome.

The fishing this weekend was great and I was able to catch fish at will for lunches and dinners. Perch is a great fish to eat camping. Its been a year since I caught and prepared them this fresh. Even though many of them were small, they fry up great with minimal bones and the larger fish fillets are great in fish Tacos. Some people say that perch are too soft, but if you cook them properly and bread them, they fry up crunchy. ON evening I caught more than we could eat and after a night in refrigerator, the fish was even more firm and tasted great cold. I seem to do better in the low tide vs the high tide when the waves were smaller. This weekend was the 33 anniversary of the Challenger Disaster and it made me remember where I was when it happened. I was fishing for perch with my Dad on Rio Del Mar beach when it happened. We hit the high tide at 7:00 in the morning and the Shuttle exploded around 8:30 am.

The goal now is to sell or donate the old motorhome and purchase a trailer to pull with the truck. Im looking at the 2019 Forest River R-Pod Ultra Lite RP-179.

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3 thoughts on “The Last RV Trip

  1. You are downsizing but it looks nice with the slide out. I’m missing you by a week. We are headed to HMB for super bowl weekend and the weather is not going to be conducive to fish. Lots of reading and binge watching I think. We have to meet up one weekend so you can show me your crabbing technique. I have had some great days catching perch off the beach even an occasional snagged crab. Lots of fun!

    Paul

  2. Hi Meng,

    By coincidence, I took a quick fishing trip to the beach near the Half Moon Bay campground by myself on Saturday afternoon after my wife and I spent most of the day babysitting our youngest granddaughter. I only fished from about 3:00 PM until sunset, but managed a half dozen decent barred perch for my efforts so I can confirm the good surf fishing this past weekend. Unlike the calm conditions you reported, I was amazed at how windy it was in the late afternoon, blowing hard straight out to sea, which is rather unusual at HMB. I saw a sunshade tent that had been set up by a family of four on the beach get picked up by the wind and go airborne for a couple hundred feet before splashing down in the breakers! Although the father of the group looked tempted to go in after it in the churning surf, common sense prevailed and the family ended up watching it slowly sink beneath the waves before packing up and heading home looking rather discouraged.

    Good luck in your hunt for a replacement for your RV. Sounds like you got a lot of good use out of it, but downsizing makes sense for just two of you.

    Ed

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