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yosemite

Mammoth Lakes, California: June 8th – 14th, 2024 (6 nights)

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Mammoth Lakes, California
June 8th – 14th, 2024 (6 nights)

Mammoth Lakes, located seven hours north of San Diego by car, is an outdoors playground high up in the Eastern Sierra (almost 8,000 feet above sea level).  During the winter and spring, there is fantastic skiing/snowboarding at the world famous Mammoth Mountain ski area as well as opportunities for cross country skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing and sledding nearby.  Spring, summer, and fall allow for camping, hiking, mountain biking, fishing, horseback riding, canoeing, paddle boarding, as well as many more activities (such as leaf peeping when the leaves change colors to vibrant yellows and oranges in the fall)!

Although we have visited Mammoth Lakes many times, this was our first stay in town at New Shady Rest Campground (note – there is also Old Shady Rest Campground right next store).  New and Old Shady Rest campgrounds are run by the Inyo National Forest service.  The campground is right in the middle of all the great things Mammoth Lakes as to offer, so it makes for an excellent location for exploring.  There are no hookups at this campground, but there are water spigots and central dump station ($10). We reserved site #76 ($30/night) which is very spacious and is heavily shaded by tall Jeffrey pines.  We received two bars of Verizon mobile phone service (although texting was not consistent – e.g. sometimes text would say downloading but never come through).  There is a water spigot close by site #76 and the spigots are threaded:  so, we were able to use our hoses to pump the water uphill to our trailer, instead of having to use our dolly.  Joining our 25’ and 50’ Zero-G lead free drinking water safe hoses together was still just a few feet too short from being able to fill our 2020 Scamp ’13 directly, so we filled a water jug instead.  Since this was at least the third time where our hoses have been just a bit too short to reach our Scamp 13’s fresh water fill port, we ordered an additional hose for future trips.

New Shady Rest Campground is within the town center of Mammoth Lakes and the 7.8 mile paved Town Loop bike path is right at the campground as well.  The Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center is walking distance and offers a lot of information on things to do (including trolley maps) as well a nice tourist shop.  We brought our mountain bikes (hitched to the back of our Scamp 13’) and enjoyed riding from the campground through town as well as on the paved Town Loop bike path.  The path leads high up above town and offers spectacular views of the Eastern Sierra (still snowcapped in mid-June).  We road our bikes to the Warming Hut restaurant one day for lunch and enjoyed some great meals!  There’s also a nice mostly flat paved trail that goes from the campground through a Jeffrey Pine forest to Shady Rest Park (about 1 mile each way).  We enjoyed walking this path every day during our stay.  The smells of the pines are wonderful.  Although we were warned about bears, we never saw any.  The last bear seen in the campground was about two weeks before our arrival.  The black bears are mostly regarded as a nuisance in the campground by foraging for food, but are rarely aggressive towards people.

Our Carlsbad neighbor and friend Rob surprised us with a visit (on his way up to Bend, Oregon for a family gathering).  He spent a couple of nights at New Shady Rest campground in his Honda Odyssey van which he converted into a camper van.  Rob is very familiar with the area as he has spent many years skiing and fly-fishing here.  We were fortunate to have him give us a tour of some of his favorite places, including a hike around beautiful Convict Lake and a viewing of the Minarets (mountain peaks) from Minaret Vista (the highest lookout point in Mammoth Lakes, elevation 9,276 feet).  The vista offers panoramic views of the famous Minarets, the backside of Mammoth Mountain, and the magnificent Sierra landscape.

Mammoth Lakes has an excellent free trolley system which traverses all over town as well as to the lakes.  Some of the trolleys even look like the old fashioned bright red trolleys with open sides!  Each trolley route is designated with a color, so it’s important to get a map at the Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center (or view online) to determine which colored route is the right one for your destination.  Some of the trolleys even have bike racks, so you can bring your bike with you.  The trolley stop right up the street from the campground is designated #12.  We found most of the trolleys, regardless of colored route, go to The Village, where one can catch the Lake Basins trolley to the lakes.  The Village is designed like a posh European alps village and has various stores and eateries.  We had fun taking the trolley up to the lakes and hiking the spectacular Panorama Dome, which features spectacular views of the mountains, Twin Lakes, and waterfalls.

Although we only stayed five days in Mammoth Lakes, there are so many fun things to do, that one could easily spend a couple of weeks here and not get bored.  In the late spring, there is great biking, fishing, hiking, boating, shopping, restaurants … to try.  Don’t forget about taking the shuttle to the Devils Postpile National Monument and hiking to Rainbow Falls.  And, Yosemite is less than an hour’s drive away!  We also found it very relaxing sitting in a comfortable chair at the campsite and watch the puffy white clouds pass high above the tall Jeffrey pines.  Whatever, you choose to do, make sure to get outdoors, inhale the fresh air, and wonder at the beautiful natural surrounds.  The sign at the entrance of town has it right as it says, “The mountains are calling, … John Muir”.

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything

Secret Planning Tools & Strategies For Long Distance RV Trips

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Secret Planning Tools & Strategies For Long Distance RV Trips
Planning a long distance RV trip with multiple stops can be overwhelming.  Questions such as:  Where to go?  Where to stay?  How much will campgrounds cost?  How long to stay at each stop?  Are there amenities such as hookups?  Where are dump stations along the route?  and many others often arise when arranging such a trip.  Where to begin?!!!  I’ve put together a number of tools and strategies below which hopefully will help answer many of these questions and make the process of trip planning fun.

When and Where to Go?
The answer to this question is often dictated by the weather.  Unless one has an important reason to go somewhere specific, such as a business trip or family gathering, most of us will head to locations where the weather is good so we can enjoy our RV vacations (which usually involve a lot of outdoors activities).   In planning trips for our Scamp 13’ (with San Diego as our home base), paying attention to good weather usually means planning coast and mountain trips in the summer, all types of trips in the late spring and early fall, and coast and desert trips in the winter.  By following this method, we usually avoid temperature extremes, which can not only be extremely uncomfortable, but also damaging to the pipes (e.g. freezing) in small travel trailers.  Living in California, we are lucky in that there are usually locations throughout the year where the weather is favorable for small travel trailer trips.

In addition to the weather, it’s also a good idea to plan trips around locations of interest to you.  It only makes sense going places you will enjoy.  I have a friend who likes to attend the big annual quilting show in Sisters, Oregon every July.  Another friend loves fishing and has a standing reservation at Silver Lake Resort.  Building a trip around these activities is the perfect way to enjoy your small travel trailer and a fun interest at the same time.  Personally, I enjoy going to National and State Parks for the outdoor activities and many of my trips are to these locations.  After all, one of the big advantages of having a small travel trailer is being able to stay within these parks (often where hotels are non-existent or extremely expensive like the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite).  But, I also enjoy going to unique locations of interest, such as farm stays or specialty locations.  For example, I’m currently planning a fall trip through Oregon and hope to stay at several specialty stops including this alpaca farm, airport and airplane museum, small railroad depot, and organic farm.

Lastly, it’s often our schedules that dictate when we go.  For example, families may only be able to travel in the summer.  In these cases, pay close attention not only to the weather but also the potential for crowds when trip planning.  Even if the weather is good at a particular location during the planned travel month, if may not be a lot of fun if there are big crowds (such as at certain National parks).  I’ve found that going to lesser known parks can be equally enjoyable during the summer months.  For example, we had an awesome time at Lassen Volcanic National Park this past July and probably enjoyed it as much as our Yosemite trip two months earlier.

Planning Tools
Once you have decided when and where you want to go, it’s time to utilize some key travel planning tools which will not only help you decide on the best travel routes, best places to stay, and where to dump, but also potentially will save you a lot of money and make your trip more memorable!  The first tool I recommend is using Google Maps to search drive times between your planned stops.  Search “drive time from X to X”.

We try to limit our daily driving to no more than 4 hours per day (and driving no more than 2 consecutive days in a row).  However, we do sometimes make exceptions to facilitate certain trips (occasionally driving 5 or 6 hours if necessary and/or driving more than 2 consecutive days in a row if the drives are 3 hours or less and we want to visit a certain location).  For example, in the summer we go to Mammoth Lakes in the mountains (about a 7 hour drive), but it’s not possible to stay overnight midway as it is the desert and too hot.  However, when we arrive we often stay several days at each location, making the long drive on the first day worthwhile.

A second free tool is the AAA Triptik Travel Planner.  It’s free, but you have to have a AAA membership if you want to save your trip (which isn’t really a big deal unless you are plotting out a lot of stops and want to come back to refer to the website map in the future).  This is a fantastic route planner because it gives a lot of great information.  It shows your route on a map along with pins at each stop (which you can print).  You can set a time or distance interval that highlights with a circle on the map each interval.  For example, if you want to limit each day to 4 hours driving, you can set a 4 hour interval and then the tool highlights these intervals on the map with red circles.  The map lists trip total drive time and miles along with complete step by step driving directions (if you want).  There is also a selectable legend that will show gas stations, campsites, restaurants, and other areas of interest on the map.

Sometimes it may be necessary to find an RV DUMP Station along your route.  Having this information in advance can be very useful as it may allow you to stay at free locations (such as Boondockers Welcome or Harvest Host sites) without having to spend money for a campground just to have access to a dump.  This RV Dump Stations Map by Roundabout Publications (publisher of travel books) is a third free tool which shows Dump stations all over the country (note:  I have not verified the accuracy of this map so use at your own discretion).  In addition to showing dump station locations, the map also has a legend indicating the cost of the station (some are even free!).  In our experience, private dumps generally charge between $7 to $10 per dump.

State and regional parks often have websites and maps showing state and regional campground site locations (the 4th free tool).  For example, on the Oregon trip I’m planning, I referred to the Oregon State Parks “Find a Park” map extensively.  And many regional parks have campground maps that provide campsite locations.  For example, Sonoma County has this regional campground map.  I’ve found that state and regional parks campgrounds often offer very generous amounts of campsite space and tend to be an excellent value.

If you think you might enjoy some niche stays, such farms, wineries, museums, or people’s homes/driveways, consider joining both Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Hosts (inexpensive annual memberships).  With this 5th tool, just a couple of stays will offset the cost of the annual subscription.  Before signing up, go to their websites and view host location maps.  The Harvest Host map even lets you plot your route and shows stay locations on the map!  If it looks like there are many places to stay on your route, perhaps give it a try.  We’ve had great stays using these memberships and enjoyed meeting the hosts.  Also, memberships can allow you to save a lot of money if you stay at multiple locations throughout the year (as individual stays are free / although we generally give a small gift or make a purchase).

Power Tools:  Using All Tools Together
I’ve found it incredibly efficient to use all of the above tools simultaneously together to review maps regarding the route and stops (Google Maps / AAA Triptik), Dump station locations (RV Dump Stations Map) , available campgrounds (AAA Triptik / State & Regional Parks map), and boondocking sites (Boondockers Welcome / Harvest Hosts).  To do this, just open up multiple browsers so you can jump back and forth comparing all the information.  Doing this allowed me to quickly see driving times and possible campsite locations on my planned trip.  I was also able to identify some interesting boondocking possibilities without being concerned about a lack of a dump station at these locations (since I also had the Dump Station map and knew there were dumping options on the drive).

Fun Things to Do
Now that you have figured out when and where you are going, made a map of your trip (and chosen stops so you aren’t driving much longer than 4 hours per day and limiting travelling to no more than two consecutive days of driving), it’s a good idea to get some insider information on fun things to do at your locations.  A few sources I’ve found helpful (beyond just Google searches) are campground reviews, State tourism commission websites, and a couple of travel websites.  For example, when I searched Wallowa Lake State Park campground reviews, along with actual reviews of the campground, I found some great tips.  There are recommendations for things to do and places to go, like taking the tramway to the top of Mount Howard, trails to hike, great restaurants (like the Wallowa Lake Lodge), good shopping (including art and bronze galleries) in the town of Joseph, and fishing.  State tourism commission websites are also good sources of local knowledge.  I checked Oregon’s “Travel Oregon” website for our upcoming trip and found some interesting things to do that I didn’t see anywhere else.  For example, I definitely plan to reserve a pedal train car with Joseph Branch Railriders!  I did something like this in Sweden and it was a blast!  Tripadvisor and TripSavvy are a couple of travel advisory websites that are good for providing lists of fun things to do.  Here is the TripSavvy list for Joseph, OR.

Conclusion
Now that you are armed with these Secret Planning Tools and Strategies for your future long distance RV trips, you can rest easy knowing that “you’ve got this”!  You can now plan RV trips like a pro and have fantastic experiences without the stress which typically comes with figuring all this stuff out!

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly. 

Planning Pearls for Your Small Travel Trailer Adventures

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Planning Pearls for Your Small Travel Trailer Adventures

Having a small travel trailer means you are now free to travel the world (or maybe at least your continent)!  Interesting side note — although North and South America are treated as separate continents in the seven-continent model, they may also be viewed as a single continent known as America.  So, for all of us living in America, we have tremendous travel options for exploring with our small travel trailers…if you dare!

The first thing to do once you get your small travel trailer is to figure out what type of travel you want to do.  If you’re like me, you’re probably interested in exploring State and National Parks.  Starting in your home state is a good strategy because you won’t be too far from home if something happens and you need to regroup.  On our first preliminary “shake down” overnight trip to Palm Desert, just a couple hours drive away from our home in San Diego, we discovered we couldn’t get our hot water heater to work!  Fortunately, we were close to home and only had booked one night (which we spent without hot water).  I called Scamp when we returned home and we discovered a hidden on/off switch at the hot water heater on our Scamp 13’ which the factory was supposed to turn on!  In any case, I highly recommend taking your first few trips close to home so you are prepared in case something happens.

To discover which State and National Parks are in your home state, visit your State Parks website and the National Parks website.  The National Parks website has a search function for National Parks by state.  Google maps is a good tool once you find some parks you are interested in to get an idea of where the parks are and the drive time to each park.  It’s also a good idea to check monthly weather for the location to make sure it won’t be too hot or too cold the month you plan on going.  This is especially important for popular parks for which it is generally a good idea to reserve months in advance (5 – 6 months out for National Parks).  For strategies on how to secure a popular campground, see my article “Winning Yosemite’s Campground Reservations Online Lottery”.  On your first visit to a National Park, make sure to purchase the annual “America The Beautiful” National Park Pass.    One of the best values in all of camping, this pass costs only $80 and lets you and your family (not to exceed 4 adults) into the National Parks without paying the entrance fees (typically $35 per car).  You can also share the pass with family and friends (each pass can be signed by two main pass owners)!!!

Regional parks can also be great places to camp and explore.  These are a bit harder to find because they are generally run by cities and counties with a variety of different types of websites and reservations systems, but online searches of different cities can uncover some of these gems.  Additionally, apps like iOverlander, RV Parky, and ParkAdvisor may provide good leads on these campgrounds.  Be prepared to set up online accounts for these regional parks and expect different types of online experiences.  For example, one such park in California is Calico Ghost Town (a genuine old Western ghost town!).  I was able to make reservations for it on the San Bernardino County Regional Parks website.  This place was home to one of the largest silver strikes in California which happened in 1881.  Another interesting regional park in California is Cachuma Lake which can be reserved through the Santa Barbara County Parks website.   Like Calico Ghost Town, this campground requires one to sign up on the specific county website.  So, you’ll find that if you do decide to visit lots of regional park campgrounds (which you should plan on!), then you will end up having numerous park website accounts (all free).  So, it’s a good idea to have a great password manager that can store all these website URLs with your usernames and passwords.

We try to limit driving to no more than 4 hours to reach each campsite so that our trips are enjoyable.  Sometimes we are forced to drive a bit longer, but generally never more than 5 hours (unless there is an unusual circumstance).  One such circumstance was our trip last summer to Mammoth Lakes from our home in San Diego.  We were forced to drive nonstop over 7 hours because stopping halfway in the desert would have meant staying overnight in our trailer (which does not have AC) in unbearably hot conditions.  This is a long trip, but for a stay of a week or longer it was bearable.  But, overall, we choose to follow our 4 hour rule.  Another thing we like to keep in mind when planning our trips is that, for now, we currently need to Dump (main limitation is the Grey water tank) every third day.  With this requirement, we try to schedule trips so that we are staying at a location with hookups or a general Dump station every three days.  If that’s not possible, then we Dump during our ride to the next campsite at a service station which has a Dump station (these can be found within the apps like RV Parky or by an online search).  Note:  I’m currently working on a portable Grey water auxiliary storage system solution which should double our time between Dumps.  Stay tuned for a future article on this system.

With the 4 hour drive time rule in mind, it’s good to have some expanded options for mid trip stay over locations between your starting point and destination.  These options may include family driveways, Harvest Hosts and Boondockers Welcome locations, free BLM public land areas, and private RV campgrounds.  Our favorite midway stays when travelling are either family driveways or Boondockers Welcome locations.  Our first choice is staying with family because it gives us a chance to reconnect and visit without being a burden since we are self-sufficient in our Scamp 13’.  We have stayed in driveways at my cousin’s in Santa Barbara and my sister’s in Oakland many times while in transit from our home in San Diego to destinations in Northern California and Oregon.  We have also had great success in overnights at Boondockers Welcome locations.  Please see my article “Free Stayovers with Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Hosts”.  These services are available via inexpensive annual subscriptions and allow for some unique experiences like overnights at farms and wineries.

In addition to using your small travel trailer for visiting State and National Parks, another idea is to explore other settings or locations in which you have a strong interest.  Of course, these can be fantastic outdoor wilderness locations, such as Lake Tahoe or the Oregon Coast (which we have enjoyed greatly).   But, such trips can also include other locations which interest you such as for rock hounding, museums, amusement parks, star gazing, city touring, etc.  One trip that I would like to do in the future is to stay at Gilbert Ray Campground in Tucson, AZ and visit the Pima Air & Space Museum since I love aviation.  And, because I love star gazing, trips to dark skies parks (like Anza Borrego Desert State Park) are always rewarding.  Another fun trip we had was a stay at Hearst San Simeon State Park which provided a great rock hounding experience (searching for moonstones on the beach in Cambria) as well as observing the elephant seals!

There are so many different ways and purposes for using your small travel trailer.  And, since everyone is different, there will no doubt be a lot of different viewpoints on the best types of trips.  But, however you choose to travel, there is one thing for certain –your small travel trailer will offer you a golden ticket to see the world (or at least your continent  …  if you dare)!

Disclaimer:  You will get the same great Amazon price by clicking on the links here compared to buying directly on Amazon, but by buying here you will also be supporting the continuation of this website as we get a small commission from each sale.  These are products and procedures we use for our own Scamp that we selected and developed from our own research and experiences.  However, we do not endorse any specific product and cannot guarantee that the products we use are exemplary and the procedures we use are complete, accurate, detail the correct recommended procedures, or apply to your model small travel trailer.  It’s always best to double check with your manufacturer or operation manuals to ensure you are doing everything correctly.