Greetings, campers. Today was a slightly less exciting day as we wound our way down the rough and horrible surface of California’s Interstate 5. I don’t want to say this is a build quality test for any moving vehicle, but that’s about the best way I can describe it. 

The day started off great with a “Traveler’s Breakfast” at Pea Soup Andersen’s. They allow polite travelers to spend the night in their parking lot but it’s a noisy place surrounded by truck service facilities. I woke up to the sound of an impact wrench working on semis across the street but I didn’t care. The stay was free and I was getting pea soup for breakfast. Oh yeah. 

The Traveler’s Special includes a bowl of pea soup, a breakfast meat, two eggs and all the pancakes you can eat plus a drink for $14.50. Well worth it and much less expensive than staying at an RV park. 

Odyssey battery

Our new Odyssey battery performed admirably over night. Being a hotter night, we ran our MaxXair fan all night long and the battery was still more than happy to run the water pump and tongue jack in the morning with much power to spare. 

So far I’m very happy with this battery. However I do need to fiddle with the mount a bit - it’s not as secure as I’d like. 

The Stove

Once again, our trusty Suburban stove came apart. It’s not really that big a deal, but we have one of those glass-topped three-burner stoves with a 22” oven and it works really well. But the screws holding the glass stove top regularly come undone. 

Oh, I’ve tried all the things that would seem normal. Loctite, thread fillers and more. But if the road is at all bumpy, and they usually are, the plastic screws come undone. Then you have to delicately balance the glass tops, disassemble the stove top, find the nuts and put it all back together again. 

This time two of the six nuts had come undone so it was more wonky than normal. 

I also noticed that two of the four wood screws holding the stove itself in the enclosure had started to back out. This is part of why I recommend having a Leatherman or other tool handy when you have an RV. 

In the past the burners have come loose as well but the Loctite did seem to do its job on those little screws, maybe because they’re metal on metal. 

Screws, bolts and other things regularly come undone and it’s your job to figure out where they went and put them back where they should be. At least I didn’t have the same experience as the couple whose entire stove flat fell out. 

Still, if you’re in the business of making stove tops for mobile environments you’d think you’d have some sort of research or testing or just life experience to know how to keep them from rattling apart. It’s not like I have to reassemble my six year old Ram after bumpy trips. Why should an RV be different? 

Remember the show MASH? 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a comedy show called MASH, which was about a team of mobile medics in the Korean War. The show was pretty funny but also tackled some serious social issues in many ways. It was also very, very popular. 

Tonight I’m staying at the Malibu Creek State Park in Calabasas, California which is a bit northwest of Los Angeles. This is also a place near where a lot of television and film production happens and also was part of the setting for MASH. 

Prior to being opened to the public in 1976 it was used to film a number of movies and TV shows including Planet of the Apes and MASH. Much of the park was actually donated by Bob Hope along with later significant acquisitions from Ronald Reagan and 20th Century Fox. 

If you’re familiar with MASH the mountains that are the backdrop of the park will be instantly familiar to you. Those were in the opening sequence for the show and are rather iconic. 

The park itself is all primitive camping (no services) but does have clean shower houses and bathrooms and our site had a water spigot, so we topped off our fresh water tank. 

While we were here it was really, really windy so I didn’t explore as much as I should have, considering I was sitting on my hind end most of the day staring out the windshield of the truck. 

One of the surprising things about this campground is how quickly folks drive through it. My gosh, imagine if there were kids wandering around? 

Old friends

Who should be staying in Malibu Creek State Park but our old friend Michael. Knowing we were camping here he made a reservation and when we pulled it I was pleasantly surprised to see him right across the street from our site. It was great catching up - I honestly don’t remember the last time I saw him in person. Real life is better than Zoom life. 

Beer

I still have one of the beers I got at North Coast Brewing Company, today a Brother Thelonious Belgian style abbey ale. Again, this was a rich, smooth beer with caramel notes owing to its barrel aging. While not as powerful as yesterday’s beer, this one still packs a punch at 9.2% alcohol. 

I found these “Tasty Bite” Indian-style veggies which come in a pouch and are sold at Costco and many grocery stores. I love these things so tonight I heated up a bacon perpperjack sausage from Roundman’s Smoke House in Fort Bragg and added a pouch of these veggies. Delicious, simple and easy clean-up.