After being home from our cross country trip for 3 weeks it was time to hit the road again, although this time it was going to be for a more local experience. This being Thanksgiving, the boys also had the entire week off from school. Between Covid related capacity restrictions and our own late planning we didn’t have too many options, especially in terms of big name state and national parks. We ended up choosing to stay two nights at Uvas Pines RV Park (about 40 minutes from home) and three nights at El Capitan State beach (just north of Santa Barbara – about 4 hours from home).
This trip we also decided to see just how many people our RV could accommodate, by taking the 4 Shtargots with us. They’ve been a part of our small Covid social bubble, so why not.
While Uvas Canyon RV Park was pretty much an RV parking lot, at least it was a nice one, and it did feel like we were close to nature. There was a short trail along Uvas Creek right behind our RV that we walked Boomer on a few times during our stay. But the main reason we wanted to stay there is that it was close to Uvas Canyon County Park, which we’d never been to. Of course it would have been easy to just do this as a day trip from home but that wasn’t really the point.
Speaking of easy, the road into Uvas Canyon Park in an RV was not that. We had actually called the park to ask about taking an RV there and they said it was “not recommended”. Of course when I hear “not recommended” I translate that into “for a man of your considerable skills and determination, it’s totally doable”. Yes, I’m fully aware that this is going to get me into some considerable trouble one of these days. So how did it go? This is when we learned that when it comes to safely driving an RV, it’s not all about watching out for curvy and narrow roads, it’s also about overhead clearance from tree branches. Driving in, there were definitely some low hanging branches that were making a decent effort at scraping our A/C unit right off the roof. After we found a spot big enough to park in (which was it’s own little adventure) we actually climbed up on the roof to see if there was any lasting damage. Fortunately there wasn’t. Bottom line is we will not be taking our RV to Uvas Canyon Park on any future visits, and neither should you (even if you also have considerable skills and determination).
The park itself was nice. We ended up going on a roughly 5 mile hike with some decent elevation changes. There were even some decent California size waterfalls along the way.
After leaving the park (and driving a bit more cautiously than on the way in) it was back to the RV park for one more night, before leaving in the morning for El Capitan State Beach. We did make one pit stop at Uvas Reservoir on the way back to the RV park for some fishing and drone flying. Of course there were no fish to be found. Not a big surprise in that department.
