After 4 days in the San Diego area, we headed a few hours north, up the road to Orange County and stayed at the O’Neill campground.

Ruby in O’Neill Campground

This was actually a fabulous place – for $20, they had water (not quite available at each site, but we for whatever reason, we had 2 water taps on our site) and RV dump available. You can have up to 8 people camping in one spot (WHAT?!) and the campground showers/toilets were immaculate! We had a problem with Ruby’s hot water tank, so we ended up using the showers (which are free and you can shower for as long as you want!). There was also a tonne of hiking in the area, but a few days before we got there, they had torrential rains and the hiking trails were closed due to flooding. Anyway, we weren’t concerned, cause we were hanging with friends for 4 days.

Two Alberta Rednecks in California deciding the best way to start a fire: the second best way is propane torch, first is diesel and sawdust.

When we pulled in to our spot, we had enough food for the night but would have to grocery up the next day for the weekend. Well, this turned out to be a shitshow, as this was the day that Coronavirus was announced a pandemic and the world went in to a frenzy. We attempted 3 different groceries stores by the time we found one that we could actually get parking and had food, you know that we ACTUALLY NEEDED! Although, we did have to stand in line for over an hour, to get meat from the meat counter – during that time we got to witness true hysteria when a 30 year old lady was having an absolute melt down (yes, like a 2 year old) in front of 40 people, because she was going to be late for her doctors appointment if she didn’t get her meat order. Todd also saw a couple people fighting in the aisles and the store had to call in the fire department to assist with crowd control. So our quick trip to the grocery store took us about 6 hours from start to finish! Way to go southern California – way to stay calm. The best part about the weekend (aside from shaking our heads at the insane hysteria happening in the outside world), was the invention of our new favourite word (obvious created around a campfire late at night) “Sheeple” (sheep plus people). We may have used this word in varying ways but it usually started or ended with “What the fuck is wrong with fucking sheeple?”. Here’s an example of sheeple (slash fucktards) in their infinite (and highly educated) wisdom: https://www.rebelnews.com/toilet_paper_and_corona_beer_panic_buying_in_the_days_of_covid_19

Regardless, we had a great time with Maynard and Louise – we even had a lobster barbeque on the last night, with lobsters caught by Maynard from the actual ocean – these were fan-frickin-tastic!. Thanks guys, see you next time!

I forgot to take a pic with them together, so this is from our last trip to see them in 2017.

Drove through 14 lanes of nearly empty freeways through Corona, CA (it looked virus free) and pitstopped for the night in Barstow, CA where we saw a cool railroad museum.

Cool rail museum

Moved on to Vegas the next day, and were greeted with fairly empty streets (Las Vegas Boulevard) and sidewalks. Did a little maintenance on the bus while we were squatting for a couple nites in the parking lot of The Orleans – next time you see me about the time I took the garbage to the dumpster here.

Las Vegas Strip

Currently, we are perched on the NW corner of Lake Mead, in a random camping (free) area, with about 40 other boondockers, spread out over a 100 acres or so. Although we have been told by Trudeau that we need to get our asses home cause the borders are closing, nah, we’re not coming home. Its too cold and we don’t want to change our plans. We continue to hang on to warm, until we absolutely have to come home!