RV Park Review- Saddle Mountain RV Park- Tonopah, AZ

Saddle Mountain RV Park

Check- in Date: 03/12/17
Check-out Date: 04/08/17

Type of Accommodation: Deluxe (more spacious than standard spot) Back-in

Price: $380 + Electric (ours ended up being $115)= $495 for the month

Amenities: Swimming pool, exercise facility, library, basketball courts, tennis courts, pool tables, ping pong tables and more. They also had a "free table" where you can put items you no longer want and take items others have given away. We purged a lot of items on that table.

Wifi/Cell Reception: The cell reception was great. The only FREE wifi in this park is in the clubhouse area. We paid an extra $50 for wifi coverage and it was excellent for streaming!

Favorite places to go/eat in the area:

It' s about a 35 minute drive to any grocery stores, shops or restaurants. Most of these are in neighboring cities.

• Oregano's- amazing salads, deep dish pizza, margaritas and desert.
• Saddle Mountain Brewing Company- Great beers and Chris LOVED their fish and chips.
• Skyline Regional Park- free park with beautiful desert views, picnic areas and lots of hiking trails.
• Desert Diamond Casino- I enjoyed the slots machines, there is NO alcohol on the premises and no table games.  
• The Goodyear Farmers Market
• The Apache Trail and hiking South Mountain in Phoenix, AZ
• Haus Murphy's- delicious german food and beer.

Here is our blog post with more in depth information on these items and more.

Recommended: After a month here were are surprised by our answer...Yes! If you can handle the occasional chicken coop smell and flies.

**WARNING** This RV Park is near Hickman's Egg Farm. It smells ok most of the time but there were certain times of day when the smell hits hard and it smells like you are in a chicken coop. It's pretty bad! There are also lots of flies which was pretty annoying. They kept getting in our rig. The RV Park doesn't allow cancellations so if you get there and can't handle the smell you don't get your money back.

Sign across from the post office

RV Park Review- Orange Grove RV Park- Bakersfield, CA

Our rig surrounded by all the orange trees at Orange Grove RV Park

Check- in Date: 04/11/17
Check- out Date: 04/16/17
Type of Accommodation: Full hook up pull through
Price: $215 for the week (saved 10% good sam)

Amenities: FREE ORANGES, Cable TV, Outdoor pool, gym, laundry rooms, dog park and more.

The best thing about this park is you are surrounded by orange trees. You are allowed to pick and eat the fresh oranges. They were the best we ever had. Seriously! Chris was in orange heaven.

The bees were out pollinating the blossoms. Will be a lot more oranges soon.

Wifi/Cell Reception: The cell reception and wifi were great. Perfect for streaming videos.

Our favorite things to do in the area:

Hart Memorial Park- What makes this park special is the fact that it has a bunch of peacocks roaming around. The first time we went I saw 5. Then when we went back I counted 15. I read they have been there since the 50's and no one knows where they came from.  Who wouldn't want to picnic with the peacocks?

Temblor Brewing Company-

Our flight of beers. They had a good variety. We really liked their Blood Orange Begian Wit and the Streets of Bakersfield IPA.

California Fruit Depot- This place is just a short walk from the RV Park. They have tons of tasty samples.  They have fresh fruit, stuffed olives, dried fruits and veggies and tons of candy. We left with garlic flavored plantain chips and orange glazed almonds. So delicious!

CALM- The California Living Museum was pretty cool. They only house injured animals or animals that can't survive in the wild. The $9 entrance fee to get in helps go towards educating the Kern County children.

I fell in love with this sleeping porcupine

A Harris's Hawk

Watching the mountain lions

Favorite places to eat:

Café Creps

We went hear on Easter Sunday. The food was delicious and we saved money by using this discount from groupon. If you are going with two people I would suggest using the $8 groupon for two people. We used the other one and had some issues with it. They finally decided to accept it because we wouldn't be able to come back to use it.

Chris had the Hollindaise Crepes

Strawberry cream cheese crepes- Yum!

24th Street Café


This place was SO good. It's the number 1 restaurant in Bakersfield for a reason.

Cajun omelet with shrimp and biscuits and gravy

Chicken picata, rice pilaf, veggies and fried green tomatoes

Recommended: Yes! The only bad thing was there was no grass in the dog park. There is a train nearby but it didn't bother us.

RV Park Review- Marathon Motel & RV Park- Marathon, TX

Marathon Motel & RV Park- Marathon, TX

Check-in Date: 02/12/17

Check- out Date: 02/19/17
Type of Accommodation: Full hook up pull through

Our rig Lucy surrounded by all the bright stars

Price: $140 for the week.

Amenities: Cable including HBO and Showtime. They had a laundromat, vending machine, and courtyard with a grill and fire pit but we didn't use any of these.

There is also this sweet working outhouse (it amused me)

Wifi/Cell Reception: The wifi and cell reception were great. Perfect for watching Netflix.

Our favorite thing to do in the area:

Big Bend National Park is only an hour away which is a must do!

There really isn't much to do here except enjoy the beautiful skies. Marathon is a VERY small town.  There are supposedly 400 people here but we saw maybe 15 or 20 in a week.  I actually really enjoyed taking pictures around the RV Park. The sunset, sunrises and star gazing were awesome.

Sunrise

The dark skies were amazing

There were lots of birds out during the day including this hawk.

We enjoyed the mountain views from the park.

Favorite places to eat:

There really aren't many places to eat in or around Marathon, TX. We mainly went to the V6 Coffeehouse which had great coffee but the food was expensive.

We drove to Alpine, TX a couple of times. It is only 30 minutes away. We ate at La Casita which was pretty good. * Be warned they only take cash.

We also ate at Guzzi Up which was WAY overpriced. Chris ordered a medium pizza for $18. Crazy.

Tiny $18 pizza

Grocery stores:

This is it folks. There is one grocery store and it is expensive. We loaded up on groceries before we came but had to get a couple items while we were there. I paid $3 for a can of pinto beans. At least they were organic with no BPA haha.

Recommended: Yes. You can't beat the price. The main reason we decided to stay here is because it is only an hour drive from Big Bend National Park.  We really wanted to stay somewhere a little closer to the park but when I was checking RV park reviews it sounded like if you get anywhere closer you might not have wifi or cell coverage. We couldn't risk that for Chris's job.

*The only negative we can think of is for our pups there wasn't much grass and there were stickers everywhere but it's the desert so that is no ones fault.

It is really close to the train tracks but it didn't bother us.

Train going by across the street

If you decide to stay here don't forget to bring your telescope. I really wish I had one!

Have you stayed in Marathon, TX? If so what did you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Full Time RVing with Dogs

First, let me introduce our pups. This is Remus. He is our almost 6 year old Boston Terrier. He loves nothing more than sunbathing and eating. 

He usually has this Grumpy face all the time too

This is Samson. He is our feisty rescue pup who loves nothing more than playing ball. He will chase that thing all day if you let him. He will also try and bite you if you take his ball away. Yeah... we are working on it.

When we decided to hit the road we of course had to stop and think how it would affect our spoiled pups. Part of the reason we chose a motorhome over a fifth wheel was because Remus hates riding in the car. We thought he might adjust to all the time in the car better if he could lay in his bed comfortably. It ended up being the right decision. 

They just sleep in their bed between our seats as we travel.

Samson and Remus tend to go to the vet more than we go to the doctor. When we first got Remus we found out he had a heart problem and a joint problem. He was only a couple weeks old. Then, with Samson we found out after we rescued him that he had heartworms.

This is what it feels like sometimes

We have had to take the dogs to the vet in quite a lot of places as we have traveled. Samson got poison oak while we were in New Market, VA and had a stomach problem in Springfield, MO. Remus has also had his fair share of rashes and stomach infections. We also took them to the vet or to get annual shots in Santa Fe, NM, Kerrville, TX and Houston, TX. We normally just do google searches for vets in the area and look at Yelp.  Every place we have gone so far has been great.

Samson's poison oak

As far as getting their food, treats and etc. while travelling we normally order everything from Amazon (helps when you are moving slow) or find a Petco or Petsmart in the area. We keep their food in a large 25 lb. pet food container and some of their treats in mason jars.

A lot of the places we have stayed in the past year have had dog parks or dog runs. I think our dogs get out more than they did before when we lived in an apartment.

Our first stop when leaving Houston was Kinder, LA and they had an awesome dog park.

Chillaxin outside

Life is rough for an RV pup

We have had some issues with parks not having great designated areas to walk your dog to relieve themselves like the one in New Market, VA where Samson got poison oak. Or some don't have good lighting at night which sucks. But for the most part we haven't had too many issues.

We don't do much boon docking (no hook ups) so that might make it harder and normally when we leave to go on hikes we keep them at home. They are very quiet while we are not there so we haven't had any complaints about them barking. Then, we always get to come home to our adorable welcoming committee.

We haven't had any issues finding RV parks with our pups because they are under 25 lbs and are not restricted breeds but sadly if you have a large dog or certain breeds you may have issues.

Do you travel with animals? If so how has it been? Any questions let us know below.

Thanks for following along on our journey!

Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch- San Antonio, TX

We had some visitors this weekend...my(Rachel's) parents! I wasn't sure how it would be having overnight guests in our 35 foot Fleetwood Bounder and I've got to say, "It wasn't bad at all!" We had a great time.

We did lots of fun things in San Marcos, TX which included a boat ride at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment and checked out some of the delicious restaurants in the area.

We also drove out to the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch in San Antonio, TX. I remember my parents taking me to Natural Bridge Caverns when I was little but we have never been to the ranch. We all love animals and taking pictures so figured it would be a good place to go.

The price to get in is pretty expensive. It's $22 per adult and you get one bag of food total for the car. Would be nice if they did a per vehicle fee.

After we paid that steep fee we headed to the Safari Entrance.

The ranch covers 450 acres of land and is home to over 500 animals. We opted to not pay for one of their "travel guides" which led us to the problem of having no idea what type of animals we were looking at. They did give us a little safari map though.

Our welcoming committee

A lot of the animals didn't approach the vehicle and just watched the cars go by.

This one looks like it is smiling

Some opted to graze on hay and grass instead of the pellets.

We were excited to see the zebras. Then we saw this sign and thought maybe we should just admire them from afar.

Then of course as soon as we get near them one rushes up and sticks his head in the window with his mouth wipe open. We quickly learned he wasn't going to bite he was just wanting someone to throw some food in there ASAP.

He needs to brush them nasty teefers

The zebra ended up being one of our favorites. After Chris rolled up the window it came to my window and opened its mouth waiting for some more food.

Gorgeous animals

Up next were the llamas. I love them they are so cute but they do smell terrible. The llamas just stopped by quickly and then moved on.

I decided to be brave and feed it

A llama visiting my Mom

I saw a couple ostriches and threw food to get them to come over.

One finally showed up and it was pretty crazy. We couldn't feed it fast enough so it decided to try and eat our car.

Chris enjoying the show

We all rolled up our windows and it wasn't too happy.

Look at that face

By the time we got to the emus, we decided we were done feeding the animals and wanted to walk around and check out some of the other attractions.

We headed to Lemur Island but there were no lemurs for some reason. We did get to see a couple monkeys. Then it was on to the Giraffe Barn.

the giraffe had found a stick it was enjoying chewing on

We had a great time visiting the wildlife ranch. I think it would be a great place to go with kids. They also have a petting zoo, sweet shop and restaurant on the property.

Thanks again for coming to visit Mom & Dad. We love you crazy kids!!

Have you been? If so what were some of your favorite animals? Let us know in the comments below.