State Parks

One of our goals on our travels is to stay at state and county parks whenever possible. Although the prices can range anywhere from eight to twenty-five dollars, the locations and scenery in a state park just can’t be beat. The quality of campground services can vary widely, and doesn’t always have to do with the cost of a night’s stay. The first state park we stayed in was at the Bidwell-Sacramento River Park. It is located on Highway 32 in Northern California, between Orland and Chico. We called ahead and were told to go to the Irvine campground, and when we arrived there, no one was there, no campers, no picnicking, no one fishing on the river. There were about ten back-in spaces for RV’s with water but no electrical hook-ups. There was one space right next to the bathrooms that had electrical, so we looked around and decided what the heck, let’s park it there. Payment for camping is on the honor system in California, you pick up a little envelope at the gate and drop it back with your money in it. This park was eight dollars, and we knew that this one and only space with electricity was probably for a campground host, but the worst that could happen is the park ranger would make us move to one of the other spaces. Although the park is next to a two-lane highway, it’s below the slope of the bridge that goes over the river, so the road noise wasn’t too bad. We had a great, quiet stay among the almond and walnut trees.
The park ranger showed up the next day to clean out the bathrooms. We knew we were in the wrong space when he went to a central switch box and turned off the electricity. He knocked on our door and let us know we weren’t supposed to park there, and made sure we had paid our eight dollars. We were on our way by ten in the morning, off to the next park.
More information on our facilities. The RV has three water tanks. One tank is fresh water, for drinking, cooking and showers. The other two tanks are waste water: grey water, which is the sink and shower water, and black water, which is the toilet waste. RV parks have a dump site, which you hook up to and dump your waste water. At many privately owned parks, you will have your own dump site at your parking space. Where ever we stay, we try to use the bath house as much as possible, that way we don’t have to go through the business of dumping our tanks. And even though the RV has a shower, it’s nice to use someone else’s hot water.