Hidden Valley “Resort”? October 23, 2010

 David’s city rhyme:     It's time for some rest, since we're now in Tijeras.

We finally arrived at the Hidden Valley “Resort”? I don’t know how the owners figure they can call this place anything close to a resort. The RV’s are packed in here like sardines. We are so close to our neighbor that the clearance between our slide outs is only few feet.  There are no grassy spots with a picnic table, there is just the site driveway itself. Luckily we only have to pay $10 per night because the “Resort” is part of our campground association. There is a pool closed up for the winter and an indoor hot tub, but it doesn’t look inviting. I am going to check out the exchange library. Hopefully there are some good books to trade.

We were really tired from the 280 mile drive; half on bad reservation roads. We just wanted to get settled so we could begin our three day rest stop. The Resort is located just off the freeway up a steep hill behind a gas station. There are two large signs warning you that this is “private” resort at the entrance.  The manager told us we would need to unhook the towed, the 4runner because the RV would not be able to make it up the next steep hill with it attached. We drove a little ways and David unhooked the 4 Runner as instructed. But we could not go farther, the 4Runner wouldn’t turn over, the battery was dead. We were parked in the middle of the road so we tried to push it to the side a little, but David decided to connect to a site electric box with the charger on the battery to see if it could get enough spark to start the engine. No luck. Then as he was headed forward to turn the RV around to use its’ battery to start the engine, a nice man in the RV next to the road came over. He said, “You shouldn’t set up your camp site here because this is a road.” Duh! I explained that we were aware that we were in the middle of the road, but it could not be helped because the 4 Runner’s battery was dead. He asked us if he could jump our 4 Runner with his car. Saved again; it started right up after we attached the cables. From my perspective in the 4Runner, the hill was so steep; it looked like our RV was going to fall backwards on top of me. At last we arrived at our sardine site to be greeted by Eugene our very helpful and very close neighbor.