I’ve described the wonder which is the Annual KOA (Kleerup Organized Activity) camp-out before, so I won’t repeat myself. We were back at Lake San Antonio again this year (more on that below). A couple of highlights:
- It was beastly hot this year — in the 100-110F range during the afternoon. We made up for it by (a) visiting several of Paso Robles’ fine wineries during Saturday, and (b) going inner tubing out on the lake on Sunday. The temps were trending downward, though — Sunday night it got actually cold by dawn.
- Wineries visited included Tablas Creek (nice facility, good-if-pricy wine, picked up two bottles), Norman (low cost, slurpable but not worth trying to ship bottles back to Colorado), Opolo (utterly undistinguished offerings, esp. with all their Zins sold out), and Linne Calodo (a new winery, with a new tasting room; last year we sat on the owner’s back porch to try their stuff; excellent reds and a faboo dessert; we joined their club).
- Katherine did a bit better than last year about having her own tent; she understood we wanted her to stay in it at bed time, but was just unhappy about it. She had adjusted some by Sunday night. She had a lot of fun with the other kids in the group; she was the youngest autonomously mobile young’un (the next one younger was most of the time in a parent’s arms or lap), so that was a little tough on her. On the other hand, she’s finally beginning to figure out the toilet training thing, with regular walks up to the bathroom, so that aspect of things was much easier this year (though it did lead to some delays on the trip there and back).
- The big question mark for the year was — where would we be next year? Competition for the group sites is brutal, and we barely aced out another group in our reservation this year. They returned the favor for next year. There was discussion of returning to Kings Canyon in 2004. It’s certainly infinitely more scenic, but … it’s a much longer drive, the facilities are lesser (no showers, so we have to rent a room at the lodge for that; no power, so we have to bring generators), and there’s not a lot to do if you don’t want to go hiking. San Antonio is one of the least crowded recreational lakes in California, and has the wine country nearby. In the end, we decided to schedule for a week earlier, breaking a long-term tradition (last weekend in June without a Monday in July), but keeping the best place (I think) we’ve found so far.
More on the trip if/when I think of further commentary on it.
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