South to Santa Barbara County

October 21, 2011

Santa Maria/Los Olivos, California

Today started out cloudy, almost foggy, but it was just the typical California "marine layer" that often develops along the coast.  It soon burned off and we had sunshine for the most part on our short drive continuing on US-101 from Atascadero to just south of Santa Maria.  Our destination today wasn't an Elks Lodge for a change!  It's a winery.

We stopped at Trés Hermanas Winery four or five years ago and were intrigued with their Wine Club deal: based on how much you spend on wine, you get "free" nights in the little RV Park they've built out back of the buildings.  If you're selective, the wines are reasonably good, so we signed up.  Then, we never took advantage of the parking.  Sure, we stopped by each spring and fall to pick up accumulated Wine Club items, but the relatively long ~10 mile drive out winding Foxen Canyon Road from Los Olivos just didn't seem to be fun with the coach.  Then, last spring, we took a different route and found a road that's much easier on the coach, so we decided to try that this fall.

The RV Park is only open to Wine Club members, although I'm sure they have some various other guests (probably family members) use it from time to time.  It's a nicely laid out 21-space, all pull-thru layout with water and 30-amp electric at each site.  It's nice and quiet and we're here all by ourselves, surrounded by a horse corral, cattle pastures and, of course, vines.  The only down side is that they didn't really execute well on the electrical service, trying to lay out 21 30-amp sites on a 100-amp circuit (that math just doesn't work) and using under-sized wiring.  As soon as there's any kind of load on the circuit, the voltage drops significantly.  Nominally, voltage in North America is 120 volts, +/- 10%.  Our coach's electrical protection system will automatically disconnect is the voltage drops below 108 or spikes higher than 132.  Here, we were able to drop the circuit below that just using the microwave; classic under-sized wiring issue.  It's OK, though, since it's "free" how loudly should you complain?  As long as it's relatively cool, we're fine.