I will be at the Quartzsite rally by myself. Valerie is busy at that time, but will fly to LAX on the 22nd of January. I would like to park the bus somewhere close to the airport for a couple of nights so I can pick her up with the Jeep. Recommendations? I don't mind parking at Walmart or similar, or on the street somewhere either, but I know that is tough to find in a big city. Within an hour or two of the airport would be best. The Dockwiler RV park next to LAX is closed for renos in January, there is one at Malibu beach about an hour away. Any other ideas? We want to see some of the sights around LA, then San Diego area.
TIA.
JC
JC,, Go to google and look up the nearest HOME DEPOT store near LAX.. One of the better places to spend the night or park for awhile,,large lots and you can usually find a remote corner with little activity.>>>Dan
JC, here is a park where you can call ahead and guarantee a spot. It is one of many but is one that I am familiar with. You can always reserve a spot here then if you find something better, you can always call to cancel this one. But this way, you are locked into something. It is about 30-40 minutes from LAX depending on what time of day she is flying in. She should avoid flying in during rush hour as traffic around LAX gets pretty backed up then.
https://www.anaheimharborrvpark.com/ (https://www.anaheimharborrvpark.com/)
But both LA and Orange County now have a lot of homeless folks living in RVs on the streets everyday, but being from out of town, and not familiar with the area, it may be better to park in an RV Park, but most of them are pretty full around here most of the time.
I will be be following this post to see what others say.
Gary
Hi JC, to bad about Dockwieler, there are a couple in Long Beach, Golden Shores, is the closest and good, but all are expensive, I stay in East Shore in Pomona near the I-10 & the 57 hwy. Very good park, also Balboa RV Park, in Van Nuys, off the I-405 & Sherman Way, a nice old trailer park, they have a overnight area, no sewer but can dump,, I know the owner well, use my name, tom...
JC, Newport Dunes is also very nice if you want to pay up to $225/night but that is above my pay grade. :D
http://www.newportdunes.com/resort/rates/ (http://www.newportdunes.com/resort/rates/)
Long Beach will be the closest you can get to LAX, I forgot about that one. Thanks Tom. Eric Mutter stayed here and said it is very nice. http://goldenshorervresort.com/. (http://goldenshorervresort.com/.) They charge $60-69/night.
Bolsa Chica is also an option if you want to stay on the beach and it is a nice state park so rates should be reasonable but I didn't see the rates online. But I am not sure they take reservations.
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=642 (http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=642)
Thanks, you guys are better than a travel agent! We will look at them all and make a decision. We will probably book for a week and see the sights.
JC
Quote from: lostagain on December 07, 2017, 12:31:48 PM
Thanks, you guys are better than a travel agent! We will look at them all and make a decision. We will probably book for a week and see the sights.
JC
A week!!!! with traffic you won't see much in LA,when you head for San Diego stop and spend the night at Pechanga in Temecola we park there and drive the hour to San Diego the parks in San Diego are expensive,one on the beach I forgot the name was over 300 bucks a night and you had to stay at least 3 days
Quote from: Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM on December 07, 2017, 12:14:28 PM
JC, Newport Dunes is also very nice if you want to pay up to $225/night but that is above my pay grade. :D
http://www.newportdunes.com/resort/rates/ (http://www.newportdunes.com/resort/rates/)
Long Beach will be the closest you can get to LAX, I forgot about that one. Thanks Tom. Eric Mutter stayed here and said it is very nice. http://goldenshorervresort.com/. (http://goldenshorervresort.com/.) They charge $60-69/night.
Bolsa Chica is also an option if you want to stay on the beach and it is a nice state park so rates should be reasonable but I didn't see the rates online. But I am not sure they take reservations.
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=642 (http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=642)
Newport Dunes is unremarkable and very overpriced. Parking next to the beach boardwalk at Bolsa Chica SP would be nice (as long as there isn't a winter storm blowing in off the Pacific!), but it's always quite full in the winter with snowbirds. Huntington Beach just a few miles south also has RV parking by the ocean, but I think it's a city park.
John
December 7, 2017. The ongoing California-Los Angeles area wildfires might disrupt normal facility availability. Short and long term. Southern California right now is in turmoil. Just a heads up.
Quote from: HB of CJ on December 07, 2017, 01:23:42 PM
December 7, 2017. The ongoing California-Los Angeles area wildfires might disrupt normal facility availability. Short and long term. Southern California right now is in turmoil. Just a heads up.
HB -The current fires in the LA area are up around Ventura, thus nowhere near LAX.
Yes RJ but the folks who live in the fire areas frequently get in their RV's and move in to the RV parks down this way until the smoke clears. The smoke drives them out of their neighborhoods.
JC - just park the bus in long term at LAX. Then just shuttle over to get her.
https://www.cheapairportparking.org/lax (https://www.cheapairportparking.org/lax)
LOL
Fires will be long gone by the time you are here, we are at the end of fire season now. I would stay outside of the L.A. area and drive your jeep in to pick her up. Goldenshores and East Shores in San Dimas are nice and no more than 30-45 min from LAX during non-tradffic hours. There are A LOT of homeless living in RVs all around the L.A. area and I would avoid staying overnight in many of the communities surrounding LAX, even in a Wallmart or Homedepot parking lot.
Matt
Smoke reported in the area but so far nothing reported around us. "Captain we have some reports of icebergs in the area but nothing around us." "Full speed ahead", said Captain Smith.
"Oh ... maintain full speed through the night and fog" My point is there is fire activity in the general area. Now getting South. Conditions are dynamic. Consider the regional repercussions.
Consider future events. Ongoing current fires. Potential for spread. Consider the numbers of folks displaced. Consider road closures. Consider future road closures. Did I mention dynamic?
Deteriorating traveling conditions. Consider fire service stacking and staging. How many folks evacuating? Where will they go? Where will they stay? Fuel. Water. Toilets. Campgrounds.
Please try to have a nice day.
I agree JC with by Neighbor Matt, East Shores in San Dimas is nice and a lot less than some others. End of January is nice also. San Diego is very expensive.
Hi JC, the county and state RV parks,don't enforce the 10 year rule, there is a $25 a nite full hookup park in Lancaster, it's just a parking lot, Antelope Valley Fair grounds. In that area are 3 other parks, in Acton, the Californian doesnt like conversions, Encore is big and nicer, i think its $45, Valencia travel village is nice but close to the fire area.
I would suggest the KOA at Pomona Fairgrounds-or East shore. Then you use Ontario airport instead of LAX-much easier airport. Good Luck, TomC
Just spent a few days in LA middle of November...didn't have a parking issue cause hotel where my event was being held reserved spot for my coach, but I will say that I can't understand why anyone considers LA a vacation destination...the traffic is really truly unreal, the roads are some of the worst I've ever driven on (and I'm a Michigander) and many places outside of 90210 are run down...sure the Hollywood sign and observatory are picturesque, but I've been to LA many many times over the years and just don't get the appeal. I dread going there every year for my event. But to each their own. I'll take a nice drive through the countryside over city insanity any day.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
We don't know LA at all, other than me driving a coach a couple of times from Calgary to the TCS yard in Orange, and flying back out. So we thought, after the Q rally, we would like to explore the SoCal area. We still have to research what there is to see and do. Every big city has good attractions. Then there is the San Diego area next.
JC
Hi JC, there is a nice RV park in Malibu on the coast Hwy,
The 1. Malibu RV park sits on a cliff difectly above hwy one and the Ocean. It is spectacular on a clear day. The problem is a hair pin turn going north on the One, south not a problem. the 101 fwy and the I-405 cross in the San Fernando valley, when going south, do not hit that area in the morning or evening. TRaffic will be at a stand still. Tom...
JC
Disney Land
Universal City tour
Knox Berry farm
Wax Museum
LA Fine Arts Museum ( The building alone is worth the drive)
Tar Pits although they are working on those right now.
Hollyweird
Chilly Fry's
Venice Beach
The Queen Mary ship
San Diego
The Hotel Coronado
Coronado Navel Base
All the Beaches there are nice
HTH
Thanks all, I was on a road trip this weekend. I will look at the options the next couple of days. We would like to stay in LA a few days. There is lots to see.
JC
Hey neighbor, great list.
To add to what Dave put;
In L.A. we also have,
Several Presidencial Libraries
The Space Shuttle Endevor
USS Iowa
The Peterson Automotive Museum
In the San Diego area,
Sea World
The San Diego Zoo
USS Midway
The Gaslamp District
The winter is also a great time to visit Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks
Pick the right time to travel and traffic should not be an issue. Usually between 8:00pm - 5:00 am there is no traffic, and 10:00am -2:00pm traffic will be light. During the bad hours traffic can extend 50 miles in every direction from L.A.
Matt
you will want your bus and a toad in/at Death Valley.
Plenty of fun tourist sites but it would be way more pleasurable if you've got a towed. LA traffic and driving and parking is a huge PIA.
His first post indicates he will have a Jeep.
Don, JC also like RJ drove buses for a living and still does at times and has a Wrangler Toed as well. ;D
Yeah, well, given both have lots of behind the bus wheel and both have tow cars, that sort of says it all, doesn't it. And since I have zero experience driving a bus, I still drive like it's a car and try to squeeze into regular gas stations and drive through windows. Not too mcuh damage suffered so far, but still not none. :(
btw - also giving up trying to air up bus tires at the gas station. Then damn on demand air pumps are wimps.
So that was you I saw in the drive up at Micky-D;s eh.LOL
I now live in Camarillo, Ca-away from L.A. traffic. But still have to come into L.A. every Wednesday for my barbershop chorus rehearsal (mastersofharmony.org). If you have the luxury of coming into L.A. on your schedule, then getting around L.A. really isn't that bad. The first thing you need is to pull up L.A. Sigalert and find out which freeways are bad. If they are all bad, then get a meal or cup of coffee and wait a couple of hours. Course 7-10am and 3-6pm are the worse.
Our crazy governor wants to put our highways on a diet and force people into mass transit. With the sh**y mass transit system and the fact that L.A. area is so spread out, this just isn't realistic. But Jerry Brown isn't called Mr. Moonbeam for nothing. The nice thing about L.A. is there are always alternative routes you can take-whether that's another freeway or getting on the surface streets without worrying about low bridges. Good Luck, TomC
Good point TomC. I seldom leave home without checking with www.sigalert.com (http://www.sigalert.com) either on my computer and Cell Phone. Can save you a lot of wasted time and also allow you to consider alternate routes.
I'll give LA this (and this only), every time I go there (once a year for the past 7) it doesn't matter where I choose to eat, the food is always really really good.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Yep "Chilly Fries" ;D 8) :o
Don't trust what the guys who live there say. After years of breathing all that toxic air, their sense of reality has gone a bit dull! :-X
Really great food, and the air is much cleaner since they banned all those stinky two stroke diesels on the road!
Yes, once they ban all of those old GM buses out here, it will smell much better. :D
Lol Gary, my little 4 cyinder doesn't smoke much.
We stayed at Orange Land RV Park in Anaheim a few years back and had no issues. It's a very clean park and close to everything.
Orangeland is a really nice park albeit a bit close parking for many spots. But they are a bit picky about who they let in. They request a pix of your bus before they will allow you in but they do not have an age limit per se. It is all about how pretty your bus is. If you just show up for a nights stay, you may be okay, but they are running pretty full now as are all of the RV parks in Orange County as they seem to close one every 5 years in this area and redevelop the land.
http://www.orangeland.com/ (http://www.orangeland.com/)
OK, so here is what we've decided to do: I'll drive the bus into LA on the 21st and stay at the Home Depot close to the airport, pick her up the next day 22nd with the toad, then go over to the Anaheim Harbor RV Park where I have reservations for a week. We'll do our sightseeing from there. It looked to be as good a plan as any, so we'll go with it... The nice lady on the phone said they weren't affected by the fire refugees, so it doesn't seem to be a concern. Again thanks for all the suggestions. And see you all at the Q rally.
Merry Busmass
JC
Great location as long as you don't go to bed before 8:45 when they start their nightly fireworks. They will be right out your back door. :D But it is fun to watch them. I don't remember if you have a dog JC, but if so, I hope he/she doesn't mind a bit of noise. But at least in CA you can get some marijuana dog treats which helps calm them down from what they say.
Hey Gary, great idea! You got me thinking: I am going to go full time in the bus and bake doggy marijuana treats and sell them at all the camp grounds. Even bring free samples for the pot luck dinner tables at rallies. Delivery service too. I'll be a millionaire soon... I could advertise them on BCM too. Wouldn't that invigorate the hobby... ;)
JC
Yeah great idea JC. Let me know if you need any taste testers. ;D
Quote from: Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM on December 18, 2017, 12:05:47 PM
Great location as long as you don't go to bed before 8:45 when they start their nightly fireworks. They will be right out your back door. :D But it is fun to watch them. I don't remember if you have a dog JC, but if so, I hope he/she doesn't mind a bit of noise. But at least in CA you can get some marijuana dog treats which helps calm them down from what they say.
woofwoof :)
JC, We can setup grow lights in your Bays with slide out selves for delivery. ;D