Rio Vista VW Camp Out

Rio Vista and the Sacramento River.


Peter's photo of some of the Rio Vista group, with the strange mushrooms lurking.


This past weekend we met a bunch of friends at another vwcamperfamily get together, this time in the small town of Rio Vista, CA. Rio Vista is an interesting little town. Its located on the Sacramento River in the delta which drains into the San Francisco Bay. The delta is kind of marshy, and has many levees built to contain the river water and to help irrigate fields of farmland. In 1985 and 2007, humpback whales swam all the way to Rio Vista from the Pacific Ocean via the riverways, even though its quite a ways upstream, about 50 miles from the ocean! But we were there to have a camp out at the Sandy Beach County Park where there is a big campground next to the river. We arrived Saturday night, kind of late, just after the sun went down. We found that many of the campers (a mix of bus owners and BMW motorcycle people) were already starting a huge fire. It was pretty windy but the smoke was blowing in one predominant direction, so that was okay. As with most VW camp outs, the drink of choice was cheap wine, which we all shared and did 'taste-tests.' Two buck chuck was the theme, although some didn't care to participate with their $10-plus bottles. Thats okay!

Despite the forecast for rain, the night was clear and we could see many stars. I saw the Orion constellation. There were many strange mushrooms growing in the wet grass. All of them were slimey and one near where we parked the bus looked pale purple and slimey, like a gross tumor coming out of the ground or something. We had electrical hook ups overnight, so we plugged in the bus to run the fridge and heater, but it wasn't so cold overnight, so I ended up turning the heater off.



Our bus. The blue tarp on the ground will be used in my yurt.

The next morning, Peter showed me the giant tarp thing he brought for me. He thought I might use it for my yurt that I'm building, and when I saw it, I got really excited because it will be perfect for making the floor of the yurt and the bottom band. The tarp thing is made out of Dacron material, which is similar to a heavy duty tarp and waterproof.

Near lunch time on Sunday, everyone split, but a few of us made a VW bus caravan to the nearest In-N-Out, a hamburger joint. Mmmmmmmm. Do we really look like a bunch of hippies? One woman spotted us out right away asking, "Are you the people who own those buses out there in the parking lot?" How did she know!?



Caravaning to In-N-Out. The Antioch Bridge and Mt. Diablo.


Lunch time at In-N-Out with some of the vwcamperfamily.