Lake Del Valle in Spring RV Trip (20)

Our closest RV Trip to home took us only 12 miles from our home to Lake Del Valle in the hills above Livermore, CA wine country…at least that was the plan.

We decided to stay close to home because we just had Camping World install a tow package to our new Honda CRV and we thought it would be good to practice towing while staying close to home.

Well, we never made it off the block. One of the last things on my towing checklist is to check the lights. The lights on the CRV were not coming on at all when the RV lights were. I called Camping World and talked to the mechanic (Dan) who did the install. After troubleshooting, we determined that we lost the electrical ground between the RV and CRV, and I should bring it in. We drove the 60 miles to Camping World and Dan was right on it and had had the repair completed in no time. I was impressed as everyone with an RV seemed to be at Camping World…all 16 bays were full and there was a long queue, yet he came out right away to fix it so we could get continue our camping trip. Dan is a great mechanic who also knows about customer service. Anyway, we ended up on the road for a few hours instead of 20 minutes, but the BWB (Big White Box) towed the CRV like it wasn’t even there. I was very glad I had a backup camera, because I would have pulled over just to make sure I was still towing it! 🙂

Now, on to our RV trip! The Livermore valley this time of year is really a great secret for the locals. The drive from I-580 to Del Valle is on a meandering two lane road that rolls past vineyards and ranch land. This time of year, even with a drought, the grassy hillsides are green and wild flowers are in bloom. We got to camp about 4pm. Lake Del Valle was surprisingly full, and looked inviting. Can’t wait to get on the lake tomorrow in a kayak! The lake is man made and nestled in a long valley that is dammed on the west side of the lake. The lake itself is about 10 miles long and fairly narrow. You think it is smaller than it really is because you only see part of the lake at any given time. The south side is where the camping, swimming, boating and picnic areas are.

Our campsite is about a mile upstream from the lake. Del Valle has over 100 campsites and even a few with full hookups. I always prefer wide open spaces over hookups, so we dry camped over the weekend.

Our site overlooked a meadow and the side of a hill covered in live oaks…just beautiful! I feel really blessed to be living practically next door!

Saturday morning we drove to the lake and hiked about 6 miles on the trails on the east side of the lake. As you can see, our dog, Charlie, likes to help with planning the walks… 🙂

The trail meandered along the side f the lake or through the oaks growing up the side the of hill. Once we passed a couple group camps and went through a cow fence we were by ourselves. We had a great hike, even working up a little sweat as the trail went up a few hills. We saw lots of birds, a few squirrels, and several cows grazing on the hillside. There were lots of people on the lake in canoes, boats, paddle boards and kayaks. We decided to stay on land this time, but we hope to have seaeagle.com kayak the next time we visit.

 

 

Oh yeah, did I mention that Lake Del Valle also has beautiful sunsets? Well, that’s it for this RV trip. Looking forward to our next get-away to Lake Tahoe. :-))