By the Never-Bored RVers
T’is the season of peace … but, it’s not easy to find peace if your RV is parked in an urban setting. For two of the past four weeks – ever since leaving Death Valley, California – we have been in Orange County (a.k.a., “The O.C.”), a suburb of 2,000,000 people and all of them crowding the freeways, surface streets and luxurious shopping centers at the same time.
Peace is hard to find around these parts.
We have landed in O’Neill Regional Park, a serene setting just outside the City of Lake Forest in Southern California. It’s a beautiful county-owned park sheltered by lots of trees and space between campsites, a far cry from city noises but not far from shopping and attractions. More on O’Neill in a few moments …
Within hiking distance or a short drive from the park is an enclave of peace we enjoy. It’s up a narrow, very tight winding road that leads to the Ramakrishna Monastery operated by the Vedanta Society. The monastery sits atop 40 acres of largely undeveloped rolling hills in Trabuco Canyon.
This is absolutely not a place you can reach in a motorhome or pulling a rig, but you can make it in a car.
Open to visitors between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. and 3 to 5 p.m. each day, the compound has sat isolated from the threat of urban development for almost 80 years, having fought off one intense effort by urbanizers to grab parts of the wilderness surrounding the few modest buildings used for spiritual devotion and living by members of the monastery’s order.
That’s the message visitors understand better once they embark on the twisting narrow “shrine trail” through verdant chaparral, into and around ravines and beneath century-old live oak and eucalyptus trees. The path takes hikers or those seeking quiet meditation past seven shrines devoted to the world’s religions.
As a part of the Vedanta Society’s beliefs, the grassy openings surrounding each individual shrine revere “the great prophets, teachers and sons of God, because it recognizes the same divine inspiration in all.”
For RVers who take the time to find this monastery and who follow the trail of discovery, there are no WOW moments; but, you may find one or more of the small areas devoted to the world’s religions enticing enough to cause you to stop, to sit, to soak up the calm and quiet for a few minutes or longer before going on your way down the path.
The buildings on the Live Oak Canyon property themselves are interesting: designed in the style of an Italian monastery, complete with oversized bricks for the walls, tile roofs, bell tower and heavy beams. It was originally planned as a college to provide a place for prayer and the study of Eastern and Western mysticism.
At Ramakrishna, there is no charge for visiting. A gift shop in one of the buildings offers interesting, reasonably priced items, including books, vegetables and fruit grown by the monks.
More information is available at www.vedanta.org.
O’Neill Regional Park, located along curvy, isolated Live Oak Canyon Road in Trabuco Canyon, is a dry-camping park; however, numerous water faucets are convenient for attaching a hose to fill your freshwater tank. Two other RV-friendly features are, 1) generator hours of 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and 2) the price of $13-15 per night plus a one-time $12 administrative fee (we don’t consider that fee friendly).
One additional note: It’s been a few weeks since we’ve been able to post to RV.net, partly because we have been kept busy in the land of several family members, friends, doctors and dentists, and we won’t be back for two years once we head out. The other is that after several days and nights with inadequate RV battery power to allow adequate time on the computer, we have decided now is the time to upgrade to two six-volt golf-cart batteries.
We look forward to resuming our normal “never-bored” lifestyle.
From the “Never-Bored RVers,” We’ll see you on down the road.