55th Stop - Coalinga, CA

Blog Post #66 - Written April 24, 2026

Stay: September 27, 2025

Our next mad-dash stop through central CA was in the small town of Coalinga.  We stayed in the parking lot of the R. C. Baker Memorial Museum, which looked fun and interesting, but we couldn't make a time work to get to see it.  The owner tried his best to open it for us, but our schedule was tight.  They did have this cool outdoor relic gas station that we were parked next to.

Setting up was almost a disaster.  Our jack wasn't working.  So we spent the next hour or so on the phone with our warranty rep and whoever else would listen, but apparently a jack problem isn't considered an emergency, since we can still tow the vehicle.  What they didn't seem to understand is that the jack quit halfway through the unhitching process, so we could neither get it on or off.  Their excuse was that there was a manual way to move the hitch, which we were not given the tools for.  

So, God was very kind to us and allowed the jack to be short-circuited into working enough to get it unhitched for the night.  We just had to use our old-school Nintendo skills and press enough random buttons in a random order and the jack lifted enough to level out.

We were hot and frustrated, so looked into getting some good Mexican food.  The restaurant we wanted was closed, but there was a little Mexican Grocer nearby that had a cafe inside.  My goodness, they had the most flavorful meats there.  Seriously, if you ever find yourself in Coalinga, CA, check out Coalinga Family Market.   They let us sample the meats before we ordered.  The Adobada was so good, we went to the butcher and ordered a few pounds to cook later.  

The next morning, we cooked up the eggs we had gotten at the rice farm. They were so colorful.  The goose egg was a bright red, and the others were orange and deep yellow. Very tasty. 

We walked to church and found some obnoxious Chihuahuas and beautiful flowers.  When we got to the building, we found that the ward was meeting in a different location that Sunday for a regional conference.  So we walked back, got the jack to work once more to hitch up, and headed out to Solvang to meet up with my parents.